We are still trying to determine what happened to the children of the abandoned baby unit. There were news reports this weekend that Partners in Health took over the General Hospital three days after the earthquake. We been cut in touch with them but they have not provided any information that would help us locate the children. While the General Hospital was not structurally damaged, the 32 children of the abandoned baby unit are still missing. These children are not valuable to anyone to sell to adoption agencies or to take as “restavek” (slave) children, because they are all severely disabled or terminal. We have had an increasingly acrimonious debate with the administration that General Hospital over the past nine months, in particular because of children (one in particular who has been there for eight years), that we have been willing to move out of the General Hospital an into one of the Mercy & Sharing orphanages for years. Of course the way they work there, if we want something to them and they want something in return, and Mercy & Sharing does not pay bribes.

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.

Susie and the rest of the US team – Jeff, Bill, Richard and Tim – arrived in the Dominican Republic this morning, after saying a tearful goodbye to all of the children and staff in Haiti. Susie is already planning another trip in about two weeks.

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!

Approximately 12 hours ago another aftershock struck Haiti with nearly as much force as the first earthquake. The aftershock rated 6.1 on the Richter scale, whereas the earthquake eight days ago was 7.0 on the Richter scale. According to the USGS, it was located 30 miles west Southwest of Port-au-Prince. The damage was not as extensive, primarily because there is not much left to destroy. Rubble was shaken from already damaged buildings, and people were panicking and running through the streets again, but our US Team did not see any major additional damage that any of the Mercy and Sharing projects.

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.

Communications were especially difficult today. I did manage to get through to the US team a couple of times but only for brief periods and only after calling all the cell and sat phone number dozens of time. Today the US Team spent most of the day surveying the school and feeding project in the slums of Cite de Soliel. I am attaching some of the photographs from that visit.

As many of you may know, we built one project in Cite de Soliel, and recently had to relocate the children to another temporary facility while we were having repair work done. Our project did not suffer as much damage in Cite Soliel as the other projects, and we had the roof inspected by some of the US team and the rebar is rusted, and that particular roof is concrete, so we have decided that it is not safe to have the children inside that building. We are exploring possibly putting a new roof on the building and replacing it with the type of roof that we use at Williamson, which uses wooden trusses and a tin roof so you do not have the weight of a concrete roof and the potential it that may collapse. The temporary project that we were using was also damaged, it is not fallen down, but it is also not safe.

Saint Louis Joseph Berkain, who is the person in charge of our Cite de Soliel feeding program and school, was not injured (thank you God!) and met with the US team today. Berkain is looking for a location where we might be able to have the school, but it is extremely unlikely that any schools in Haiti will reopen the remainder of this school year. Depending on how the efforts go throughout Haiti, there may be schools reopening this fall, and we certainly intend to do our best to get the Cite de Soliel school reopened as soon as possible.

For those of you may have been familiar with this slum, it is located on a garbage dump and land fill, occupies approximately 27 mi.² at the lowest drainage point in the watershed above Port au Prince, and even before the earthquake it had no electric, it has open sewers, and until the UN built a few wells down there at number of years ago, there were only three sources of water in the entire 27 mi.² slum. The reason it is called Cite de Soliel (the “City of Sun” in French) is because it is only a “city” when the sun is shining. When it rains, torrential mudflows and debris flows through the streets, through the open sewage canals and into the houses, and most of the houses as you can see from the photographs, do not have adequate roofs to protect against rainfall. These are the poorest of the poor, they survive on less than $1.00 dollar per day on average. Many of the children there have no clothing, and we frequently see very young toddlers without anyone to care for them. This is the poorest slum in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the poorest areas on earth. Frankly it is a disgrace that such a place even exists when its only 500 miles from the US.

The rest of the day was spent trying to arrange logistics to replace the US team, get security forces out to Williamson, and to coordinate additional relief supplies. We ran out of the diesel fuel that we received yesterday, but the US team was successful, after several hours of searching, in buying about 100 gallons of diesel fuel on the black market.

