We have a compelling story from one of the school children at Cite de Soliel – his name is Aslan.  He was badly injured in the earthquake, and a photograph is attached.  He and his brother were both in first grade and it was the first time they had been to school at the Mercy and Sharing school in Cite de Soliel. He was so proud of being in school but he was still wearing his school uniform seven days after the earthquake! Tragically his brother was killed in the earthquake. Susie visited him in what his family calls home, which is no more than wooden sticks and tin with a tarp overhead to protect them from the elements.  Please pray for Aslan and his family. We are now getting reports of more missing students.  We have at least seven more unaccounted for.

We now have protection from the Canadian military presence as part of the UN team in Haiti.  Our special thanks go out to Colonel Norman Lalonde and his team from Canada.  They have been coming by each of the projects on a daily basis and asking for things that they can help do.  As part of the Canadian military presence in Haiti they are very active and have been extremely helpful.  They are going to assist with the demolition at the projects that were damaged, and we are hoping to get their assistance in rebuilding.

They put us in touch with Canadian doctors who are in the country to look at one of our children – Arthur. Arthur has had something wrong with his eyes ever since he was a toddler. We were able to rescue him from the abandoned baby unit into the orphanage at Cazeau, and that he would move out to the Williamson Campus in August.  He is blind, and his eyes have been causing him problems for a number of years, as he scratches them and pushes on them, and has gotten to the point now where he can actually pushes his eyeballs out of his eye sockets and onto to his cheek.  We have had him checked out before, but no one seems to know what is wrong, and there are no facilities to perform major eye operations in Haiti.  Please pray for Arthur that the Canadian doctors will be able to help him.

As widely reported (such as the group from Idaho who attempted to take 33 children as to the Dominican Republic), the Haitian Government is very active in trying to control child trafficking.  We have been contacted by a number of organizations who are looking for children to take care of, but many do not understand that the government takes a very active role in controlling which orphanages are allowed to take which children. Haitian Social Services – also known by its acronym IBESR – is very bureaucratic and strictly controls (or attempts to control) the placement of orphans into orphanages in Haiti. We were advised yesterday that we will be getting 11 orphans today, from three months old to four years old, which we believe may be some of the children from the abandoned baby unit!!  However, we will not know until the children are actually delivered by IBESR to Williamson.

Mercy and Sharing recently received an award at a Haitian awards ceremony. Through the generous donation of Mark Salter, we have an ambulance that we have loaned for use in the recovery efforts.  It has been a true blessing, and was critically needed.

We are extremely grateful for everyone’s donations.  The children who have reached out from the United States to the children in Haiti especially touch us.  Here are some of the excerpts from letters that we have received:

Pasadena CA: “Enclosed please find a check.  It is a donation from the Lower School students at Polytechnic School.  Our Student Council coordinated a “loose change” drive and held a hot chocolate sale to earn the money.”

Basalt, CO: “My 8 year-old daughter Ashlyn baked and sold cookies to raise this money.  Good luck to all of your children and volunteers.”

Madison Heights MI: “Please accept this small donation on behalf of my three-year-old, Shelby.  She wanted to help the orphans in Haiti and was very concerned that they did not have milk or bananas to eat.  She asked me how to help and I told her by donating money. Shelby decided to donate her piggy bank money – $2.80.  She then asked her friends and family to manager donation.  We think you for all the organization does to help the children.”

Crestwood TN: “This donation was collected by Jade who is an eight year old.  She collected at her ballet class, neighborhood and bother’s school.  Her mom saw the foundation on CNN.  Our family is sending as money allows.”

Basalt CO: “Dear Mercy and Sharing, I am 9 and I’m giving you $15.  I send you lots of love and peace.  And Happy Valentine’s Day!”

Aspen, CO: “From the Ross Montessori School kindergarten class.  The money was raised from a bake sale, piggy banks and extra chores!”

Denver, CO: “I enjoyed hearing about Mercy and Sharing and shared the Mercy and Sharing website with my husband and children.  The donation amount is odd because my 10 and 8 year-old sons shared their allowance to donate, as well they’ve essentially empty their piggy banks!  Keep up the good work.”

Again, thank you for your prayers and donations. www.haitichildren.com

Susie & Joe

Fortunately, Mercy & Sharing continues to make incredible progress. Attached are some photos courtesy of Bill Stelzer, including Susie at Williamson with a few of the orphans and Susie in the slums of Cite de Soliel telling jokes with the local children.

