I received this update yesterday from Martin Vargas. Trisha Hartman just returned from Haiti and sent her update to a newspaper in Florida. She gave me permission to post it on my blog. Thanks Trisha!
~Jim
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From: Trisha Hartman
To: afins@sun-sentinel.com
Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 9:14 AM
Subject: Just returned from Haiti
We just returned from Haiti on a mission trip with Come Over Ministries, headed by Pastor Martin Vargas. The need is great. We witnessed a people who were thankful to God for their lives. They managed to smile. They were thankful that God had sent us on this trip to let them know that God had not forgotten them.
We were surprised at the article about the food distribution that we read when we returned in the Sunday paper. It said the UN was distributing food in Cite-de-Soleil on Saturday. Our information is that no one was helping this already impoverished neighborhood. We set up medical, water and food distribution on Sunday and Monday. We did not encounter the kind of turbulence that is described in your article.
The UN helped us with some security, but did not stay. We only had three local policemen with us all day. In fact, the UN left a group of our men after sundown that was waiting for a van, even though the group asked them for help. They had committed to help keep us secure while we were in the city. We stayed in a compound outside the city at night. Thankfully, everyone was fine, and never felt threatened. One Brazilian soldier commented that he was surprised that we were able to do this in a neighborhood that was already dangerous to enter before the earthquake with only three policemen. He said it should take 75 military to pull this off. God was with us.
Our understanding is that there is food sitting in ports and on the UN grounds with no one to distribute it. We could not get our container that we shipped before the trip out of the port to be able to distribute the medications, food and water that we had intended to distribute. We negotiated with the UN to get water and food to distribute, and had to pay to have it delivered to our base camp outside the city. We did not witness any military distributions of food by them. We had a Washington Post reporter with us on Monday.
The need for children is the greatest. Of the hundreds who showed up for medical help, we only had a handful who came without babies. They need medicines for children and vitamins for pregnant women. They also need those orange buckets that they sell at the hardware stores to carry water.
Trisha Hartman
www.TrishaHartman.com
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