A fitting wrap-up of the Dateline Haiti series is this video dispatch just released from the International Mission Board from an interview of Butch Vernon, the chaplain of our 10-member Kentucky Baptist Convention Disaster Relief medical team that arrived home earlier this week. If you’ve been following the series, you know that Butch was the author of the posts from the field.

For those who may be reading this on a platform that doesn’t allow you to see the embedded video,  click this link to go to the video on the IMB Commission Stories Web site.

Vernon was also featured today in a story in The State Journal in Frankfort, Ky. Here’s the story from writer Keren Henderson:

A newborn was placed in a copy paper box, when no other spot could be found at one of the makeshift hospital’s in Port-au-Prince.

Editor’s note: Butch Vernon, the pastor of Thoroughbred Community Church in Nicholasville and the chaplain for the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s disaster relief team, returned last week from Haiti. The 10-member medical team treated hundreds of patients each day in a makeshift hospital near Haiti’s collapsed national capitol. Butch recently shared his chaotic story with The State Journal, explaining that hundreds more Americans are working in similar hospitals across Port-au-Prince. This was his third trip to Haiti.

Desperate and malnourished, the 15-year-old Haitian girl dragged herself to the makeshift hospital.

“Please help me die!” she repeatedly screamed. “Please help me die!”

Linda had been pulled from the wreckage of her home two days after the earthquake. Once free, she discovered that all 11 in her family had been crushed and killed.

With nowhere to go, no one to take care of her and no food, she was wandering Port-au-Prince. Even the shirt on her back was not her own.

“She wanted to die,” Butch remembers. “All we had to do was show her a little love, a little compassion, and that was enough to get her through the day.”

After hugs and some warm food, Linda was smiling again.

Her story describes the daily struggle of one million Haitians who live in squalid tent camps and eat an average of one meal every three days.

The makeshift hospitals are bare bones – merely a series of tarps hung over street signs. At Butch’s hospital, the surgery room is a desk with a mattress on top. Newborn babies are placed in whatever’s available – in one memorable example, a cardboard box – giving mothers a few hours to rest after labor.

“We had a lot of toes and fingers that were gangrene,” Butch said. “Most of what we were dealing with was revisions of earlier amputations.”

However, the surgeries he witnessed can’t be compared to those during the first few days after the quake.

“A lot of initial amputations were done with hacksaws, Black & Decker tools, and in a couple instances, chainsaws. And there was no anesthesia, just a stick.”

Currently, the greatest needs are hunger and stress related.

“Nearly everyone is suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder,” Butch said.

Someone to listen

When he wasn’t assisting the physicians, Butch listened to stories similar to Linda’s.

“They just needed someone to listen,” he said. “I would listen as a dad was telling me, ‘I watched my wife and infant daughter and 4-year-old son crushed in front of me. My business was destroyed. I lost everything. What do I do now?’”

Sometimes, there weren’t any answers, so Butch prayed with each person he talked to, asking God to show them his presence in some way that day.

“As Americans, our response is ‘It’s going to be OK.’ We don’t know that. It’s going to get worse in Haiti before it gets better.”

Desperation has driven several to violence.

“They’re on their last nerve,” Butch said, reiterating that large families are living on top of one another in tent villages with very little food. “It doesn’t take hardly anything to cause a violent outbreak.”

It wasn’t uncommon for doctors to get distracted from treating quake victims to respond to gunshot and knife victims after a fight.

At the same time, Butch says, it’s easy to mischaracterize the Haitians as they go through this struggle.

“They are some of the most resilient people,” he said, praising their ability to withstand incredible pain.

He remembers one girl who – without any painkillers – looked up at his camera and smiled as a doctor scrubbed out bone-deep wounds on her leg.

One of Butch’s main goals was to care for the doctors and nurses – to help them process the things they were seeing.

Watching people suffer and starve was emotionally draining, especially for the women on the team, Butch says.

Most of the children are malnourished; many of their mothers died in the quake; and the mothers who made it can’t feed their infants.

“There aren’t a lot of cows running around Haiti,” Butch said. “Hardly any grocery stores are standing. It’s difficult sending a child away with a few boxes of formula knowing that when it’s gone …”

So, Butch, who has earned a reputation for his love and compassion under even the most stressful circumstances, kept encouraging his team to keep a short-term mindset.

“We got them through today,” he encouraged.

A hope for the future

Butch is also thinking long term.

He carries thousands of stories of loss and tragedy, but greater than that is his sense of hope for the rebuilding.

“Every time I come back, I have had a feeling of hopelessness, that things are never going to be different. This is the first time I came back and didn’t have that feeling.”

That hope is being administered by churches and Haitian pastors, he said.

As has been widely covered, the national government has no ability to help the people. The only social structure still standing is the church, which has spearheaded relief in Haiti for decades.

“If we’re going to make a difference, we’re going to have to work through the faith-based organizations,” he said.

Related to that is the importance for Haitians to give up voodoo superstitions, which exacerbate their posttraumatic stress, Butch says.

Voodoo beliefs place great emphasis on taking care of the dead.

“If you do not treat the body of a dead relative with respect, that relative will return as a spirit and kill children or cause mischief,” he said, adding that in a nation where families make $200-$300 a year, they will spend as much as $2,000 to $3,000 on a funeral to make sure they are not haunted.

“The end result is horrific posttraumatic stress,” he said. “They have witnessed dump trucks driving through town dumping bodies in holes. The people are horrified that their spirits are going to come back and pay them back for not treating them with respect.”

So, as Christians are feeding the homeless and helping the injured, they’re also preaching the Gospel.

“The tragedy is going to grow worse, but the end result could be very positive,” Butch said, summarizing his hopes. “But the birth pains will be horrific.”