Political Situation and Cholera Update

Family and Friends,

Day 87 of our Haiti Adventure!

Today we learned the names of the two final candidates in Haiti's presidential election.  The current president had been withholding this information for quite some time, trying to retain power, but now we hear that the two people who actually won the primaries will finally have a chance to run again for election.  Fortunately for us the candidate from the South is now one of the final two, despite what was originally announced, so we expect to see very limited demonstrations down here if any.  The final election is scheduled for March.  We have a team coming down in a few days from Sioux Falls and Alcester, so this works out good.  Of course you never know in this country, so keep praying!

As for Cholera new developments have come up just in the last twenty-four hours.  Yesterday Chelo and I were hiking up to Toussaint, a village up in the mountians, and the Pastor met us on the way down to our house.  It turns out several people up there have come down with Cholera, and he was planning to ask us for Chlorox to treat the water for everyone in the village.  I wrote a note for him to give to Lynn when he got there to tell her to give him our gallon of bleach.

When we went up to the school we asked for more details and found out mostly adults have gotten Cholera so far, and only one kid in the school.  That was really good news.  It has been interesting to see the spread of the disease in our region.  It is hitting Les Cayes pretty hard to the North of us, but then it jumped right over us on the main road and hit the next major village to the South.  Now it is up in the mountains.  This means we are surrounded, but no one in Ti-Rivier has had it yet.  Praise God!

Looking at the statistics, though, Cholera should not scare people as much as it does.  Over 200,000 people have had it already in Haiti, but there have only been a little over 3,000 deaths.  That means only 1.5% of people die from it, and we are talking about Haiti, a 3rd world country.  In other words, if you are relatively healthy when you get it and you seek treatment immediately, you should be fine in a couple of weeks.  So I try to reassure people that we need to do everything we can to fight it, but we don't need to live in fear.

Thanks to all of our faithful followers of this blog!  We truly appreciate your interest in everything God is doing down here in Haiti, and your prayers are extremely valuable and effective.  Here are some other ways you can help us if possible:

1.  We are in the process of scheduling speaking engagements for our visit this summer at Churches who support us and new groups or Churches who would like to hear about what we do.  If you would like us to visit and speak, just let us know now as we are filling up the schedule.

2.  God provided for our finances amazingly in year one with Mission Haiti!  As we look to the future we are continuing to ask both Churches and individuals to consider becoming regular financial supporters.  This will not only help us solidify our own support, but it will allow us to begin to raise money for the Bible School project beginning soon.  If you want to be involved in this way the information you need can be found to the right on this blog.  Please email us at cory@mission-haiti.org if you want a report of last year's budget.

3.  Share this blog with others!  We need as many people praying for Haiti as possible.  These are some pivotal years in the lives of Haitians as they wrestle with politics, faith, family issues, and become exposed to the worlds of TV and movies and cell phones.  This work is so important and we are so humbled to be here. 

God Bless,
-The Grimms