Our next challenges are to begin rebuilding our staff at Williamson, they are for the most part missing, or in shock and unable to work, or busy searching for and burying their family members. The majority of the children at Williamson are special needs children that require care 24/7.

What would seem to be very simple things have become extraordinarily complex and convoluted without communications and infrastructure for logistics. For example, we have not paid our staff their salaries for two weeks, they need money and we have no way to move money into the country because the banks are all closed, many are damaged, and they are trying to address their own problems.

While we have approximately 100 tons of relief supplies on the way to Williamson, we are grappling with how we are going to unload the goods. Ordinarily we would simply remove the containers and leave the containers there and hence secure all of the goods. However, we have no equipment to remove the containers from the trucks, and bringing in locals to help unload is only going to draw attention to the extremely valuable commodities in this upside down world of Haiti, because everyone in the community will know where the food is located and we are going to create security problems. This is the reason why we are going to have to send in a security team, and get them armed so that they can protect the children and the food. I know that may be hard to understand living in the comfort that we have, but when people are starving, water is scarce, and the local people have their own families and children to think about, things frequently get out of control.

We thank everyone for his or her prayers, support and donations. Sleep well and try to appreciate the simple things in life and what we all take for granted!

Relief supplies arrived at Williamson project thanks to Feed the Hungry and Stefan Radelich including water, food, and diesel fuel. All children and staff from Cazeau orphanage have been evacuated to Williamson and arrived late this afternoon. They drove out in a convoy with the women and children singing, and I got this e-mail from Stefan:

“After I called you today, our truck ‘happened’ (Divine providence) to wind up following Susie’s pickup with a bunch of praising ladies in the back and the last load of kids… we followed them into the Williamson site. What a great moment to see those kids there, all safe & sound. Let a few tears out & had to really hold back from losing composure. Dropped off the rice & beans (should be enough for 10-12 days for everyone if they keep watch on portion sizes — it’d be a shame to leave food cooked & unfinished in times like this). Dropped off 50 gallons of bottled water & 30 gallons of diesel to fire up the generator. Hope to connect with them tomorrow in Cite Soleil should Divine Providence lead again.”

Susie and Mde Chenet will appear on CNN Morning Show Wednesday January 20th. They are supposed to be on the first hour of the 2-hour program.

We actually got on our Skype with Susie and the US Team at Williamson this afternoon and talked for a while and she got to see how the doggies are doing! The US team in Haiti seems to be very exhausted, but in much better spirits.

The following is a brief summary of what Susie explained about the trip into Port-au-Prince to rescue the children at the orphanage. All of this is being documented and still photos and video interviews.

“We saw mass graves alongside a number of the roads with bulldozers filling the graves with bodies to overflowing. While we are accustomed to seeing small children naked in the streets, we saw many naked adults in the streets or sitting on the sides of the road who were either robbed or ran from their homes in the middle of the night to escape the catastrophe. The devastation is everywhere. The city looks like a war zone, neighborhood after neighborhood. The children and staff at the Cazeau orphanage were so overjoyed to see us that they started singing and praising God. When we got back in Williamson we were overjoyed that relief supplies were literally right behind the convoy of vehicles. The staff is all thrilled to know that they still have jobs, although most of the staff lost family members and have been burying loved ones all week. Although the children at Williamson have had bottled water, because the generators were not working they have not bathed for at least a week and they were filthy, dusty, covered with cuts, and scared to sleep inside the buildings. They have started playing again, we are getting them cleaned up, and they are smiling and going inside the buildings. We have chickens we are raising running around and roosters crowing in the background. The smell of cooking food is incredible when you are this hungry.”

Tuesday the US team is going to deliver some of the supplies that we have received to others who are in greater need. There is a planning session scheduled tomorrow with the US team and the Port-au-Prince team to decide on the next courses of action.

