"If they can save thee in the time of thy trouble"

There are a lot of people packed into this small country.   Lots of people means lots of accidents. Lots of accidents call for lots of medical attention.  However, there are not a lot of doctors and nurses to even begin meeting all the needs that coming pouring into the hospitals all day long. They are understaffed, underpaid, and swarmed with people who are desperate for help. Mothers carry the limp bodies of their young children.  Victims of road accidents limp in with broken limbs and road burns. Whether it's terminal illness, severe burns, or just a belly ache, you have to just wait your turn in line.  Barry has been seeing first hand just what is going on, and not going on, in several different hospitals.  Just in the past week, he's been asked to help three different men in great need of medical aid.

One young man was in a tragic motorcycle accident and is unable to walk. Barry drove him all over Port-Au-prince to various hospitals, multiple times, to do several different scans and tests.  The machines work half the time, at best. When they finally got some results, the doctors said he's too badly injured and will never walk again.

Another very young man, whom Barry first drove to pick up in an isolated mountain village,  is seeking help for a large lump that seems to be overtaking his back, almost making him look like an old man. After the same story of running here and there, waiting in line, pleading for doctors, old, broken machines, more testing, more scans, they discovered he has severe, incurable scoliosis. It likely won't kill ho, but his spine is curving and will continue to do so until he dies.

These two boys are actually cousins, and the one in the motorcycle accident was already at the hospital trying to get help when Barry first took the boy with scoliosis. However, since he had no money for medical care, it was not possible for him to get any help.  There are so, so many needs, and so many people without money, that the hospitals can't and won't do a thing to help until they see proof that the patient can pay. If a mother has a baby in need of a life- saving operation, for example, but she can't pay, they will let the baby die unless she comes up with the money.

The third man, at the other end of the age spectrum, was also in the mountain. At 86 years old, he was planting beans on the mountainside and took a fall. Again Barry drove up the mountain, but the village where the man lives is an hour walk from the road. He was carried from the village on a make-shift stretcher and put in the truck to be taken down the mountain to the hospital.  The second trip there, last week, they learned from x-ray results that his leg is badly broken. After more than a week in the hospital, nothing had been done to help correct his leg, but they finally put it into a cast on Tuesday.  Nobody's really sure if the bone was set back in place or not before the cast was put on.

Unfortunately, many accident victims don't end up in the hospital. The severity of the crashes that take place on Route National 1 are sobering, as one can see the way the vehicles look while they remain on the roadsides for days, months, or years after the incident, that no one could have survived.  When there are not ambulances as we know them racing to the scene to help, passersby may even witness the gruesome scene before any bodies are removed.  It is often a public taxi involved in these horrific crashes, which means many lives are lost at once. For example, last week Barry and pastor gBazalet wher heading home one day when they came up on an accident involving a bus(in Haiti there called 'killer buses because there loaded down with people and supplies and they drive very fast and don't stop for much), Barry usually doesn't stop at accidents but this one was fresh and it looked like they needed help. The bus was on its side and there were people underneath of it, they tried to pull the bus back upright using a large box truck, the bus was raised about 5 feet, the bodies did not
look to be in good shape, Barry suspected they were already dead, but then the ropes broke and
the bus came crashing down. It was hard for Barry to witness the results of the impact. There were no survivors under the bus.

Another two men were shot in the field directly behind the mission house on Wednesday morning as a result of a land dispute. Life is only hanging by a thread, in the hands of a mighty, powerful God, and no hospital, no matter how advanced, can help when the time is up. There are millions still here, but, oh, that we would cry out for these souls before they pass into eternity! That they would find the true, unchanging, life-saving Jesus!

But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise, if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble: for according to the number thy cities are thy gods, O Judah.
Jeremiah 2:28