Hanley Family

We celebrated the end of the semester with a Christamas Party in Batey 41.

Side note, after being here a year and a half I finally found out the
name the Haitian community uses, and will try to start referring to it
as Po Plume, of course I am not sure how to spell it, but I think Pó
Plúm or something similar with crazy accented vowels. I work on that,
and hopefully in another year, I can get the spelling right. But Po
Plume gets the sounds right, at least what my ears understand.

The Christams Party included watching The Jesus Film, handing out
report cards, singing, gifts for the students and guests, a lunch of
chicken, goat, beans and rice, and piklis (spicy cabbage salad). We
had two visitors for the Haitian government, which is a huge step in
the right direction of getting the school recongized by the department
of education, and this coming year they are working with us to get
birth certificates for all the kids and national identification cards
for all the adults.

I think the pictures say a lot more than I can and I am gong to try to
post some videos of the singing.

October 8th I have an amazing opportunity to visit Kigali, Rwanda.  We are implementing an electronic medical record system for the clinic in Jimaní to support and enhance our medical outreach and help us effectively target needs as well as collect health information for our community and specifically maintaining health information on all the kids in our school programs.  This program will support our collaboration with International Children's Heart Foundation as we work with an informal network of clinics throughout Haiti and the Dominican Republic to identify and treat pediatric cardiology cases.  I am very excited about this program. After a lot of research I identified OpenMRS as the medical records program that will meet our needs.  OpenMRS is an open-source project supported by a community of implementers and developers from all over the world working in some of the leading areas of prevention and treatment.  The potential this program has to support our mission and vision for the health care aspect of our ministry is huge.

Please pray for:

Safe Travel

Melissa, Mom, and Dad as they hold down the fort

That my brain can take-in and retain everything I need to learn

This is longest I've been away, so please pray for separation anxiety on both sides of the world

Also, health and safety for my family while I'm gone, well always, but we have a history of health issues while I'm away (Maicol had his appendix out when I was on a two-day camping trip, and we thought Kate was having galbladder issues when I was on a three-day trip to Santiago)

To say I'm behind in posting is a huge understatement.  I need to go back and look how many posts have started with that or a similar statement.  A lot has been going on, and I don't want to miss keeping you in the loop on the great things that are happening, but it seems that every time I sit down at the computer with the good intentions of posting an update something comes up.  If it isn't due to technical difficulties such as internet connectivity or not being able to find the picture I wanted to post, then someone walks up to talk or a child starts crying, screaming, arguing, or needing/wanting something.  We were in the States visiting Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina back mid-June to mid-July.  It was a good time that was a mix of relaxation, reconnecting, meeting new people, and sharing what we had been up to.  It had been 12 months since we had been in the States, and we enjoyed every minute of it.  When we got back home, Mom and Dad, the kids, and staff had prepared a welcome home party for us.  After a full day of travel that started at 5 AM and finally ended just after 9 PM it was a great surprise.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

I am back in Cap Haitian and am writing this email with a heart full of thanks and praise! 

I'll try to keep this brief. Here is a summary of our trip to the DR.

Thank you for all of your efforts. 

Amy

On February 3rd I got an e-mail about six month old Loudjenka who lives with her parents in Cap-Haitiean on the North Coast of Haiti.  Physicians n Cap-Haitiean thought that she showed signs of a hole in her heart, but without access to better quality diagnositc equipment they could neither confirm the diagnosis or have any means to intervene if the diagnosis proved correct.  The Chadasha Foundation through a grant to International Children's Heart Foundation is working to provide pediatric cardiology procedures in the Dominican Republic.  ICHF currently has a pediatric cardiology medical team volunteering for two weeks at the Arturo Grullon hospital in Santiago.  The only thing we needed to do is get Loudjenka across the border to Santiago, but we faced a hurdle, she did not have a passport, and neither did her mother, and the process to get one was taking longer than expected, and would likely not be completed until after the specialty team had completed their trip.  So, with the help of Amy and Karen a nurse and volunteer with Children of the Promise, the ministry in Cap-Haitien providing primary care services for Loudjenka and her mother, I started working to get a special permission for her to get across the border without a passport.  I might not be able to perform heart surgery, but I can talk someone's ear off!  Based on the recommendation from the head of the immigration office here in Jimaní, I went to the Dominican Consulate in Port au Prince, where I thought I had arranged an introduction to the consulate through the husband of one of the physicians in Santiago; however, we missed each other, and my reception was less than stellar.  I barely got my foot in the front door, and was only given the procedure to request a humanitarian visa for someone that has a passport, and while the secretary kept running messages back and forth behind a closed door for me, no one else was willing to speak with me.  After I returned from Haiti, I made a few calls, and got a hold of a man I have met a few times who works for the Dominican First Lady's office and works on Haitian humanitarian issues for the First Lady.  He started making things happen.  I met him in Santo Domingo, where we went to the main consulate office and he was able to introduce Chris Keylon, the executive director of Chadasha, and me to the Ambassador in charge of the Domincian Consulates, who coordinated a meeting with the head of Dominican Immigration where they approved a special pass, and forwarded it to the Dominican/Haitian border crossing at Dajabon, the border crossing closest to Loudjenka and her parents.  The next step was actually transporting them to the facility, a trip to Dajabon from Jimaní would probably take 12 hours, so I called our friends Chantz and Renee Cutts with GoMad Ministries who were able to go pick them up at the border and drop them off.  The process of driving a car across the border is even more difficult, so having someone pick them up on the Domincian side, was a huge blessing.  Of course just to make things more interesting, the day before going to pick them up Chantz and Renee's car broke down, so after trying to get it fixed in time, they had to rent a car to make the trip.  So now, after 15 days of meetings, phone calls, e-mails, and letters, Loudjenka is checked into the hospital and scheduled for her procedure.  Please continue to pray for her, her parents, and the physicians, and pray that God will touch her life.

I made a trip up to visit three communities in the mountains near Jimani to do some prep work for an upcoming short term trip. Unbelievable views. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device