Of particular concern are the feeding programs in the north of the country (Paulette and Phaeton) where we feed a minimum of 1,300 people a day sometimes over 2,000 a day. We are in urgent need of someone to donate the cost of buying a 4WD diesel truck so that we can provide supplies to the north. We have arranged shipping from Miami if we can get the vehicle purchased in the next day or two. The vessel will leave the Port of Miami this coming Monday and we received news today that the government has opened the port in Saint Marc, which is a reasonable distance from Williamson with passable roads.

Mde Chenet sounded much more upbeat when we spoke to her today. Here is her story of her eyewitness report of the earthquake:

“I was going to deliver an invitation to the grand opening of the Williamson project to the owner of the Villa Creole, located at the top of the mountain above Port au Prince known as Petitonville. This is the location of the best hotels in Port-au-Prince, including the Hotel Montana and the El Rancho. I was thirsty, and when I arrived I gave the invitation to the owner of the Villa Creole and then decided to get lemonade. I sat at a table in the restaurant area, and for some reason I got up from the table and my phone rang, so I was walking away from the table when the earthquake first hit. Within an instant I turned around and the ceiling collapsed and a concrete slab fell on the table where I was just sitting moments before. At that point everyone in the restaurant jumped up and ran outside the covered restaurant area to the swimming pool area. The earthquake was shaking and moving everything, the swimming pool tilted up to a point where there was no water at one end of the pool. Trees started falling and everyone ran toward the parking lot and out the entrance of the Villa Creole. I looked up and saw the El Rancho hotel collapse right in front of me, so hard I felt a blast of wind. There is a panoramic view over Port au Prince from this location, and it was like slow motion as dust begun rising from the earthquake all over the city. It rose to the point where the sun was shining through it and turned the color to blood red. As I looked over the city through the dust, the red started to turn to ashen color. I was frantic and stopped a young man on a motor scooter and paid him to give me a ride. We had to maneuver around debris and as I came down from Petitonville I could see the frozen expressions on the faces of people trapped or killed in the rubble and debris that seemed to be everywhere I looked. Those images will never leave my mind.”

We urgently need cash donations. We need to buy one and ideally two heavy-duty trucks for delivery relief supplies to our feeding programs in Paulette and Phaeton. We can buy supplies locally. We cannot accept supplies yet. Donate online at www.haitichildren.org.

Above all, pray for the US team and the children, as well as the people of Haiti. What is impossible for man is possible with God. Our lives will never be the same.

We have relief supplies arriving at Williamson project thanks to Feed the Hungry and Stefan Radelich including water, food, and diesel fuel so we will have operations stabilizing.

All children and staff from Cazeau orphanage have been evacuated to Williamson, and are now driving in a convoy to Williamson and the staff and kids are now seeing the devastation of the city. At Cazeau the walls are so fragile they can be pushed over by hand.

All abandoned baby unit children have been evacuated and are moved to undisclosed location due to security issues. Some kids have TB and they are being treated in isolation ward. All kids from ABU are undergoing medical checkups.

The US team visited the office and the hospital, as previously reported, both are pancaked, collapsed and devastated. The only portion of the project was still standing was the enclosure around the generator, Susie went inside and determined that it is unusable.

Susie met with the Marines this morning to talk to them about security. There are helicopters flying all over the city and that seems to have quelled some of the unrest and looting.

Susie and Mde Chenet will appear (if things go right) on CNN Morning Show Wednesday January 20th. They are supposed to be on the first hour of the 2-hour program.

We urgently need cash donations. We need to buy two heavy duty trucks for deliberative relief supplies to our feeding programs in Paulette and Phaeton. We can buy supplies locally. We cannot accept supplies yet. Donate online at www.haitichildren.org.

Above all, pray for the US team and the children, as well as the staff, are medical doctors and medical personnel.

