Postings from Haiti reveal toll on missionaries, Haitians
SALEM, Ore. - Computer postings from missionaries this week in earthquake ravaged Haiti revealed the human toll on the people of Haiti and the missionaries themselves.
Right now the only connection Judy Williams in Salem has with her sister Rosie Thompson and her niece Cierra, who are in Haiti, is through those postings written by missionary Gretchen DeVoe, who is with them in that shattered country.
The Thompsons, who are from the Silverton area, are two of the 58 Lifeline Christian missionaries stuck on a seven-acre mission that’s been destroyed in Grand Goave, west of Port-au-Prince.
The missionaries can’t leave until the airport can make room for flights to take people out of the country. Currently, the main priority is to get aid workers in.
Williams has been reading those posts and fearing the rising tensions could put the missionaries in danger.
“If they have an uprising there, because they (Haitians) get angry and they want to – I don’t know – rebel. It’s kind of like everybody’s in survival mode now, and so I do (have) fear,” said Williams.
She said her sister and niece aren’t injured and are doing fine considering the circumstances.
The postings describe the work the missionaries now face.
An 18-month-old boy was brought to the mission with a severed arm.
“All he had as a right arm was a stub above the elbow,” DeVoe wrote. “I had to dress it and use duct tape for a pressure bandage, as that was all we have and then give him some sleeping medicine.”
The missionaries said they prayed the boy wouldn’t die like one boy who had also been brought to the mission.
“That precious little boy had his leg slit wide open and lost too much blood before he got here,” DeVoe wrote.
Once they return from Haiti, Williams said she fears Rosie and Cierra will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder from all they’ve seen.
“I think of things they have seen are some of the things that people see in wars,” she said.
This was Rosie’s and Cierra’s first mission and Williams said they knew it would be a life-changing experience but nothing to this magnitude.