Cholera in Haiti

Breakfast in front of our tent.

Most of the time we don’t have electricity or internet here in Haiti, so communication has been quite a challenge, but so many things have happened already, that we’ll give it a try!

The school is going really well. The students keep surprising us and we are very proud of them. Carla, one of our co-workers who is specialized in bereavement, did a post-trauma counseling with them, and over the last two days the students applied what they learned with more than 100 children of a local primary school. It was so moving to see them in action!

The infection in Johan’s knee and eye are very well under control, and I haven’t even had the slightest pain in my back so far; we are very thankful!

But we do have a special prayer request for the health situation of the people here in Haiti. On Thursday a number of cases of cholera appeared in the St. Marc region some 80 km from Port au Prince. There is a big YWAM base there. The director, Terry Snow, was taking a patient to the hospital that died on the way to the hospital. On the same day 135 people died of cholera, a sickness with heavy diarrhea and vomiting which can cause death in a few hours because of dehydration.

The epidemic did reach the city of Port au Prince yesterday, but we hope and pray that it won’t start spreading although the risks are very high:

• There is a big lack of sanitation systems.

• Everywhere you find little camps with 10-20 tents, mostly without toilet facilities.

• The bigger camps have mostly chemical toilets, but those are difficult to maintain clean, with so many people using them.

• There is almost no running water anywhere.

Some Dutch friends have been assisting in some clinics around St. Marc, but they were telling us about the lack of the most basic things, like IV-fluids, needles, gloves etc…. We hope to be able to help them a little bit through contacts we have with American Doctors, Brazilian army et.

We did buy some extra sanitation hand gel for our students and extra bottles of bleach.

Please pray for protection against cholera, and that the outbreak will be under control very fast.

May God bless you all,

The church and the primary school run by the father of one of our students, collapsed during the earthquake, this is the temporary building.

Our students were busy counseling the kids.

This little girl drew four of her family members who died during the earthquake.

They are having class on the broken pieces of their old church and school.

Johan kept the little ones busy, while some of our students taught the principles of bereavement and trauma counseling to the teachers.

This little three year old girl had been taking care of her 2 year old sister who had come with her to school. At the end of the morning she was soooo tired and fell asleep in my arms. Her mother had died in the earthquake...

The school in Haiti has started with 40 students, what a blessing!

"Bonjour, bonjour!" We hear all around us. We're in Haiti! What a privilege to be here!

The country and the city reminds me a bit of Angola: really very, very little infrastructure, and wonderful friendly people.

We have 40 students; young people who are enthusiastic and very eager to learn. Every pastor of the 30 churches we work with was asked to choose one or two young people from their church to do this school. After the earthquake there are lots of young people who still cannot go back to their schools or universities, as most of those buildings collapsed, and lots of their teachers died. So we had a very large group of youth (120!) who applied to do our school, but we could only accept 40 students, because we do not (yet) have such good facilities and each student costs approximately $ 500 in food and housing for those three months. They cannot pay this themselves, so for the most part (25 students) they are sponsored by Brazilian churches.

We all live in tents with covers of plastic sheeting, which unfortunately is not watertight during the tropical rains that we have here almost every night. The church / school seems a bit like a large tent; the walls are made of blue plastic with a roof from corrugated iron.

There is no running water. Water is purchased from a truck that announces his arrival with a cheerful music of the Titanic (!) Only one or two hours a day we have electricity when the generator is turned on. The bricklayers are still building the toilets for the students to use; hopefully they will put in the doors today! Showering they do outside, with their clothes on (which are also immediately washed) with a bucket and cup ...

Some students lived in nice houses before the earthquake, others were already poor. For all it's a big adjustment to now live very primitively in leaky tents. We have great respect for their positive attitudes. There is not much food, most must be imported, and usually there is only enough for two meals a day: for breakfast a bit of spaghetti with a dash of ketchup, and then for the combined lunch / dinner a large plate of rice with a little beanwater . A sad reality, not only in our school, but all throughout the country.