Just yesterday we received the Government of Haiti customs approval to release the six containers of approximately 120 tons of relief supplies that have been in the port at Saint Marc for over a week. In quintessential fashion, after going to the Customs office numerous occasions only to be told that we were required to place a “deposit” of close to $40,000.00 to get the containers released, yesterday the same government official who was requiring the deposit agreed to release the containers without the deposit! From 2008 and 2009 we still have over $50,000.00 in un-refunded “deposits” held by the government.  While Mercy & Sharing is officially approved by the Haitian Government as a nongovernmental organization exempt from customs fees, they do not characterize the “deposits” as customs fees, but then we do not frequently get them refunded despite our repeated attempts to do so. We celebrate the blessing of being able to get these relief supplies to the site at Williamson, where we will be working with other organizations who have on the ground distribution facilities to distribute these relief supplies to so many who remain in harm’s way.

We are undergoing a major reorganization of operations, working on interviewing and hiring new staff, organizing medical volunteers, updating the training of our current staff and we have joined various cluster groups organized by USAID so we are better able to coordinate with the work of other NGOs in Haiti. We are working on determining how many more orphans we may be able to take it Williamson, depending on what our budget will allow. We have obtained cost estimates for rebuilding our facilities once the government allows rebuilding to proceed.

Last week we had an incredible fundraising event at the Wheeler Opera House and asked them and we raised over $55,000.00. We wanted to give a special thank you to Mary, Melissa and Kelly Gabossi the event coordinators, Liz Shapiro who organized the silent auction with close to 100 donors, and hundreds of others who helped with this event, as well as all of the incredibly talented performers who volunteered their time that evening, including John Oates and Kathy Chiavola, Jimmy Ibbotson, Dan Sadowsky, Cottonwood Acoustic, Starcher Hutsen, the Defiance String Band, the Crowlin Ferlies, Twipr Anderson, John Sommers, Bobby Mason and friends, the Derek Brown Band, Pastor Brian Roessler and Sonja Linman. And also special thanks to the sponsors including Lennie “Boogie” Weinglass & Sandy St. John, and in the Wheeler Opera House, Aspen Marketing Group, the Englehart Family Foundation, Buddy & Connie Bates, the Cantina Restaurant, Aspen Valley Pediatrics, the Paradise Bakery & Café, Estella and David Cockrell, Morris & Fyrwald Sotheby’s Real Estate, TV Aspen 19, Radio Station KUUR, Radio Station KSNO, JRW Energy, Inc., Christine M. Karnes & Richard Check, and the Nancy Taylor & the Children of the World Foundation.

Please continue to support and help us in our efforts to rebuild the projects of Mercy & Sharing as well as aiding others in their efforts to rebuild the country.

For those of you in Aspen, don’t forget the Wheeler Benefit of Haiti concert tomorrow night. Information is available at www.haitibenefitconcert.com

We have resumed feeding programs at the Cite de Soliel school and at the Cazeau project. We continue to struggle with the Government of Haiti which insists on somewhat ridiculous measures in clearing customs, including requiring the large “deposits” which never seem to get refunded (Mercy & Sharing is Haitian government approved NGO (nongovernmental organization) which is supposed to be exempt from customs duties and fees, but they continue to collect money by calling it something else, and rarely give us any refunds). A beach landing and temporary dock facility has been opened at Lafiteau which is about 10 miles from Williamson, but the Government of Haiti in its infinite wisdom requires all the supplies arriving there to be trucked into Port-au-Prince to clear customs and then trucked back out, which obviously exposes the shipments to looting.  There have been a number of supply trucks of other organizations, which have been stuck in traffic, and once the locals realize they are stuck in traffic, they loot the supplies.

We need to urge the international community not to attempt rebuilding efforts in Haiti by going through the Government.  Transparency International has ranked Haiti is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. There was a very telling article in the Wall Street Journal last week, which I am attaching as it shows the kind of dysfunction that is going on inside the government.  The Prime Minster reportedly makes $2500 per month, but we all know that the government officials have their eyes on the billions of dollars of foreign aid coming into the country.

