Friends-
On Tuesday, May 20th, the Canaan Malnutrition Clinic will see its first patients and begin treating them with the Medika Mamba. It’s been a longer-than-expected process to get everything lined-up, but we are now ready with materials, training, supplies and staff.
We arrived on April 29th and moved into Canaan (located in Montrouis, Haiti), welcomed by the most loving and joyful hosts and children you can imagine. And it was the first day that we witnessed our first miracle. We had 8 navy-seal-ish huge black duffles, weighing 50 lbs each – full of medicine, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, IVs and bandages. Under an enormous covering of prayer, we entered Customs in Haiti with declaration papers stating that we had “medicine and pharmaceuticals and supplies.” The Customs agent called me to her counter, opened the first bag it was covered with ABC books from my mom – perfect that out of 8 bags, she would select that one…beneath it was 40 lbs of medicine. The next bag she opened was full of meds and pharmaceuticals. She picked up a prescription bottle of antibiotics and asked me if we had any medicine. Confused, because she was holding a bottle, I said we had some, but really it was just some things for an orphanage. She asked me two more times if we had any medicine. I said, “We have supplies, books, blankets, vitamins and some medicine.” She wavered us through, not confiscating anything or demanding any payment or bribe. God blinded to her the medicine that she was even holding in her hand, with a supervisor standing by.
After a week of getting settled in at Canaan, we were in training May 7th – 10 in Cap Haitian, Haiti (on the Northern coast) with www.mfkhaiti.org at their headquarters and factory. They are a highly productive and knowledgeable group and are producing the medicinal peanut butter with Haitian peanuts, in a Haitian factory, with Haitian employees. They have an incredible model and best of class quality standards, as set by UNICEF. There, we were trained on how to diagnose the differing dangerous levels of malnutrition and how to administer and maintain malnutrition treatment among the children of Haiti. We visited their flagship clinic at Justinian hospital and have already begun a documentary video from the arrival of the trip (more on that to come asap – via YouTube).
After training, our next step was to secure two heavy duty, locking metal shelving systems. These are necessary for a few reasons, but primary for protection of the peanut butter and medicines (from rodents and theft). We found two ideal cabinets at an office store in Port Au Prince and had them delivered on Tuesday, May 13th. The timing was perfect and our first shipment of 400 kilos of Medika Mamba, along with dewormer, antibiotics and anti-diarrheal meds arrived on Wednesday, May 14th. It was very exciting to finally have the MFK delivery truck bring us the peanut butter and meds – a conversation, some dreaming and researching, 300+ supporters and here comes a truck just three months later on the road to Canaan.
Equally as important, on Thursday, May 15th, our three other long-term missionary volunteers arrived from the States. Joel and Mandy Busby and David Butterfield will be staying at Canaan through the end of July working in the malnutrition clinic. Joel and Mandy are also going to focus on documenting the entire project and the lives of the children and their families. David Butterfield just left his job in LA in commercial real estate to commit his summer to this cause. And we have a college student, Will Nix, joining us on May 28th – also staying through the end of July. We have a training and team briefing meeting Monday at 2pm.
Thus, we have the supplies, the medicine, the peanut butter, the training and the staff. All we need now is the right children to enroll in the program. Please pray for the people of the community to hear about the program, for the children to get the treatment they need, for proper translation of instructions, and most importantly for the Good News of Jesus Christ to be shared and received in the lives of these precious people. Prayer and God’s will is what will make this clinic a success. It’s nothing we’ll do by our own efforts or best intentions. It must be committed to God daily and stewarded well to His children in Haiti.
***OUR FIRST PATIENT***
Elsie Kornelsen, our resident volunteer nurse, has already recruited our first patient from her time at the medical clinic at Canaan. And Met (“teacher”) Elfab has been spreading the word among the local Montrouis community what is available starting on Tuesday.
We’ll have a great deal of posting to do after this week – it’s sure to be exciting. Thank you again and again for your prayers, support and willingness to fund this project for the children of Haiti…it would be an impossibility without your faithfulness and sacrifice.
With love from Haiti-
John A. Elmore
