We didn't end up leaving last night. We plan on leaving this evening late. At the end of the day yesterday we gave all of our supplies to those who were staying. (Not our group) So today I'm spending the day in Kenskoff. It's up in the mountains. Will keep you posted about my return.

Tuesday February 9th

Today we got up and got an early start. We left camp at 6:45 to go to the General Hospital. When I arrived there I found Mana had had a very bad night. She was in a lot of pain and was screaming and crying. The only nurses left in that tent were Haitian nurses and they don't usually give the best care and attention. I sat and talked with her for a little while and tried to calm her down before I had to leave to the ICU tent for the day. I worked changing IV solutions, changing dressings and translating. Joel and I took a lunch break today and walked to the Centrale Chapel in Port-au-Prince to meet a bishop who was just a young man (a deacon) in Jeremie when we served in that area. It's so good to see people we knew from before and to see they are still strong in the church. We came back and worked in the ICU again. (CNN was filming in our tent today, and they interviewed some of the doctors and talked about what Healing Hands for Haiti does.) The conditions these people are trying to heal in is unbelievable! There are flies everywhere and it is hot and sticky. The tent is about 100 degrees inside. In the late afternoon one of the Haitian translators that is working with us had a wisdom tooth that was really bothering him, so I numbed him up and extracted it for him. We got a ride back to camp with the 82nd airborne, had a nice testimony meeting and were given plans for our departure tomorrow.

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Healing from the Rubble

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Healing from the Rubble

Doug,

I am so happy you and the others are in Haiti. So many are praying for your efforts and safe return. Your stories are terrific. I am sure Michelle and your kids are beaming with pride because of your selfless time and money spent helping such an important cause. I look forward to hearing from you when you return. Has your Creole come back faster than you would have imagined I wonder?

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Haiti: Protecting the Throw-Away Children

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Haiti: Protecting the Throw-Away Children

Today we went back to work at the Petionville Chapel. It will be the last time we set up our medical and dental clinic here. Each time we have been to this chapel (I think it's been 3 times) we have had a member of that ward who just recently returned from his mission assist us. His name is Jean Orlien Pierre-Louis. He is a very nice guy and I got to know him very well. He worked very hard for us cleaning and taking care of the instruments for us. We gave him some food and some money for his efforts. I'm so thankful for the opportunity I had to meet and get to know him. He will be a friend forever. We finished up a little early today and headed up into the mountains behind Port-au-Prince to a place called Kenskoff. We walked through a little market and bought some Haitian things to bring home. It felt really good up there. It's about 15 degrees cooler up on the mountain and a little break from the heat was nice. We came back down the mountain and went and visited with Madame Bourelli. She had some very good and safe Haitian food made for us. It was wonderful!

Sunday February 7th

I rose at 2:00am Sunday morning to assist the 82nd airborne with a mission to pick up rice and move it to a location where it could be distributed to the people of Haiti. It made for a very long and tiring Sunday. I returned to camp at 7:00am, just in time for the camp Sacrament meeting. It was a wonderful meeting. Many shared their testimonies of the gospel and of God's love for all people. I was then off to the General Hospital to translate and to see what I could to help and be of comfort. It was a very warm day, and even warmer in the hospital tents. I can't even imaging trying to recover from amputations, infections and other sicknesses in these conditions. I spent some time in the ICU tent where a sweet young girl had an infected lung. When she came out of surgery I talked to her. She spoke of her fear of dying because she had not yet had the opportunity to become a mother. Joel walked her to the restroom and she was in great spirits. An hour later she began to decline and really took a turn for the worst. She couldn't breath well. She coded and the team sprang into action and began working on her to get her breathing. She fought very hard and they brought her back twice. After what seemed to be forever, (It was about 1 1/2 hours of working on her) she passed away. It was a very emotional time for all of us. I needed to take a break from the ICU so I went over to the post op tent to see Mana. Mana is the girl I talked about last week who had just had both of her legs amputated. I found her in good spirits. I sat with her for about an hour and we just talked. The most amazing thing about the Haitian people is I have never heard any of them blame God. They only praise Him. When I ask them how they keep going they generally say they only have hope. Once they loose hope they have nothing at all and they will die. There is little hope for a better life...for better conditions here in Haiti, but they do have their faith in Jesus Christ and no one can take that away from them. This life tests them and tries them in such different ways than us, but I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and he is their Savior as well.
Love you all

UTAH HOSPITAL TASK FORCE: GOING FORWARD:

Because of the extraordinary sign up of volunteers on the UHTF web site (which we kept open to optimize priority medical emergency skills and Creole speaking skills), we hoped we could take a second large team of volunteers to Haiti. Unfortunately, conditions at the Port-au-Prince Airport are drastically changing, and options for both entry and departure are tightening. Food, water, and shelter for the long term are becoming highest priority – and this is not our mission. UNICEF, WFP, and World Vision are now on the ground in Haiti and are managing these elements.