Adoptions have been completely shut down by the Government of Haiti.  We find it extremely ironic that foreigners are being charged with child abduction when we know and have known for many years that the Government of Haiti, and in particular a department that I’d prefer not to mention in this update, has been trafficking in children for years.  Susie actually wrote about it in her book, many of the children would have tags with numbers on them as the staff selected the ones they were going to take (only the healthy children who are easily adoptable and can be sold), and so we feel like the proverbial wooden bell but has been clanking for years but getting no attention. Susie’s book – Angels of a Lower Flight – is in its second printing and can be ordered on http://www.amazon.com/Angels-Lower-Flight-Mission-Country/dp/1416535160/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265846188&sr=8-3

One of the underlying problems in Haiti is the drug trafficking, which feeds an insatiable appetite from the United States. The US Drug enforcement agency has long listed Haiti as the top transshipment point for cocaine into the United States. I’m attaching an editorial from Sunday’s New York Times that makes the point quite well.

Finally, the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms have had a grip on the Haiti since it was founded over 200 years ago based on principles of voodoo.  If you are one of the people who believe there is no evil in this world, then Haiti is Exhibit A in my evidence that evil will does exists and is alive and well in Haiti. Satan prowls in this world looking for whom to devour.  While I realize that many who read this may not be spiritually inclined, prayers do make a HUGE difference in pushing back the gates of the hell. One final item I am attaching for your “reading assignment” is another editorial that appeared last Friday in the Wall Street Journal regarding voodoo. We have met many voodoo priests, and for a number of years knew a voodoo priest in Jacmel who had a school with over 800 children. Susie actually went into his house once, which despite the unbearable heat in Haiti, was extremely cold.  He had specimen jars with human body parts (fingers, thumbs etc.) hanging from the ceiling, and kept a zombie in his root cellar. Zombies are people who have been poisoned with a poison from the blowfish that is extracted by the voodoo priests, mixed with other ingredients (including human bones) and when administered essentially results in a pre-frontal lobotomy of the victim, rendering them unable to think cognitively, but without destroying their mobility.

Anyway, enough of the unpleasantness regarding the spiritual and structural problems to recovery in Haiti, just remember to pray in the spirit. Please continue to support Mercy & Sharing because as this catastrophe fades from the headlines and news reports, the real work only now begins. www.haitichildren.com

Falee arrived at the abandoned baby unit 2 and a half years ago with a serious eye injury. After many months inside the ABU We were able to get permission, after complying with the Haitian paperwork requirements, to move her to a Mercy & Sharing orphanage.

Mercy & Sharing immediately had her evaluated by our doctors in Haiti. Apparently her right eye is dislodged from the socket and was somehow pushed back near the edge of her brain and membrane It took 6 more months to work through the bureaucracy (details available) of getting a passport and Visa for Falee. Mercy & Sharing reached out to numerous doctors and medical institutions in the United States to try and get her treatment. The doctors who did the initial evaluation of Falee believe that her eyesight in her right eye could be restored and that her right eye is potentially not damaged because she sees some sort of a light from the right eye even though it is lodged near her brain.

After none of the hospitals contacted approved Falee for their charitable program perform the necessary surgery for Falee’s right eye, so we turned to the hospitals in the Dominican Republic to see if we could place her there for the operation. A hospital in the Dominican Republic agreed to take her into their care and to perform the operation, but due to travel restrictions between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, her travel to the Dominican Republic hospital was delayed while we put together her paperwork. The paperwork was completed early in January, and we funded the costs for her travel to the Dominican Republic and for the surgery.

Then the earthquake hit.

Falee was evacuated to the Williamson project. A couple days after she arrived she had seizures and was treated at the mobile medical clinic that we have located at the Williamson project. The medicine needed to control her seizures had nearly run out, and so we were frantic to try and find someone who would look at her and hopefully perform the necessary operation. Two days ago, through God’s hands and Dr. Rodriguez (our Cuban born doctor who lost 4 members of her family), we were able to get her admitted to a Haitian hospital. Unfortunately, the Haitian hospital was unable to perform the necessary operation because of the high level of equipment that was needed, and the lack of adequate equipment and surgical facilities in the Haitian hospital.

Dr. Rodriguez has a colleque on board the USNS Comfort, the U.S. Navy hospital ship that arrived off the coast of Port-au-Prince Haiti on January 20 and began receiving injured victims of the earthquake. Initially we were told that she would not be allowed to go to the USNS Comfort because they were focusing on trading earthquake victims. Through God’s miraculous work, Dr. Rodriguez was successful in getting them to agree to take her on board, and we are asking for prayers that they will be able to perform the necessary operation and fix her eye.