It is very special to see the hope, resilience, willpower, and happiness of the students. They start each day at half past five in the morning with one and a half hour of prayer and worship. Than at 8 o’clock in the morning until 6 o'clock in the afternoon they have classes.

Johan is teaching these first weeks. His knee has healed well, but he cannot stand yet for a long time, or walk a long way. His eye infection is also slowly healing and he is reducing his medication. At night we rest very well, as we go to bed very early, like most people do here.
We are starting to hear some of the personal stories of pain and sorrow. Yesterday a pastor visited us, the father of one of the students. He told us about the earthquake and about his family. We cannot even start to imagine what they have gone through. In about ten days we will give special classes about trauma and bereavement. Will you pray with us for the students? We hope to train the students in this area, so that they in turn will help others, especially children in the many tent camps around the city.

Please, could you keep on praying for the students and for Johan and me? It's very special to be in Haiti at this time and to work with these young people. We thank God for his faithfulness, and also all of you who have sent us emails to encourage us, who have prayed for us and who have given us financial gifts. We feel very fortunate to have such wonderful compassionate family and friends. Thank you! We wish you God's abundant blessings!

Struggles and victories

Many thanks to everyone who has sent us e-mails last week; it encouraged us so much that you stand with us. Yes, we had to change our plans drastically and unexpectedly. After all the setbacks of the past weeks Johan all of a sudden woke up with a big knee. According to the doctors it could be a bacterial arthritis, a serious condition if it is not treated appropriately and quickly. So last Saturday he was rushed to the operating room, where the inside of the joint of his knee was cleaned. For the next few days he had to stay in the hospital and was on strong intravenous antibiotics.

So our trip to Haiti had to be postponed; we couldn’t go last Monday. Then to top it off, on Tuesday Johan woke up with a severe eye infection. He has ankylosing spondylitis, so that flared up as well. Wednesday he was released from the hospital with lots of medicines and with blood tests, and doctor’s visits marked for Thursday and Friday. We really hoped and prayed to be able to travel to Haiti on the next Monday, but also understood it depended now on the health of Johan, which we put in God's hands. We told each other, “He knows what is best for us, our life is dedicated to Him. If He wants us to go to Haiti he will also make it possible”.

Many people wrote us to say that they believed we were encountering a great spiritual resistance because of our plans to go to Haiti. It is a fact that 200 years ago in Haiti, some mighty men high up in the government, made public pacts with demonic forces. But Johan was personally present in Haiti this year, when exactly one month after the earthquake, a 3 day service was held on the square before the presidential palace. Hundreds of thousands of people came together to fast and pray, to break the demonic bonds, and to enter into a new time where Haiti will be dedicated to the Lord.

Yes there is spiritual warfare going on and there is lots I don’t understand, but one scripture comes to my mind. It is where the Lord Jesus tells Peter (Simon) about his prayer in Luke 22:31: “Simon Simon, satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you Simon, that your faith might not fail.” It surprises me that Jesus did not pray that Simon would be spared from the attack; He did not tell satan to stop. No, He prayed so Simon’s faith might not fail. So that’s how we want people to pray for us, and how we pray ourselves: “Help us Lord so our faith might not fail.”

And yes, when we came back for the doctors consult yesterday, one of them told us he had never seen somebody recuperate so fast! Thank you Jesus and thanks to all of you who prayed! We will be travelling on Monday to train young Haitian people in the course that will start the 4th of October!

I do not think it will be easy to send emails when we are in Haiti, but if you want to stay informed you can fill in the box on the right, which says: "Subscribe to this blog." Then every time when I post a new message on our blog, you get it automatically in your email.

Thank you all so very much for your love, care, gifts and prayers! May God richly bless you!

