Medical team brings more than healing to Haiti

Don Graham
IMB

She doesn’t remember much, but Louphine Demorcy won’t ever forget the sound — like a runaway freight train roaring beneath her feet.

“I heard the voice of the earthquake coming,” says the 31-year-old mother of three. “I called out for Jesus to save me.”

The next thing Demorcy knew she was lying under a pile of broken concrete that used to house her small sundries shop. It was Jan. 13 — the morning after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake slammed Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Demorcy tried to move but couldn’t. One of her arms had been crushed and pinned by a chunk of concrete the size of a dishwasher. A leg also was trapped under rubble. The pain was excruciating. She screamed for help, pleading for a doctor.

A couple of months later Demorcy sits quietly under a tree at a field hospital near Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic. Merry Holt, a 62 year-old nurse from First Baptist Church, Norfolk, Va., kneels beside her, gently wrapping fresh bandages around Demorcy’s right arm, amputated above the elbow, and left leg, amputated above the knee.

There to help
Holt is part of a six-member medical team that’s come to Haiti through Baptist Global Response, a non-profit disaster relief and development organization supported by Southern Baptists.

Demorcy is grateful she didn’t lose more than her limbs. Her children were not hurt in the earthquake, and thanks to volunteers like Holt, her wounds are nearly healed. Soon she’ll be fitted with prostheses that will improve her quality of life.

“Nurse Merry is always an encouragement to me,” Demorcy says. “She tries to get me to overcome the situation that I’m in. She always sings with us and tries to keep stress from overwhelming us.”

Once she’s finished changing bandages, Holt stays true to her reputation, taking time to teach a song to Demorcy and other patients before moving on to the next row of tents. Smiles spread across patients’ faces as they sing; Holt’s beams with affection.

“I’m amazed at what God does through the smallest little gesture,” she says. “There is so much hope in this camp. More today than when I arrived … because the physical healing is taking place, and their souls are being healed, too. … I’m so blessed to be a part of it.”

Scene out of M*A*S*H*
The field hospital where Holt’s team is working is known as the Disaster Recovery Center (DRC). It is run by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) and feels a bit like a scene from the ‘70s TV show M*A*S*H* with the buzz of helicopters ferrying patients to and fro.

Despite its amenities — including wireless Internet access — working conditions at the DRC are challenging. The heat is intense. Outside temperatures top 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Inside patients’ tents it can reach 115. Constant wind makes the heat more bearable, but it also coats everything with a fine dust — less than sterile conditions, especially for patients with skin grafts and large, open wounds.

Sweat begins to roll down Kerri Dewitz’s forehead as she steps inside a tent on the children’s ward to check on 13-year-old Junior Renaud. Doctors were forced to amputate three-quarters of Renaud’s right foot when a deep wound he received during the earthquake became badly infected.

Holding out his foot, Renaud grins when he sees Dewitz, a 43-year-old pediatric nurse from Cove Church in Hampton Cove, Ala. “This kid is always smiling,” she laughs. Before changing his dressing, Dewitz washes his feet, an experience she calls “spiritual.”

“I feel God with me every time I wash a patient’s feet … I can’t help but think about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples,” she says. Dewitz joined the BGR team when she felt God calling her to Haiti. It is her first international mission trip.

“I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world,” she says. “It’s life changing.”

Broken bones on the mend
James Rogers, a 60-year-old pharmacist, and his wife, Brenda, from Hermitage Hills Baptist Church in Hermitage, Tenn., are leading the BGR team. He takes advantage of a slow moment to visit his favorite patient, Weber Joachim, whose leg was badly broken.

Metal rods protrude from the 58-year-old general contractor’s left leg. The tinker-toy-like rods are known as an external fixator that holds the bones in position so they heal correctly. It likely saved him from an amputation, but the rods are painful.

Rogers visits Joachim nearly every day to pray with him and read the Bible. Today he’s brought more than Scripture. Rogers carries scraps of a two-by-four to level Joachim’s cot, which is slanting steeply downhill. He also gives Joachim a gift — a pair of size 12 shoes. Joachim’s only pair was stolen several days ago, forcing him to walk around the hospital barefoot.

Joachim says Rogers has the “heart of Jesus,” but the pharmacist gently dismisses the compliment.

“We’re ordinary people,” he says. “Don’t assume you can’t be used by God because He will find an opportunity to use the ability that you have.”

No swanky hotels
Hard work isn’t the only sacrifice volunteers like Roger have made to serve here. Volunteers sleep on the ground in tents and take baths in a bucket. Rice and beans — a Haitian staple — is on the menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Malaria, tuberculosis and scabies are all health risks for the volunteers, as is heat stroke if they don’t stay hydrated.

But no one on the team doubts the sacrifice is worth it. Back in Virginia Beach, Holt writes about breaking down in tears while singing with the choir during her first Sunday back at her home church, First Baptist Church, Norfolk, Va.

“We began to sing How Great Thou Art,” she writes in an e-mail. “It was then that it hit me. I saw Louphine’s [Demorcy] face, no arm, one leg … and I began to cry. … Count your blessings, and don’t ever forget that while we thought we were a blessing to them, how much they were to us.”

Demorcy won’t forget the day Haiti’s earthquake took her limbs. And she’s not likely to forget the people who helped her take back her independence either, or the God that brought them.

“I know God is a God that always make a way, even when there is no way,” she says. “If I did not believe in Him I would not be here today … May His name be glorified.”

Act

Give
100 percent of your gift will be used for meeting needs of earthquake victims in Haiti if you give through these channels.

• Haiti Response Fund, IMB
• Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund, Baptist Global Response

Volunteer

• E-mail: E-mail haitiresponse@imb.org. Indicate your name and contact information, what skills you have and when you are available. Southern Baptists interested in donating supplies or offering other assistance also can send an e-mail to this address.
• Contact your church or state Baptist convention to learn about other Haiti projects they may be planning.

Contact the creative team

• E-mail writer Don Graham don.graham3@gmail.com
• E-mail photographer Joseph Rose joseph.rose78@gmail.com.