Dear Ones,

I am writing to let you know that we will not be loading a container this week. We are still praying for milk products, especially baby formula, to send.

Most of you are well aware of the serious need we have for especially our premature infants, whose mothers are so starved, that their milk is not rich enough to keep their babies warm. Our nurse/midwife, Melissa, has worked out a schedule for these babies, where they nurse properly with their mothers, and then two hours later, receive a bottle of special baby formula, rich in nutrients. Two hours after that, they nurse with their mothers again. This gives us opportunity to get the mothers built up, and the babies some special nutrition, while still encouraging God’s plan for infant nutrition to continue.

Follow up:

We are still praying for baby formula. When it comes in, I will let you all know, and we will pack a container for Haiti, full of blessing for the babies.

You know, there are so many things that go on, ways that our Father blesses us, and I get so busy, I forget to tell you about them.

One of the ones that I have trouble talking about without crying, because of the beauty of it, is four containers of rice meals that I have just shipped.

I know that some of you have heard about Feed My Starving Children. They are a bunch of wonderful people, around the United States, who have been donating rice, which they fortify with some cracked soy beans for protein, add vitamins and some dried vegetables, and make a nice rice meal for us to use to feed many starving people.

If you were able to go across the northwest province of Haiti on any weekday, you would find literally thousands of refugees, elderly people, and children gathered around charcoal fires, where these rice meals are being cooked and served to those who are hungry. The mission does this. We hire cooks, and deliver the charcoal and meals to them, in each area, and they feed those in need. It is a huge ministry, and a time to teach the Love of God with prayer, Bible reading, and by feeding those who might have starved to death without.

In the ‘Twin Cities’ out in Minneapolis, Christ Presbyterian Church, along with eleven other churches, every private and public school in the area, and people from many businesses, got together with Feed My Starving Children. They decided they were going to bless us.

More than 5,000 volunteers came together for four days, around the clock… Twenty four hours a day, they prayed, mixed, packaged, and packed the rice meals. They prayed over every package, and every box. Prayers were at work in twenty-four hour prayer chains at the churches and in their homes, praying for the workers.

It took four forty-foot containers to carry it all to Haiti. Doon, our shipping agent, arranged it all to go by truck to the rail yard, and then out through New York harbour, and down through Jamaica, and off to Haiti. In the end, they figure they packed one and a half million meals! I know that they have not seen how many cups of food a tiny Haitian child can eat! J But, even if our starving children and refugees eat twice as much as a normal person can, that is still a lot of meals.

That food should be reaching the cooking pots in our mission outreaches later this week.

Isn’t our God good?!

I know it sounds as though there is so much going on, we can relax and take a break. Please do not relax on your prayers for the hurting and starving in Haiti!

In our village of 10,000, we have more than 36,000 refugees. None of these dear souls, displaced by the earthquake, have any income, nor any food. And this is only one village in the north. We are asking that our Lord will open the windows of heaven and pour out for us such a blessing there is not room enough to receive it. He is so very good to us! I am so glad that for a few nights at least, many children will not go to bed hungry.

Also, as you pray for the children and families who are being reached by our work, please also pray for direction from the Lord. He, can, in His Wisdom, show us ways to teach the people, to help them build ways to feed themselves, and overcome some of the natural disasters they have been facing without outside help. Our God wants Haiti to be strong and a living testimony to His goodness in the earth. I praise God for every soul who has come to know His love, and accept the Living Saviour, because of the wonderful work you, His family, are doing.

In His great love, Tina