Susie, Jeff, Bill, Jacques and two Haitian police (as security), crossed the border into Haiti around 6 am Sunday, and arrived at the Williamson project late this afternoon. Unfortunately, things are not as we had hoped. Typically we have approximately 85 total employees with around 1/3 of them working eight hour shifts around-the-clock — instead there were a handful of employees on site trying to take care of hundreds of children. Many of the children have not had water or food in two days, the handicapped children have a bed sores, and they are trying to stabilize the situation in Williamson before nightfall. There is no diesel fuel to run the generators, which power the water pumps, electric and Internet communications. The well hand pumps are largely ineffective. They are getting water and food for the children this evening, and then searching for a place to stay that might have Internet or other communications.

We have now reports that the children of the abandoned baby unit have been two days without food and water. They are reportedly alive, but the morgue is piling up with hundreds of bodies, and the morgue is located right next to the abandoned baby unit.

The office building and hospital in Port-au-Prince have been completely demolished, we have lost all of our paperwork and records which are laying in the debris and blowing around the streets. The project has been completely looted.

The team is traveling to Port-au-Prince tomorrow to go to the Cazeau orphanage. We have reports that Cazeau is not safe because the walls collapsed, there are men with machetes robbing anyone with anything or value, and the people in the neighborhood have stormed the building, over powered the guard, and have taken up occupancy in what is left of the buildings on that property. We intend to remove all the remaining children from Cazeau and take them to Williamson tomorrow.

Madame Chenet is very traumatized, she has been living in her car, and having experience to the devastation, she is likely in shock. Dr. Rodriquez lost 4 family members, Dr. Algenor lost his brother. Our accountant lost his 2 brothers. Madame Chenet said it is total devastation around her.

We urgently need cash donations. We cannot accept supplies yet.

Above all, prayed fervently for the US team and the children, as well as the staff, are medical doctors and medical personnel.

On Thursday January 14 we got a text message from Mde. Chenet, the Mercy & Sharing in-country supervisor — with one word: “surviving” — otherwise communications to Haiti were down all day Thursday.

Jeff Swope, a member of the Mercy & Sharing Advisory Board and his team arrived in Cap Haitien today. He was able to reach Mde Chenet, who is reported that many of our employees are unaccounted for. We have preliminary reports at the office and hospital at Delmas 75 in Port au Prince have been completely destroyed. Mde Chenet said that her house is partially damaged, and she and her elderly mother are sleeping in a car outside because of fear of further aftershocks. Likewise, the children remaining at the Cazeau orphanage are all sleeping outside, most of the country is sleeping outside because of fear of more building collapses.

We have reports the general hospital is operating, we have still not received any specific information about the 32 children in the abandoned baby unit, but we are optimistic that if the General Hospital is operating that the abandoned baby unit is still operational.

Mercy and Sharing has over 100 tons of medical supplies, food and water ready for shipping to Haiti. However, relief flights were turned back from Haiti’s airport yesterday, the port remained closed and most of the capital’s infrastructure has been destroyed. Of the first relief flights arriving Thursday, but the airport had to stop them because it had no aviation fuel for the return trips. It took six hours to unload a single Chinese plane because of a lack of equipment. A British aid flight was one of eleven turned back. Supplies are piling up a few hundred miles away in the Dominican Republic. The port is closed because of damaged wharfs and debris in the water. Most roads are impassable. The Government is barely functioning because whole ministries were destroyed. There is no running water or electricity, little heavy lifting equipment and most communications are down.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, here are some updates on our Mercy & Sharing programs. Information is limited at this time, so stay tuned for updates or follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Want to help? Please consider making a donation to the Mercy & Sharing Foundation.

Orphanages

• Williamson School – Kids are ok, they were far enough away from Port-au-Prince
• Abandoned Baby Unit – No info, but located in a destroyed area, and may also be destroyed or damaged.

Education

• John Branchizio School in Cazeau – Some damage, but kids are ok.
• Cite Soleil School – Probable damage, no info yet.

Mercy & Sharing

• Clinic and Headquarters building – No info, but likely damaged.
• Employees – Likely many dead, but little info.
• Mdme. Chenet – Director – limited communications – things are very bad.

Nutrition

• Nutrition Programs – No info.