Falee is an incredibly intelligent girl, and is very mild-mannered. She simply wants to be a little girl and enjoy the pleasures of life that other children have, to dress up in pretty clothes, to play with her toys and dolls, and we ask that everyone please pray that the US Navy doctors will be able to fix her eye and allow her to lead a normal life. Some photos of Falee are attached. It has only been through your donations to www.haitichildren.com that we have been able to care for this child. Thank you for your continued support.

As we mentioned in a prior update, the Government relocated the missing children from the abandoned baby unit to a facility near the General Hospital. We understand from IBESR (Haitian Social Services) that they will no longer have abandoned babies being dropped off at the General Hospital, which is but now being operated by an international relief agency, and that when children are abandoned at the General Hospital they will immediately be moved into a facility operated by a reputable organization. We are hoping that this will actually be the case and that the deplorable conditions of the abandoned baby unit will now be only a horrific memory from the past.  My personal opinion is that Mercy and Sharing, spearheaded by Susie’s letter writing campaign, and the international attention that was focused on General Hospital as a result, caused the administration of the General Hospital to change their way of doing business. Only time will tell, as we will continue to monitor the situation at General Hospital.

I wanted to send a personal “THANK YOU” to the World of Children, and Dr. Leibowitz and his wife Kay, for their organization’s support of Mercy and Sharing, which even included a grant from Manitha Neyam Trust in war torn Sri Lanka.  While we have received support from a number of organizations throughout the United States and overseas, we want to respect everyone’s privacy and unless requested, we will not be publicizing any donations, but needless to say we all are extremely grateful for the outpouring of support.  We are praying that this will continue and that the incredible disaster that befell Haiti will not be quickly forgotten.

Mercy and Sharing’s next major shipment consisting of approximately 120 tons of relief supplies (five containers donated by Feed the Hungry and one container donated by Sun Electronics) have arrived in the Port at Saint Marc. These containers are in the process of clearing customs and we plan to have them available at Williamson within the next few days.  At that time, we are going to start distributing them to other NGOs and organizations working in Haiti.  Many remain hungry in Haiti.  As of last Sunday, of the 2 million estimated to be in need, only approximately 640,000 people had received a meal from the United Nations World Food Program, less than one third of those in need. Remarkably, this catastrophe has been more difficult to manage than the tsunami in Indonesia or famine in Africa.

As of Monday February 8, 2010 we are going to start the feeding programs at the schools.  We will be increasing the number of recipients.  In Cazeau we will feed 500 and in Cite Soleil we will feed 300. Our top priority continues to be cash donations. Go to www.haitichildren.com and click on the Donate page. We also appreciate everyone’s prayers and continue to seek His guidance and protection for the children and staff.

Many of you have asked us about our rebuilding efforts.  One would think in a country racked with such poverty and despair that rebuilding would be a relatively easy process. Unfortunately, Haiti is quite bureaucratic, and we also have to do a “constat” for the office building that has collapsed in Delmas 75.   A judge has to do a report before we are allowed to commence the demolition of the building.  Same thing for the Cazeau school and wall.

Susie will be likely testifying at a Congressional hearing in Washington, DC next week, then we will keep you advised as to that hearing, and whether it is going to be broadcast on C-SPAN.

We did receive some news in the past several days in our continuing attempts to track down the 32 children from the abandoned baby unit.  We have now determined that the staff of the General Hospital has moved 30 of those children to another hospital.  Two of the children are still missing. If there are so many corrupt trafficking issues in Haiti right now, there is no infrastructure to track children and many of the US agencies, including Mercy & Sharing, are trying to identify where all of their children went.

It is remarkable that things that we have been trying to bring to the attention of the public over the past 16 years are now becoming well known and publicized on television.  For instance, the “restavek” children – the child slaves of Haiti. This has been a scandal for many years, and only now all are organizations finding out about the over 300,000 restaveaks – indentured servants in Haiti. In Focus did a program: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhdttD70GEw from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Likewise, evidence that we have witnessed and photographed over 15 years ago, such as mass graves and the use of end-loaders and trucks to carry and bury corpses is nothing new, but it is now attracting the attention of the international media.  We pray that these efforts will shine the light on some of the darkest places in the world.

