Bethlehem Sends Team to Haiti

Bethlehem sent a team to Haiti on Saturday, February 27 to help respond in love to the needs. Most of the team are nurses and there are five others who will be helping distribute food, water and other supplies. The team is being led by Steve Prater and is being welcomed and hosted by the Iglesia Bautista de la Gracia of the Dominican Republic. The Global Diaconate helped provide money for some supplies. Many other supplies were donated. The picture below shows the team receiving instructions after arriving in Port au Prince.   Steve wrote the following update on Sunday, February 28.

“After a good night’s sleep dispersed among the homes of the Santo Domingo IBG Church, the
team arrived back at the church at 7:00am to get started on the long bus ride to Port au Prince. We were in a 30-passenger minibus hauling a trailer with our luggage and another van with all the suitcases of medical supplies and tents that we brought with us.
We traveled down heavy but will return light. We drove through the DR on some semi-good roads at first but they really deteriorated in some places and every little town we drove through had multiple speed bumps that kept us going pretty slowly. We had our own church service in the bus with some great worship and readings and Daniel from the IBG Church gave us a devotional.

We stopped at a small town for lunch of pork,rice and beans, a very typical dish here that was very good (I thought). Then back on the road which from that point on was very poor and slowed us down even more but we got to the Haiti border praying that they wouldn’t be too picky with us at the border, especially with all the medical supplies that we had. We really were not sure what to expect but thought that customs might want to go through all our baggage and possibly charge us some duty. The Lord greatly blessed us again as the border guards just opened the gate and waved us through after our bus driver honked his horn at them. This was a favorite activity of our driver but he was extremely skilled and we appreciated him a lot.

After we crossed the border we had another 35 miles into Port au Prince. We were already seeing the effects of the earthquake as there were several very major landslides that had covered the roads with a couple feet of rubble that now formed the very rough roadbed. We made it into PaP and met Pastor Luis Arocha who brought us into the Quisqueya Campus. We passed right through town and saw a lot of the devastation and huge tent cities that have popped up.  It is a very secure compound that is totally fenced and there is a US military contingent here. The medical people will be based out of here all week and the five of us that are non-medical will be staying at the IBG house and going out to rural areas and helping the churches in the area that have great needs for food and housing. The medical people will be dispersed from here to different medical facilities around town based on the daily need. The facility here is taking care of food, housing and ground transportation. We will either be sleeping on the floor of what used to be a classroom or in tents.

We are excited about getting started tomorrow so we appreciate your prayers that God will greatly use us and open the hearts of the people that we come into contact with.”

I’ll leave with the words that the team sang after their prayer time at the airport: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, New every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness, O Lord. Great is Thy faithfulness.”