Butch Vernon

This is the first of what we hope will be several guest posts from the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s disaster relief team in Haiti. The 10-member medical team arrived in Port-au-Prince today (Monday) and will be ministering through a makeshift hospital on the edge of a tent city. In this post, Butch Vernon, pastor of Thoroughbred Community Church in Nicholasville and the chaplain for the group, shares about the group’s first two days.

Greetings from Port-au-Prince, Haiti! We made it. What an amazing trip. The airline (Delta) let us take 42 packages for no extra charge. The problem was, we had so much that 12 bags containing very vital medical supplies got left in Atlanta. Initially the Dominican airport officials very apologetically told us that it would be the next day before we could get them. We prayed for God to intervene in a very direct way and just a few minutes later they called us over and said the bags would be there by 9:00…and they were. Praise God!

A collapsed Haitian home

We are the first in what will be a wave of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief teams coming to Haiti. As such we are very blessed to get to endure some things that hopefully the next groups won’t have to go through. Folks in charge of transportation weren’t initially prepared for the vast number of bags that medical teams have to have, so we ended up waiting while alternate transportation was graciously provided. (By the way it was worth the wait.) We had an extremely comfortable trip to Haiti and God allowed us to make up lost time by having the border guards simply wave us through without even looking at any of our documentation. What a blessing.

Please be in prayer for one of our Dominican drivers. We got word that on his way back to the D.R., he was involved in a very serious accident. We do not know the extent of his injuries or his condition.

It was funny that after we switched to vans and tap taps, I was videotaping our entrance into the city when the vehicle that was hauling our luggage ran slam into the back of our truck. I got it all on camera. No one was hurt or even shook up be we were all borderline hysterical with laughter. It has been a long couple of days and we are going without a ton of sleep at this point but that is about to be remedied.

A bookcase becomes a pharmacy

Tonight we turned an area that was a small library into a pharmacy. It was amazing to see all the medications that God provided for the two teams to work with.

The Kentucky team got our orders tonight and we will be operating in a small portable hospital just outside the edge of one of the larger tent cities, the one that sits directly across from the National Capitol building. We are expecting to be slammed all day. We will leave here at about 7 a.m. and work until 3 when we have to stop and come back because of security concerns. Please be praying that things would flow smoothly and we would get to see as many patients as possible. They guys who went on the initial assessment this afternoon said the damage was unbelievable downtown where we will be heading.

God has really been at work in our midst and I am anxiously awaiting the opportunity to fill you all in on what He does next. I want to close with a vision that was shared at dinner. Haitian Pastor LaBranc, the director of ministry for the CMBH (Confraternite Missionaire Baptiste d’ Haiti), shared with us how God had given him a vision before the earthquake. He felt that the Lord was telling him He was going to break Voodu’s hold on Haiti. (By the way, I didn’t spell it wrong, there is just no official spelling of the word, and this is the one most accepted here.) God told him to expect 1.5 million Haitians to turn to Christ in the next five years. He told us how he has been talking to some of the voodu priests who have expressed that the power of voodu is broken and several have accepted Christ! Praise God on His mighty work even in the midst of tragedy.

The KBC medical team receives its assignment to minister near a tent city

Pray hard for us tomorrow. I’m so tired that I am having to constantly go back and fix mistakes so I believe I will hit the sack. Six o’clock will be early. As I get ready to shower I hear singing from somewhere in the neighborhood. It sounds like 30 or 40 people raising their voices in praise to our God, and by our God I mean the God of America, Haiti and the world. What a blessing!