Siklòn Saga

Places mentioned in this post where we are working to help hurricane victims include St. Marc, Port au Prince, Les Cayes and Chantal.
Places mentioned in this post where we are working to help hurricane victims include St. Marc, Port au Prince, Les Cayes and Chantal.

Warning! Warning! “Siklòn ap vini!” A few days have passed since we went around our Haiti neighborhood and warned our friends and neighbors of the coming “siklon” we all are now too familiar with as Hurricane Matthew. We begged one family who live in a stick house on the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean to please store their belongings at a nearby neighbor’s concrete house and come shelter at our home with us. We and other missionary friends in our area and all over Haiti prepared ourselves, helped others prepare, warned and warned again and waited. The wait was long and hard as Matthew took his time in coming. We thought about Noah’s long wait and warnings for people to get themselves in gear and get on the ark. How in the world did he handle that for that long? The waiting became more than just heightened anxiety because it caused many to not heed warnings as they assumed the sunny skies and slight joke of a rain that had fallen earlier in the day meant the siklòn was no longer a threat. They must not have been receiving the every other minute messages of weather news reports for two days straight like we were! Night came and all was calm (other than our phones which were still buzzing thanks to Page Wells). Elfina and her four children had not bothered to heed the warning either. Even if her house miraculously survived, we did not want to risk the baby who has hydrocephalus getting wet and sick before his long awaited life saving surgery scheduled this next week. Eric drove up to their house and woke them up. He would not take no for an answer and carried little bare bottoms to the car secretly hoping they would hold their pee. They stayed with us for two days and we had a great time sheltering them from the storm.  We read the Jesus Storybook Bible in Creole, prayed together, let them try pizza for the first time, the kids played with our kids toys and just rode out the storm under a dry roof. We are thankful to have had that time with this sweet family while safe in our home and have the chance to talk about the warnings God gives. Are we listening?

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