Revolution of love

This video was made on the site where we will run the course. It is the area where there was a church  before the earthquake. Several young people from different local churches and some staff from YWAM Port au Prince helped to make this video.



And those pictures were taken a little bit later, still cleaning up all the fallen walls.



And the church/university that is being built right now and where we will run the course.

Help, we need help!

In 5 days we will leave for Haiti and suddenly we have a lot more adversity than usual: we need prayer!

Last week I had to stay in bed all week with sever back ache. I have this often and have had two operations on my back already, but this time it was heavier than the last couple of times. We even had to call the doctor for additional prescriptions for medicines to be prescribed.

Johan, who is always strong and full of energy, was battling a severe bout of diarrhea. Each day this week he became more tired, the conversations became shorter, and we were both physically so drained. We rarely get diarrhea; I think we have really built up a vast resistance against all kinds of bacteria and viruses, but his diarrhea is still not over and eats his energy.

Then also as a bonus my beautiful new Lenovo laptop crashed with everything on it that we will need in Haiti. It's a new laptop! I bought it five months ago in the Netherlands! Friday I was on the phone all day to get it fixed.

It seemed the problem was the built in ventilator, which did not work anymore so the laptop was overheating and crashed. Friday afternoon, just before closing time, we managed to get the notebook to the store. The young man who helped us was so happy when he saw my notebook: "Wow you have the new Lenovo, which we do not have in Brazil yet! Did you know that it is also used by NASA? They never break down, the best laptops in the world together with Sony ...”

"Uhmmm well, this is broken ..."

"Well that's a miracle that we never really see here. We sell many brands here, but all the people working in this store buy themselves a Lenovo because it really is the best, superior quality, does not break down…”

"OK, when can we get it back?"

"Well, if the fan is really broken it will take about 2 weeks!”

"What? We need it to take with us to Haiti!”

"Well, no, that's impossible. If it really is broken and we need to order new parts, those parts need to come from China... we do not have them in stock."

Oh no.

I have wonderful material in French and Creole for our students, like a little booklet specially written for the children in Haiti to help them overcome the trauma. Phyllis Kilbourn sent it to me, a famous WEC missionary who has a whole series of books to her name, all about children in need. It is really beautiful. I certainly can see how the students could start using it with the children in the camps; I would like to have at least 1000. For my classes I have handouts how cholera is preventable, and we also want certain parts of the book series "Where There is No Doctor," in French and Creole printed. Johan has already sent all the handouts of his classes for the French translation. Everything was supposed to be printed in Haiti but now we just heard that the print shop in Haiti, who would do it at a very reasonable price, cannot do it anymore. We now have to do it all this week in Brazil! Oops...

And financially we are also struggling; we still need more money to pay for all our costs!

Will you pray for us? So much opposition at once is not normal. Like the Lenovo salesman said: "This really never happens!"

We are going to Haiti because we believe that God is leading us there. We are going so that we may teach young people to let their light of Christ shine forth in their camps and neighborhoods. We hope to give many practical lessons so they will grow in their faith and knowledge of God, but also that they will be able to reach out to children in need in a practical way. I believe we now are in a spiritual battle and we need more prayer. Will you stand in prayer for us?

Mountainbikes!

Just a little fun video of Johan with Jonathan, our son in law, and some more staff, who love to ride their mountainbikes on their free saturdaymornings. They go high over the mountains and sometimes even through the mountains, using old mining tunnels!



Look where they arrive, it looks like paradise!

Haiti Training Program, Empowering Local Communities for Transformation

This is a letter to explain a little bit more of the school we are planning to run in Haiti:

Introduction

YWAM (Youth With A Mission) is an international, inter-denominational, non-profit Christian missionary organization. It has existed for 50 years and currently has a staff of over 16,000 people from more than 150 different nationalities, operating in 171 nations worldwide. YWAM trains over 25,000 short-term mission volunteers annually, and is involved in educational training, church planting, business missions, and relief and development services.

