Seeking_the_Lord_to_Bless_the_Poor.pdf

During my last trip to Haiti, I was able to tag along with World Orphans and their “117 team” (based on Isaiah 1:17—“Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause”). The team was ministering to orphans at orphanages, hospitals, schools, and tent cities.

One spot we went to was a Mother Theresa home for children. The home is not an orphanage, per se, but a place where people drop off children who are homeless or in bad shape physically, many close to death. Parents leave their children at the home with the hope that they can be nursed back to health or at least die with dignity. I was sad to see no medical people there, at least while we were there—just Haitian volunteers, nuns, and folks like me.

I was holding a 2-year-old girl for about two hours up on the main level of a cement block building with walls cracked from the earthquake, cement floors, and a rusty tin roof. She would not let me put her down. I fed her, prayed for her, and we played with a balloon and just walked around and looked at some of the older kids playing. She did not want to leave my arms.

Then one of the team members came up and asked me to come to the lower level, because one of the babies was about to die.

I avoided the lower level at first because there was a lot of crying coming from that area of the building, and the kids were in really bad shape. I wasn’t in the mood to change diapers or hold babies who looked like skeletons with orange hair and bloated bellies. But I quickly descended the stairs.

I entered an area with about 36 cribs, wall to wall, filled with children who were whimpering, some wailing. Many were just lying there, barely moving, eyes half open, staring vacuously into space. I made it to the crib with the sick baby. When I held him, there was no pulse, so we started praying and doing CPR, putting an oxygen tube in his mouth in an attempt to revive him. The mother sat next to him, wailing.

One of the nurses on the team put an IV in the child’s head and gave him a shot from an EpiPen, but to no avail. The oxygen tube was not working well either, so the team leader pulled the oxygen tube and started doing mouth to mouth. Just minutes earlier the baby was foaming and drooling nasty things out of his mouth. This team leader made a real sacrifice not knowing what sickness or disease this baby had. It didn’t matter, we were going to save this baby’s life.

After about 15 minutes of trying to revive him, nothing. So we stopped. It was like an orchestrated moment when all the musicians crescendo in a chorus—all 36 kids started screaming and crying loudly, the mother was wailing, and the team members were also crying. It was a surreal moment.

As the frenetic activity stopped and the team members dispersed outside with new sick babies in their arms and tears flowing down their cheeks, I looked at the baby next to me: maybe five pounds, lying in the fetal position, eyes half open, not having moved at all during the 20 minutes of trying to revive the other baby. Was he dead also?

I leaned over to pray for him. God, save this baby! Give him life! Heal his body. I felt for a pulse, looked for a breath, I wanted to see a blink—anything. After nudging him, he moved ever so slightly. He was alive, but for how long? What could I do? I was not sure I could go through that ordeal again.

Within five minutes, the dead baby was brought to a separate room, the crib was cleaned up with new sheets put on, and another sick child was placed in the crib. How long will that baby survive? I wondered.

Tens of thousands of people/children die every day around the world because of starvation and lack of nutrition. Thousands more die from sickness, disease, and AIDS. Experiencing this one instance for 20 minutes was enough to break my heart … and it helped me understand God’s heart even more.

And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.”—Luke 7:22

Jesus came to heal the sick and bless the poor with good news.

Lord, what can we do through Bethlehem? Give us wisdom as we move forward to bless the poorest of the poor.

Brad Nelson
Pastor for Short Term Ministry Mobilization

Pastor Brad Nelson is departing soon to travel with another short term team to the Dominican Republic and Haiti (July 12–23). Read more in the June 21 Star about the ministry they are planning to participate in.