Mercy & Sharing, through donations from Feed the Hungry and Sun Electronics, is anticipating the arrival shortly, in the port of Saint Marc, over 120 tons of relief supplies.  We have a security team in place ready to arrange delivery from the port to the Williamson project, once we navigate the vagaries of the Haitian customs system.  Even before the earthquake, the system was corrupt, had rampant abuses, and we have on numerous occasions had food spoil while waiting to be cleared by customs.  Mercy & Sharing does not pay bribes, and so in the past our shipments have often gone to the bottom of the list.  We are also entitled with a number of other organizations who are in need of supplies, which we plan to distribute from the Williamson project.

As now being reported, adoptions are completely on hold, except for those who were already in the “pipeline” prior to the earthquake. Child trafficking is prevalent in Haiti, and under the auspices of preventing child trafficking, the Haitian Government has stopped all new adoptions.

We reported last week on two of our children who were in the pipeline and who were successful in departing Haiti to their new homes in Canada. We receive a very touching report from their adoptive parents and I am attaching some before and after photos of Jessie:

“On Saturday evening at 6:30 pm we received our call from Citizenship & Immigration Canada (CIC) that Jessie & Sarah were confirmed to be on the first flight out of Port-au-Prince carrying 24 orphan children from Haiti to Canada to be united with their forever families. Just after noon on Saturday we learned that Jessie was not able to bring her leg prosthesis from the orphanage, so we had to work fast to find a wheelchair for our expected trip to possibly Ottawa. Unfortunately every place that loans or rents out wheelchairs was closed either by the end of Friday or noon on Saturday. In a panic I called our wonderful neighbor Susan, who was busy at the ski hill with her twin boys birthday party, and she had a wheelchair delivered to her house by 6:30 pm Saturday (Susan lives next door to us) !!! Once we received the call from CIC, we managed to book flights to Ottawa for the next day (Sunday) for Mathew and I to meet Jessie and Sarah. The girls arrived in Ottawa at 6:30 am and Mathew (our 9-year-old son) and I arrived at 4:30 pm into Ottawa.

Mathew & I arrived at the Air Canada Presidential boardroom to find a CIC manager with Jessie & Sarah. Jessie was sleeping and Sarah had just woken from her nap. Sarah was exactly as I remembered her from two years ago, but she was pretty scared. Mathew sat in one of the chairs and the lady with her put Sarah on his lap . . . . that did it . . . Sarah relaxed almost immediately. I left everyone to go pick up our luggage and arrange a hotel for Sunday & Monday night. When I returned to the boardroom Jessie greeted me (on her knees) at the door with a huge Jessie smile and lots of hugs. She definitely remembered me and knew exactly why we were there. The CIC lady had told us that when the girls arrived in Canada Jessie was all excited about the snow. The Salvation Army had brought snowsuits for all the children, so they took Jessie outside to play in the snow. Apparently she was rolling in it and eating the snow . . . she loved it. As I understand it, Jessie was interviewed by CBC television on Sunday when she arrived and told the reporters she though it was cool – coming to Canada!

We took a cab to the hotel. All the trees outside the hotel had Christmas lights on them, which got Jessie pretty excited. All around she was pretty happy and smiley where Sarah was quite and watching and staying close to Mathew. On the advise of a friend, the girls had baths right away and then I put a scabies treatment cream on both of them from the neck down and got them ready for bed. Next morning they had to be showered off and lotioned. Once that was out of the way it was off to breakfast and shopping at Wal-Mart for new runners for both girls and pants for Sarah. They brought pants from the orphanage for Sarah and I had bought some that were all size 5 or 6 but Sarah was swimming in them. At Wal-Mart Sarah’s pant size we found was 3 !!! And I had just last month put away all of Whitney’s size 3 pants (which I will now have to recover) as Whitney is now in size 5 pants. Jessie seems healthy enough, however, Sarah has had diarrhea since her arrival and she is so skinny. Our friend had suggested I give them dewormer, which I did on Sunday night, however, I think Sarah’s problems will need alot more attention. Our Canadian government is providing full medical coverage for all the orphan children, which will be in place until the provincial medical coverage kicks in.

