This "blog stuff" is so new to me, and I am finding my way as I send my messages to you. To say that I am "challenged" when it comes to technology is the gross understatement of the year! However, if you can bear with me, we'll find our way together.

I still have no direct news from Petit Goave or from Carrenage; however, my daughter suggested something that may help--a ham radio operator. I have found one and maybe another in Citrus County, and I am going to try to contact them this afternoon, asking that they try to find out from another operator in Haiti exactly what is going on in my two little areas of interest. I have read everything I can find on the internet, and have some second hand news from a couple of people who have heard from family. At this point this is all I know.

Damage in Petit Goave is somewhere between "considerable" and "devastating." One man said that any structure of more than one story has been damaged. That would include the mission house and the Methodist Church. I was also told that the people there are discouraged because all the focus is on the terrible damage in Port au Prince, and outlying areas are not being reached. That, by the way, is something that I had feared.

The little church at Olivier, where we have worshiped each time we have been to Haiti is just outside Petit Goave, and though it is only one story, it is vulnerable. It received damage in last year's hurricanes, and some of those things--like the destroyed wall that surrounds it--have not yet been repaired.

One of the blogs that I read on the internet mentioned Carrenage as an "area that received damage." That is where the school and little church are, on the mountain just behind the little community. The good thing is that the children leave the school early in the afternoon, and they should have been home when the earthquake occurred.

If you want to send financial help, I suggest that you not do so until I find out where to send it so that we can be sure it arrives! My church is setting up a Haiti emergency fund, completely separate from the working fund that we use to do our projects there. That money will be delivered to either Pastor Maude Hyppolite, the District Superintendent of the Miragoan District or to the Bishop. I will either take it, send it by someone going there, or electronically transfer it to Maude's account when she tells me that the account is secure. Right now, nothing can be guaranteed to be secure. I have absolute trust in both Bishop Paul and in Pastor Maude. I knwo them both, and I think I know their hearts! They are honest.

As to prayer, I suggest several specific things.

• Pray that I can find Maude. I am so troubled that I have not been able to get through to her on any of the numbers I have. Her email is a dial up, so I can't count on reaching her that way.
• Pray for the children. I watched their little faces on the TV the other night, and I made my heart ache! They have witnessed things we can only imagine. Pray for their emotional and mental recovery from the grief they are experiencing all around them.
• Pray for the adults. Family is so important to them, and they are watching as their loved ones are being left in the street to be picked up by front-end loaders and actually dumped in to trucks to be carted away for incineration or mass burial. Knowing how they respect the dead, I cannot conceive of how horrible this is for them to watch!

I thank you for your concern. I never dreamed when I went to Haiti two years ago that I could so quickly learn to love a people, but I did. Everyone is telling me not to go down there now even if I find a way to do so. My mind tells me they are right. My heart tells me, "Go!" Years ago, a young friend of my daughters--a black boy whom we loved very much--experienced a terrible trauma in his life. He hovered between life and death. I prayed for him all night, and on the morning I went to the hospital to see him, only to find he was in intensive care, and only the family was allowed entrance. I must have looked terrible in my disappointment, and the nurse looked around to see if anyone was watching and said, "Go in!" As soon as he saw me, he began to cry, and I just held him in my arms until he could talk. Finally, he said, "I think I would have died had I not seen someone who cared!" I keep seeing his face in my memory, and I wonder if those people there think I have forgotten them because I am not there.

I'll go as soon as I can.