Thank You

Posted on 26. Jan, 2010 by Lutheran World Relief in Haiti

More from the Rev. Matthew Harrison in the Dominican Republic

Monday, January 25 — The team of LCMS docs just debriefed, packed themselves into
two vans here
in Jimani, Dominican Republic, and headed off on the six hour
trip to the
capital and back home. What an amazing group!

Not a half
hour ago, we were all together on the back porch of the large
home, which has
been the erstwhile dorm for medical teams. The stories of
who was with us,
how they were assembled within hours, and then put on the
ground is amazing.
The docs and nurses where high-level professionals,
university instructors,
emergency room doctors, and nurses–experts in
numerous disciplines. As we
talked, they were thankful, traumatized, joyous,
exhausted, and emotional.
They expressed profound struggle in dealing with
the carnage they had just
walked into; and yet at the same time, profound
faith in Jesus.

As the
first tremor struck last night, and as the LCMS missionaries
delivered trucks
full of meals, I was asked to guard the load until the word
was given to
disperse the precious cargo. I leaned against the tailgate, and
a tall,
mustached gentleman with an easy southern accent struck up a
conversation. He
was in his scrubs watching the chaos of 1500 Haitians who
not ten minutes
earlier had scrambled for their lives out of the orphanage
converted to a
hospital.

“Where ya from?” I asked.

“Georgia.”

“Who ya with,” I continued.

“I’m with a group called the LCMS. I never even knew they
existed, had no
idea what they did, but a friend of mine called and asked me
to go. I’ve
never been so impressed with a group of people in my life.”

“That’s great to
hear,” I said. “I’m with the LCMS too.”

One of the seasoned emergency
room docs struggled to get hold of what she’d
just seen. She wept as she
recounted the story of stepping off the bus late
at night this past Tuesday
and jumping into the operating room. Her first
patient was a young woman who
lay bleeding to death on the floor. The team
worked and tried everything, but
life was quickly ebbing. The woman had
lost her entire family. “What should I
say to her?” the doc asked others in
the room? “Tell her it’s o.k. . . . to
go be with her family.” She did so.

“Pastor, I don¹t know how to cope
with this,” she told me. I helped her
begin to process the matter in the
context of the cross of Jesus. “Pastor,
I¹m going back home now. The people I
work with will not understand this.
Patients where I work complain about
everything. I just treated a woman who
had her arm guillotined with nothing
but Tylenol as pain reliever, and she
was smiling at me, thanking me. I
couldn’t believe it. These people have
lost everything, and they are so
thankful.”

As I was writing this, a doctor just appeared behind the
building where I am
sitting, moaning in anguish and pain about what he’d just
experienced. One
of our pastors was with him. He’s just come from Port au
Prince, is
exhausted, overwhelmed, hasn’t slept in days. The volume of trauma
is
infinite. He feels great need to return.

In the midst of all this,
the Haitians have shown amazing faith, regularly
singing hymns to Jesus as
they huddle with their lone surviving child or a
new friend on the ground or
in the next bed over.

O blessed Jesus, have mercy upon your people. Cause
this affliction to
cease. Comfort the dying, the sick, and the traumatized.
Uphold the faith,
hearts, and hands of all those many who are were unharmed
but now are
assisting the needy, and also those who have come as angels of
mercy. Amen.

No mind can comprehend this. “Oh, the depth of the riches
and wisdom and
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how
inscrutable his
ways!” (Rom. 11:33).

We can only face tomorrow with
the knowledge that the outpouring of love and
blessing in the wake of this
disaster is and will be one of the most
phenomenal acts of mercy in our time
together on this earth.

Pastor Matthew Harrison
Executive Director,
LCMS World Relief and Human Care
Board Member, LWR

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