Haiti Earthquake Stuff

I've noticed a few people have checked my blog in the last few days. I'm assuming to find out what's going on on this end.

BAH!

It's pretty crazy. Watching the news, there have been a few places shown on camera that I saw while I was in Haiti. It's pretty insane to see the damage. Mostly, I wonder "how are these people going to survive?" It's already been 2 years since I was there and Haiti is known for its impoverished state, let alone this crisis.

In regards to Chris. I'm not entirely sure what is going on with that. We are just starting to receive information. It sounds as if things will be sped up. He was in the last stages of adoption anyway and it sounded as if he would be home sometime in the spring. Needless to say, it's been super hard on my sister. The orphanage is fine. There were a few cracks in the building that weren't there before, so they slept in the yard for a bit (which is horrifying to me because of all the rats). At one point there were rumours that the dam was going to break again (this is the one that burst during the hurricane and it flooded), so they had to evacuate the kids to the top of the hill and everyone slept in a tiny house. Apparently, they had some cash and immediately after the earthquake they went and bought supplies so they are good for now, although they are concerned about milk and baby formula (and that was this last weekend, so I'm not sure where things are at).

It's been hard on my friend Lori. Thankfully, (although she might beg to differ on that part) she came back at Christmas to go back to school. But as some of you know, she has spend the last 2.5 years there... The Canadian side blocked phone calls going in - assuming so that people can get a line out if they need it.

It's an extremely complicated situation in terms of actually giving aid. People are absolutely desparate and so desparate measures are becoming more of an option. The UN was only able to start handing out energy super bar food things last Friday but there were huge misunderstandings. In Haiti you can buy perscriptions anywhere but it is engrained in people not to use something beyond the expiration date. The problem with the food that was being handed out, was that it had both the expiration and manufacturing date (something they aren't used to seeing) - and so because they saw to the manufacturing date people started getting upset and yelling because they were being given food that had gone bad.

Relations between the UN and Haitians haven't been that great in the best of times. The Haitians have resented the UN presence there - there have also been instances were the UN hasn't acted very "UN-like." Nothing like Rwanda but it's definitely not as saintly as we prefer to think of them as.

So yeah. Please continue to pray