We returned home last night at 7:00 pm. I had parked at the airport so that Curt would not need to come and get us. Whitney (our 4 year old daughter with Down syndrome) had just finished her dinner when we arrived and she was totally surprised to see Jessie & Sarah come into the house. Whitney got out of her highchair and greeted the girls and followed them everywhere as they explored the house and many of her very interesting toys. Whitney was talking away to Jessie in her Whitney talk (which we cannot understand) and Jessie was looking at her trying to figure out what she was saying. Curt left our two big dogs outside and the girls saw Rocky and Bella looking in at us not long before they went to bed. Sarah was quite scared and Jessie was curious. I explained to Jessie that the next day they would meet the dogs (should be very interesting). Thank you all for first, taking good care of Jessie & Sarah while in the orphanage, and second for helping us to bring them home to Canada. Please feel free to pass along this information to some of your Mercy & Sharing staff or volunteers who may wish an update on Jessie & Sarah.”

Once again we want to thank everyone for their donations in support.  We are not taking volunteers to Haiti until the conditions change substantially. We have received an overwhelming number of requests to volunteer in Haiti, and unfortunately simple logistics in that country are in or mislead difficult, a typical volunteered needs a translator, transportation (which requires a vehicle, a driver and fuel supplies), security, and accommodations – all of which are in extremely limited supply.  Thus we are still asking people to make donations online. Go to www.haitichildren.com/donation/ to help.

We also request prayers that God will guide the international community to impose new requirements on the Haitian government or to establish a protectorate in order for redevelopment of the country to take place.  The United States sent over $175 million to Haiti last year, and frankly we could tell very little difference, the country is extremely corrupt and we are, like other nongovernmental organizations working in Haiti, always competing with the government for funding.  Of course the funding that goes through Mercy & Sharing is not diluted, as our Board of Directors and Co-Founders contribute more than 100% of the administrative and overhead costs, thus assuring that outside the donations will go 100% of the projects in Haiti.  This is not the case when funding goes to the Government!

Here is an update from the last few days.

On Saturday evening at 6:30 pm we received our call from Citizenship & Immigration Canada (CIC) that Jessie & Sarah were confirmed to be on the first flight out of Port-au-Prince carrying 24 orphan children from Haiti to Canada to be united with their forever families. Just after noon on Saturday we learned that Jessie was not able to bring her leg prosthesis from the orphanage, so we had to work fast to find a wheelchair for our expected trip to possibly Ottawa. Unfortunately every place that loans or rents out wheelchairs was closed either by the end of Friday or noon on Saturday. In a panic I called our wonderful neighbor Susan, who was busy at the ski hill with her twin boys birthday party, and she had a wheelchair delivered to her house by 6:30 pm Saturday !!! Once we received the call from CIC, we managed to book flights to Ottawa for the next day (Sunday) for Mathew (our 9-year-old son) and I to meet Jessie and Sarah. The girls arrived in Ottawa at 6:30 am and Mathew and I arrived at 4:30 pm into Ottawa.

Monday, Mathew & I arrived at the Air Canada Presidential boardroom to find a CIC manager with Jessie & Sarah. Jessie was sleeping and Sarah had just woken from her nap. Sarah was exactly as I remembered her from two years ago, but she was pretty scared. Mathew sat in one of the chairs and the lady with her put Sarah on his lap . . . . that did it . . . Sarah relaxed almost immediately. I left everyone to go pick up our luggage and arrange a hotel for Sunday & Monday night. When I returned to the boardroom Jessie greeted me (on her knees) at the door with a huge Jessie smile and lots of hugs. She definitely remembered me and knew exactly why we were there. The CIC lady had told us that when the girls arrived in Canada Jessie was all excited about the snow. The Salvation Army had brought snowsuits for all the children, so they took Jessie outside to play in the snow. Apparently she was rolling in it and eating the snow . . . she loved it. As I understand it, Jessie was interviewed by CBC television on Sunday when she arrived and told the reporters she though it was cool – coming to Canada !

We took a cab to the hotel. All the trees outside the hotel had Christmas lights on them, which got Jessie pretty excited. All around she was pretty happy and smiley where Sarah was quite and watching and staying close to Mathew. On the advise of Esther King, the girls had baths right away and then I put a scabies treatment cream on both of them from the neck down and got them ready for bed. Next morning they had to be showered off and then applied lotion. Once that was out of the way it was off to breakfast and shopping at Wal-Mart for new runners for both girls and pants for Sarah. They brought pants from the orphanage for Sarah and I had bought some that were all size 5 or 6 but Sarah was swimming in them. At Wal-Mart Sarah’s pant size we found was 3 !!! And I had just last month put away all of Whitney’s size 3 pants (which I will now have to recover) as Whitney is now in size 5 pants. Jessie seems healthy enough, however, Sarah has had diarrhea since her arrival and she is so skinny. I think Sarah’s problems will need more attention and thankfully our Canadian government is providing full medical coverage for all the orphan children, which will be in place until the provincial medical coverage kicks in.