YWAM Belo Horizonte (Brazil) has existed for 24 years, focusing on working with children at risk, as well as training and inspiring others to do so. We, Johan & Jeannette Lukasse founded this work in Belo Horizonte, and continue to lead these efforts to this day.

In January 2010, a small team of YWAM staff from Brazil (including Johan) spent 3 weeks in Haiti to help in the post-earthquake relief efforts. Our goal was to assess the situation in order to provide long-term support to Haiti, particularly in the area of children in need. They were stationed in the National Police Headquarters, and served with Misión Rescate ( led by YWAM Santo Domingo) in the medical clinic set up there, besides distributing food in orphanages and other “tent cities.” They also participated in Unicef and Unesco meetings on Education and Child Protection.

At the same time, Pr. Mario from Brazil, working with the NGO M.A.I.S. was in Haiti, developing a network with 30 local pastors who were not receiving any other sort of assistance. The network formed is led locally by Pr. Vijonet. Pr. Mario is working with Brazilian churches to offer relief-type assistance to these pastors and the populations they serve. He has taken several teams to Haiti to provide food, water, shelter for these contacts during the past few months. He has also developed a plan for long-term support of these church communities, and realizes the importance of training as an essential component of building strong, self-sustaining communities.

The following is a proposal for a training program in Haiti, emanating from the needs seen during the 3-week visit to Haiti, and from networking with other leaders and organizations.

Purpose

The purpose of this program is to train about 50 key community members from regions affected by the January 2010 earthquake in the areas of Child Protection, Leadership/Discipleship and Community Development, so they may, in turn, work to rebuild their communities in these areas, focusing especially on children and youth.

Format

The training includes theoretical and practical components. Students and staff will live and study on site. Classes are held Monday through Friday (mornings and evenings). Morning classes are on Child Protection & Community Development. Evening classes focus on Leadership/Discipleship. In the afternoons students work with the population in the camps, applying the strategies and principles acquired during the lectures.

Content

This course is a combination of 4 distinct YWAM courses:

1. Discipleship Training School (DTS) – basic training in missions, focusing on relational aspects of Christianity and Biblical principles for living. This training is provided by YWAM around the world as basic staff training.

2. Children at Risk Course (CAR) – training for working with children in need: street children, orphans, abused/neglected youth, children with special needs.

3. Foundations of Community Development (FCD) – training on working with communities in impoverished or adversely affected areas.

4. Teacher Training – preparation for teachers in basic principles of Education.

The goal is to adapt these courses to the reality of post-earthquake Haiti.

Some of the classes are: Understanding Community Development, Community Health, Strategies for Working with Children at Risk, Project Planning, Communication & Leadership, HIV, Bereavement, Creativity with Children, Child Development, Curriculum Development, Classroom Dynamics, Storytelling, Trauma Counseling, Foster Care, Discipleship Training.

Speakers

YWAM has an international network of lecturers on these subjects, in addition to local staff and partnerships who will provide speakers on specific subjects. YWAM Belo is responsible all arrangements with speakers.

Duration

The training is from October 4th – December 25th, 2010. Total: 3 months.

Location

This course is to take place in Port-au-Prince. Arrangements for a location are under way. Students and staff will live and work/study within close distance of internally displaced population sites, so they may serve those communities as part of the training.

Finances

YWAM staff is responsible for their own finances through private donors. The cost per student is currently being studied. The current estimate is that the approximate cost will be US$250 per student per month. There is a possibility of Brazilian churches sponsoring the students of the course.

Needs:

• Water
• Food
• Bathrooms
• Printing 
• Books
• Classroom materials
• Internet/Projection system
• Sound sytem
• Chairs
• Transportation for the students

If you would like to participate and give financially towards those needs, please get in contact with us through our email.
If you would like to help us personally you can find in our contact info on the right, how to give to us if you live in the USA, UK or in Australia. For other countries, please get in contact with us.

Please pray for this school!