Therefore the UHTF has decided not to take a large second plane team to Haiti

Conditions in Haiti are evolving; some things are now turning to a new (and difficult) normal. Native hospital workers are beginning to return to the hospitals. Critical wound care is believed to have been mostly now performed. Though obviously much remains to be done, such is a many year task which has never been part of the UHTF mission.

We are told that in a few days we can no longer count on U.S. Air Force transport from Haiti to the USA because the military will soon begin shuttling out military personnel who have been on the ground since the earthquake; most seats on the military transport planes will then be allocated to military requirements.

Daily transport assistance by the 82^nd Airborne to and from remote areas for our medical teams will no longer be available. UHTF would have to rent transport trucks. Our campsite will be transitioned back to the military for its larger and longer term role in Haiti. This would result in increased camp costs for security, water, food and bathroom room facilities.

We are informed the airport will be turned back to Haitian government control on February 13, further complicating the issue and taking away priority options we currently have. Evacuation efforts by the U.S. Government will effectively end. We would be required to work out landing spots for a second plane in and out with Haitian government officials rather than with the U.S. Government with who we are in good favor. Our confidence in the Haiti government’s control of the severely damaged airport is not great enough to risk inserting the second team.

The volunteer team leaders in Haiti are unitedly unwilling to incur the risk of having a second team of 120 doctors, nurses, and translators stuck in a country with little available food and water, inadequate medical care, uncertain ground transport, increasing risk of disease, and increasing hunger of the populace. Remember, we are all volunteers who are doing this – we have no paid leadership or staff.

Simply put, regardless of how much any of us want to send a second team to Haiti and continue serving the Haitian people, we love and respect all of our fellow volunteers far too much to subject them to a potential situation where we cannot effectively and safely control the length, security, and living conditions of their stay in Haiti.

Those noble volunteers who wish to go to Haiti should now do so in smaller groups under the auspices of Healing Hands for Haiti or other established long-term aid groups. We will work with the HHH leadership to confidentially transfer the names and emails of all those who volunteered to serve with the UHTF. As we have stated from the beginning, all donations for UHTF have gone to the Healing Hands for Haiti Foundation and that 501(c)(3) organization will continue to benefit from those donations with smaller teams into Haiti and rebuilding their medical facility in Haiti.

Our tents and non-medical supplies in Haiti will, upon our departure, be turned over to the Mardy orphanage. All medical supplies will be turned over to clinics here.

We appreciate all those who have volunteered, all those who have helped with donations and all those still willing to find ways to help ease the pain of those suffering in Haiti.

(From UHTF website)

Friday February 5/Saturday February 6

Today was a much better day! I got up and felt much better, back to normal. We had an early start to the day. We caught a ride across town to a chapel in Cafrourr. We set up to do a medical and dental clinic in the cultural hall. After about an hour there we had about 200 lined up to be seen. As far a dental patients we had about 40. My first patient of the day was an 18 year old girl with really bad tooth decay on her front 4 teeth. She said they hurt very, very bad and that she could not afford to fix them. I felt bad for her because at home with the proper equipment and tools I could have fixed them so easily, but with what I have here it was impossible. The work from there went straight down hill...it was very difficult. All the people we saw had teeth that were either broken off or decayed to the bone. The room was very warm and the stress didn't help with the sweating. We started around 10:30am and didn't finish until around 5:30pm nonstop, without a break. All in all between Joel and I we extracted about 35-40 teeth. The day ended up with a long tap-tap ride back to camp. Ready for a shower and some peanut butter crackers...
Today we were back in Petionville. We set up our clinic once again in the Petionville chapel. We ran our dental clinic until we ran out of anesthetic. Then we walked over to our old Mission President's house. They moved to a new home but the church still owns it and uses it as a base for humanitarian efforts. It was fun to walk through it again after 20 years. We did a lot of walking to get there and back up and down the hills (travel isn't very easy in Haiti) We came back to camp and had a meeting with the entire group. We were reminded to be safe as we travel around. To go in large groups to avoid any chance of problems which is a great idea. Tonight I am assigned to go out and translate for the military on a rice drop. They do that at 2 am so people are not on the streets and start a food riot. I'll tell you how it goes tomorrow. Also looking forward to going to church once again with the Haitian people. Love you all. Thank you to all the friends, family, ward members and anyone reading my blog. Thank you also for your prayers on our behalf. I know they are helping! Please continue to pray for comfort and strength for the people of Haiti...they will need your prayers for a very long time.

