precious one.

There is currently a team of 80 plus Canadians serving at Mission of Hope for two weeks. With a group this large they have a variety of gifts and are working hard to serve in every capacity. Because the medical clinic is closed on the weekends, the medical people joined in the construction work yesterday at Leveque (where we are building the 500 plus homes). They were told to keep an eye out for a little girl that someone on the team had seen the day before to see if they might be able to help her. We found her. This little precious child had a burn wound on her calf and it looked so painful.  Her dad was on site so I got one of our translators and we asked the father if we could take the girl into one of the homes to give her leg some medical attention. Her dad said yes, so one nurse carried the little girl and two other nurses and myself walked to an empty home where we had put our first aid kit. This burn, we were told, happened eight days earlier from a motorcycle. As the nurses cleaned up her wound the little girl screamed. It was absolutely the sadness thing. There was so much infection and dirt that when it was actually clean the wound was much larger than it originally appeared to be. In the states, she would have had medication to numb the leg before they worked on it. It was so hard to see her little face covered in tears and her eyes just looking at me with such pain. These ladies were incredible though and worked fast so she only had to suffer for a few minutes. The wound is now clean and is wrapped up so it will hopefully heal without much dirt infecting it again. They will change the bandage Monday and will continue to keep an eye on it.

This was my first interaction with medical care here in Haiti. In the last several years, I have wished I had medical training so I could help people like this little girl with care they would never receive otherwise. After witnessing that, I honestly don’t know if I could do it. I know the care is exactly what she needed, but all I wanted to do the whole time was grab her up and hold her tightly to reassure her that everything would be okay. Not sure you can do that during the middle of care or an operation. I will forever remember this little precious ones face and am so thankful I will see her throughout this year. I have promised myself to give her lots of love and hugs every time I see her.