We returned home to Vernon last night at 7:00 pm. I had parked at the airport so that Curt would not need to come and get us. Whitney (our 4 year old daughter with Down syndrome) had just finished her dinner when we arrived and she was totally surprised to see Jessie & Sarah come into the house. Whitney got out of her highchair and greeted the girls and followed them everywhere as they explored the house and many of her very interesting toys. Whitney was talking away to Jessie in her Whitney talk (which we cannot understand) and Jessie was looking at her trying to figure out what she was saying. Curt left our two big dogs outside and the girls saw Rocky and Bella looking in at us not long before they went to bed. Sarah was quite scared and Jessie was curious. I explained to Jessie that the next day they would meet the dogs (should be very interesting).

Thank you all for first, taking good care of Jessie & Sarah while in the orphanage, and second for helping us to bring them home to Canada. Please pass along this information to  your Mercy & Sharing staff & volunteers.

Regards,

Curt, Rosalie, Mathew, Whitney, Jessie & Sarah

At one point we had our in-country supervisor, Madam Chenet, go to the office to get the final sign off to transfer the children into one of the orphanages – she went to the office at sat in the reception area every day all day for three weeks – and the administrator refused to meet with her.  Ultimately, we began a letter writing campaign to politicians and to the Clinton Global Initiative (insofar as Bill Clinton is the special envoy to Haiti from the UN), and they were kind enough to send people to Haiti and in particular to meet with the administration of the General Hospital.  They took two former ambassadors with them, and the administrator still refused to sign. So we were becoming increasingly concerned. Please pray for them, they are each and every one of them special and unique in God’s sight, created in His image and unique among the billions of people that inhabit this sphere.

We had an interesting weekend, as we got supplies into Williamson again – this time with the help of Tom and Mollie Bedell who arranged for a motor yacht that was leaving Panama for the Caribbean to stop offshore of the Williamson site.  We decided it made no sense to try and get the supplies in through the bottlenecked port in Port-au-Prince, or to drop him off at one of the other more remote ports that are currently operating. So we worked extensively with Captain Walter Rowan and his team and they sent scouts in to check out a beach landing at Arcahaie that is only about 3 miles from the Williamson project.  As it turned out, there were about 300 homeless people on that beach, there was a wooden Haitian boat about 50 feet long, and it appeared that they were perhaps planning a trip to get the people off the island – this is been typical in years past where the Haitian boat people try to get to Florida.  Likely they think that the US policies are changing and now is the time to try an escape.

Ultimately, we ended up contacting a beach resort about 7 miles up the coast, and Captain Walter and his team were able to land much-needed supplies including rice, water, and some basic medical supplies at the resort.  They had an interesting report.  While the rest of the island is in crisis, when they landed at the beach resort, which is fenced in, it seemed to be business as usual; people were sitting in lawn chairs around the pool, sunning and swimming, and sipping Pina Coladas. It never amazes us what happens in this upside down world of the Republic of Haiti.

We continue to urge people to make donations on line while we continue to reestablish our infrastructure. Go to www.haitichildren.com

We are working on setting up a website where we can help people network as we have received many offers from volunteers, doctors, and people from all over the globe, and many of these requests we cannot satisfy, for instance, we are currently not doing adoptions due to the corruption and problems surrounding the adoption industry in Haiti, and yet we receive dozens of emails a day from potential loving parents looking to adopt children.  So we are working on the new website where we can post to these various inquiries and offers and we hope that this will help the exchange of information and help others to make contact with others trying to make a difference in Haiti.

It has been a week of extreme highs and extreme lows.  It’s Friday, so we wanted to focus on the positive, and thank everyone for the incredible outpouring of support and concern.

Two of our children – Jesse and Sarah – were approved to be evacuated today, and their adoptive parents from Canada picked them up for a flight out of Haiti today.  We are going to miss of them, and we pray that they will use the blessing that they have received to make it a better world for all of the children that were left behind.  It is always bittersweet for us when our kids are adopted, because we love each of them, we have helped raise them and they have all of their friends at the orphanage who they leave behind when they get adopted, but they do have incredible opportunities when they are set free from the bondage of life in Haiti.