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Spared in the Earthquake: A High Priest Group Leader’s Story

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Spared in the Earthquake: A High Priest Group Leader’s Story

Thursday February 4th

I don't have a lot to write tonight. I woke up in the middle of the night with diarrhea and felt really, really sick! I thought it would pass by the morning but it didn't. Not sure if it was something I ate or the flu...but I had promised a lot of people that I would come back today and take care of their dental needs, and I didn't want to let them down. So off I went to the Petionville Chapel. Joel and I saw around 40 people and pulled about 40 teeth today. These Haitians have some really hard bone! We even saw one man who was about 65 years old. He only had lower teeth left and couldn't eat very well. He had perio disease so bad that we decided to pull the remaining teeth. I got the teeth out and sutured him up.    I didn't feel well all day and by now was totally exhausted! As we went to leave the chapel I ran into one of the members (first that I have seen) that I recognized. Her name is Nadine Seraphin. She had just been baptized when I was serving here and is still a good member today. That was so nice to see, and it was good to visist with her. We walked down and caught a tap tap and went to the supermarket to get Gatorade and some crackers then headed back to camp. Finally back home (in my tent) I fell asleep. When I woke up I was feeling much better. About half of our group ended up getting sick. (So I guess it was the flu) I was lucky...most of them needed IV's. I am doing a lot better and looking forward to a better day tomorrow!

Wednesday February 3rd

This morning we got up and decided that since it would be two hours before military transport could take us to our area and the fact that we needed to buy more dental instruments we     ( Joel Blake, Jeff Bates and I) took off on foot to catch a tap tap. We walked about a mile to Delmas, as we were walking a military vehicle came by and we waved them down and they gave us a ride to the dental store. We bought the instruments that were needed and I changed out some more American money for Haitian gourds. I got some brand new 10 gourd bills which is a 2 dollar bill (I am bringing a lot home). We then jumped on a tap tap and went to the tent city on Delmas 33. When we get there the crowd is overwhelming! There are hundreds already gathered there waiting for us. This tent city has had no medical attention since the earthquake. There was a group of Haitian boy scouts there that were helping. Once we set up tarps and tables with medical kits the people began to line up. We had in our unit Doctors, nurses and translators. We sent the patients through a triage and rated each a 1, 2, 3 in severity. As soon as this was done hundreds of mothers lined up with their children. I think this was a chance for them to have a doctor look at their child. A lot of wounds were treated but hundreds of well checks were done. It was a good service to do for the Haitian people today. I am sure that most Haitians have never been seen by a doctor. Even for pregnancy and birthing a child. I think we take for granted in the US the services that are right there for us so quickly. I spent most of the day translating but also had many opportunities to treat infected wounds and rebandage them. They are just so appreciative that we are here and that someone cares about them. We saw about 380 people today and treated everything from runny noses to 3 inch boils in an armpit. We even had to emergency evacuate a patient who had a stroke to a field hospital by the airport. I know that this kind of love is giving the people here hope for the future even though it still looks very bleak to me. I am looking forward to going back to the Peitionville Chapel tomorrow to work on the members there.

Tuesday February 2nd

Today Joel Blake and I left early and caught a tap tap in search of dental instruments. We rode to the top  of Petionville and walked down Delmas (we remembered there was a dental store somewhere around here) about 40 blocks in search of the store. We finally found it and bought the needed instruments. We then got back in a tap tap and headed for the Petionville Chapel. When we got there we went in to the chapel and started visiting with the members and asking them how they were doing. We asked if anyone had a toothache and within 15 minutes we had a line of about 40 people. They moved things around in the Bishop's office and set up a chair so we could do our work. We did extractions all day long and made arrangements to come back on Thursday. We will need to go get some more instruments as some of the people needed more extensive dental care. So we will go look for those tomorrow. Caught a tap tap back home to another great Haitian meal. It felt good to get to do some dentistry again! Tomorrow we are going to a tent city of 9,000 that has not had any medical care at all. Should be interesting.

Monday February 1st

Today I went to a new hospital called Comunite Hopitale de Haiti, we had in our group one nurse, one EMT and three translators. Two of the translators Joel Blake and I are dentists. We get there and say put us to work. They send us over to work along side and to also replace the Korean team that is just leaving. We are in a triage/post-op unit. We must have shown up at the busiest time of the day because it's packed with people. Now keep in mind our unit doesn't have a medical doctor in it. The first patient I treated was a young girl with her right leg amputated just below the knee. She had a femur fracture with external fixation screws. I cleaned and redressed her wound. The next patient I treated was a three year old boy with a 2 inch laceration on his foot that just had gauze placed over it. It needed to be sutured so Joel and I numbed up his foot with lidocaine as he screamed bloody murder. Once numb we placed the sutures and dressed the wound. It went on like that from 9:30am until 4:00pm without even a water break. I was just exhausted!

On the way home in a tap tap, we stopped and bartered for some sandals to shower in and to get some Haitian food. It was the best! I have missed eating this food alot. Then we stopped at the Centrale Chapel to check on the members and see how they are doing. All together another rewarding day of service. So glad I came!

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Haiti: Returning to Church after the Quake, Part 4

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Haiti: Returning to Church after the Quake, Part 4

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Haitian Orphan Rescue—The Story behind the Story

Meridian Magazine : : Church Update: Haitian Orphan Rescue—The Story behind the Story