Dates!

I have finaly bought my plane tickets! I'm leaving March 9th and leaving Haiti the 27th of April but I wont get back till the 28th.  So i will be gone for seven weeks aproximatly.

The Unknown

I have just started to realize how many people that I met while I was in Haiti last time might have been left homeless, jobless or have died. Like all the people I watched being baptized?  Its a heavy burden because I may never know.  How much more is the burden of all the Haitians that will never find the bodies of their dead family members, never having closure because they were separated and they could be dead or they might be alive somewhere?  John said in the Heartline blog that the estimated death toll is 212 hundred thousand people.  There are so many more bodies that have not been counted because buildings are still in heaps. I am not able to comprehend those numbers; it only took one minute for all those people to die.  And how manny of those people who are still alive had to watch their friends and family members die and were not able to do any thing about it? I don't know what God is going to do with all this. I can only speculate. All I know is, He is awesome and unfathomable and I will never understand all His ways. Im glad too because then there would be no mystery and our relationship with Him would cease to be something to pursue.

Heartline

Heartline Ministries is the place that I will be going to help out. Hear is their web sight if you would like to get a better understanding about what they are doing down there. You all should read their blog that is on the web sight.

www.heartlineministries.org

Im going back

            Many of you have heard about the recent earthquake that has devastated Haiti.  For those of you who don’t know much about it; the quake happened on the twelfth of January and was a 7.0 magnitude. Approximately 150,000 bodies have been found as of the 23rd of January (those are only the ones they have actually found and counted), and thousands are injured and still dying so the death toll is rising.  Building codes in Haiti are non existent and everything is built with cinder blocks, so many of the buildings in the capital have fallen and possibly 1,000,000 people or more are now homeless. Many of the people who do still have homes will not go back into them because they are afraid that they will fall. Port au Prince and the surrounding areas have been turned into one of the world’s largest refugee camps.

As many of you know last year I spent time in Haiti last year when I went with a team from Ecola Bible School. What I saw there and the people that I met captured my heart, and I desperately wanted to go back. In December, I began praying about the possibility of spending the summer in Haiti. Then the earthquake happened and I became more certain that Haiti is where I need to be. I spoke with one of the Teluchecs (the family who runs the orphanages I worked in last year) to find out if there was anything I could do to help.  There is a lot. 

The orphanages I worked at last year have been turned into a makeshift hospital.  They were able to get twelve of the seventeen children to their adoptive parents here in the US before the Haitian government put a halt on all the adoption programs in that country. Now they are trucking in people from the slums and the tent cities that need medical care. Even three weeks after the earthquake there are people that have not seen medical treatment. Many of the people they are helping need to be carried to the truck. The medical staff there are working constantly and are exhausted. I will be offering rest and relief by doing whatever is needed, and helping take care of all of the day to day operations that have had to be neglected in lieu of triage. 

My plan is to leave at the end of February and return at the end of April. I want to take as many medical supplies and as much food as the airlines will allow. I need to raise about $1700 for my plane ticket and all other expenses. I would like to raise an additional $1000 for Heartline Ministries (www.heartlineministries.org) and to purchase medical supplies to take down with me.  You can send checks to me at 4860 Zander Dr. Bellingham WA 98226 Much more important than monetary needs, the people who are working down there now and I need prayer.  The amount of work that needs to be done and the people that need to be cared for are numerous.  We need prayer for focus and the fight against exhaustion and discouragement. 

Thank you so much for your support in this.  God has blessed me so much with the family I have been born into and the friends he has put in my life.

Your sister in Christ, Danelle Roosendaal

P.S. If you have any questions at all please write back or call me.

My number is (360) 201-1828 and please don’t forget to pray.