While we have been dealing with the day-to-day crises, many of our community are actively helping to raise funds for Mercy and Sharing.  Last night there was an incredible fundraiser at the new Viceroy-Snowmass Hotel, which graciously gave us use of the ballroom free of charge.  It seats 200 people, but the place was overflowing and we probably had 300 people in attendance. So I wanted to give a special thanks to everyone who helped, including Mark Thomas, who came up with the idea for the fundraiser and was driving force in organizing it, Jeff David, the General Manager of the Viceroy, Amy Trubiroha Wells from the Viceroy, and Bob Richmond, April Clark, Glenn Smith, Mick Ireland, Don Cheney, Todd Hartley, Darren Behnke, Kathy Broughton, Murray Robertson, Katie McKirahan, Liz Curtin, Kira Harrison and Chris Couve.

There is another fundraiser tonight (and continuing this weekend) at the De Vore Gallery in Aspen and yet another fundraiser on Sunday at Krabloonik Restaurant in Snowmass Village. The Concert Benefit for Haiti is scheduled for February 11, 2010 of the Wheeler opera house in Aspen.  The website for information is located at www.haitibenefitconcert.com. Hope to see you there!

We have another team going in to Haiti who are arriving tonight in Santa Domingo and will be at Williamson tomorrow. Through the continued generosity of Feed the Hungry we have over 100 tons of relief supplies including food and medicine arriving January 29, 2010. We have been donated five shipping containers that have been converted into mobile medical clinics, which will be shipping into the country over the next week or two.  We plan to use these in Port–au–Prince where the need is greatest.

We are overwhelmed by the generosity and support that we have received, there are so many people we would like to thank, and I wish I could mention everyone here tonight, but you know who you are, and more importantly, your generosity will be repaid in Heaven!

As most of you may already know Susie as on CNN this morning. For those of you who may not have seen the video clip, you can watch it on our site.

Unfortunately the death toll continues to mount. We received confirmation that one of our doctors was killed in the earthquake. We lost one of our best physical therapists. Three children were killed outside the Cite de Soliel project, and a number or caregivers or “mothers” as we call them, have been confirmed dead.

The 4-person security team that we have coming into the country should arrive on Friday, we arranged for the purchase of two trucks in the Dominican Republic, and on Friday they are going to replace the current US Team on the ground. We did receive disturbing misinformation from the officials at the public hospital (where we have the abandoned baby unit) that was reported several days ago. We had been told, and reported, the children had been removed successfully and placed in an undisclosed location. It turns out that information is incorrect and probably falsified, because at a meeting today at the public hospital the stories of the officials were inconsistent, and no one could or would actually confirm the “undisclosed” location. We fear the worse, but pray for best for the 32 children who were there before the earthquake.

We have begun the process of trying to restore security at the Cazeau project. The plan is to move the office there in one of the buildings that was not damaged, but we need to rebuild the walls and will need to bring in security because we will use that area as a staging point for distribution of relief supplies.

We have a number of needs for the Cazeau operations, including diesel generator, three laptop computers (new not used), funding for the installation of satellite Internet communications, an inverter system (which is used to charge batteries to run power so we do not have two run generators all the time), and we needed car or other transportation for the office staff. Mde Chenet will be working there, she is recovering from the shock of witnessing the earthquake, but told Susie: “We are sisters and will not quit as long as we have legs. God is reviving us.”

Through our incredible friends at Christian Alliance we have five 40’ shipping containers donated that have been converted to mobile medical clinics under a fully operational, and we need to raise the funds for the shipping costs to get them to Port-au-Prince as soon as possible. Shipping changes on almost a daily basis, currently the best route seems to be to deliver them to the port in Saint Marc and drive overland to Port-au-Prince. These mobile medical clinics can operate anywhere. In the meantime, we are going to be removing the mobile medical clinic from the Williamson project, because we have minimal injuries and most have been accommodated, and move it into Port-au-Prince where they are desperately short on medical care.

Through another one of our other friends, Mark Salter, we had received a full-size merely new ambulance, and we are redeploying it into Port-au-Prince to assist in the medical and relief efforts.

Everyone at Mercy and Sharing sends their love and thanks you for your generous support. We especially thank everyone for their prayers, we together have accomplished an incredible amount of work in the past eight days, but we know that the efforts will continue for years as Haiti attempts to rebuild its infrastructure and hopefully embarks on a new direction.

Once again, you can follow these updates and make donations online at our website www.haitichildren.org or through our Facebook page.