My heart is breaking. We heard last night that there had been an earthquake in Haiti. Since then we've been scanning the internet , waiting for news, and receiving update emails from my parents. My parents have been serving in Haiti on and off for the last several years. They work with a mission in the city of Port au Prince Haiti.
Last year they went for six months and helped in the rebuilding effort after the last natural disaster, the hurricane of 2008. They were in Haiti again this fall doing various humanitarian type work. They returned to Canada in December and had planned on being back in Haiti now. They had planned to fly into Port Au Prince Tuesday afternoon. They would have flown into the city just hours before the earthquake happened. Thankfully God had different plans for them. They had postponed their departure because of an aunts illness. If they had been there, they very likely would have been killed along with their friends and coworkers.
The city of Port au Prince has been destroyed. The mission base in the heart of the city has also been destroyed. Not just badly damaged, but gone....along with those who lived, worked and attended school in those buildings. The large church building, the Bible school, the childrens school, the 4 story mission building/staff housing....all collapsed. This is the information we have been able to glean anyway.
In seconds so many lives crushed beneath twisted cement and rebar. So many people unaccounted for. So many people trapped and dying. So many families devastated....some families completely wiped out.
My heart is breaking for my parents who have lost many loved ones. My heart is breaking for Haiti. My heart is breaking for the children who left for school one morning, sharply dressed in their uniforms with their hair up in braids and bows, but will never return home.
I am still in shock that my parents would have been in those buildings if they had not postponed their trip. My heart is thankful that I was not orphaned this week, at the age of 32. I can't imagine how horrible it would be to frantically try to find out if their bodies had been pulled from the wreckage.
So many people are waiting in that horror. My parents are two of those people who await word about missing loved ones. I can't even go and offer my hugs and tears in person because they are in Canada and I am in Mexico.
I am crying. I can't seem to go very long without crying.
For so many people its easy to flip the channel and turn off the unsettling images. Just one more poor third world country hit by a natural disaster. click. A bunch of nameless black faces. click. Piles of buildings, horror, carnage, grief.. click. Onto something more pleasant. Don't greive, don't help, don't think about it. Better them than us. The problem with that is that each one of those people lost in the carnage has a name and a story. They each leave behind someone who will weep and grieve for them.
Please find a reputable charity and donate to aid in the recovery efforts. So many people need medical care and millions are homeless and destitute.
http://www.worldvision.org/http://www.samaritanspurse.org/Please pray for those who are clinging to life, for those who are grieving and devastated. Pray for Haiti.
Please pray for a girl named Medjina. She is like a daughter to my parents and is unaccounted for. She would have been in the school that collapsed.
Please pray for a three year old boy named Vanderlin. The same age as my son. He was like a grandson to my parents while they lived in Haiti. They loved and doted on him. He and his parents are missing under the collapsed mission buildings where they lived and worked.
Just two names out of so many.
Psalms 46
"God is our refuge and strength,
an ever present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging"
"Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my covenant of peace be removed,
says the Lord, who has compassion for you.
Oh afflicted city, lashed by storms
and not comforted,
Iwill build you with stones of turquoise,
your foundations with sapphires."
Isaiah 54:10
