Pella Team - His Timing

Life is precious in every corner of the world. This week, a single life, just barely begun, hung on the balance. Let Rebecca Piersma share the greatness of our God and the wonder of His timing to save one tiny girl’s entire future. As we move into our second day in Haiti, there are already so many experiences that we would love to share with you. We’ve seen God work in many ways, and we are excited to see more! The highlight of our first day was getting to help baby Junie, a baby girl born just this Monday with a cleft lip. Because of her condition, she was barely able to be fed at all. One of the members on our team, Amanda, is a pediatrics nurse practitioner back home in North Dakota. Amanda has dealt with many cases like baby Junie’s, and was super excited to meet her. After we picked up baby Junie and her grandmother, we drove to an orphanage where a weekly milk program is based. The head of this program, Jennifer, specializes in helping Haitian mothers and babies. Both Jennifer and Amanda took Junie inside and examined her to see what they could do about her feeding problem. Junie was the first child born to her mother, which only complicated the situation. The best option was to use formula. Jennifer had a special bottle for babies like Junie with a cleft lip. She filled the bottle with the formula, and let Amanda try to feed her. At first Junie was reluctant- she had never really fed before- but after a minute or two she started to suck. Amanda fed Junie for a little while, then gave her to the grandmother and taught her how to feed her correctly. After watching all of this, we realized that God had put Amanda on our team at just the perfect time to care for this baby. We were all in awe as we were able to see how truly incredible God’s timing is. It was amazing to get to see Junie eating for the first time! Most of the mothers in the room where almost in tears as Junie figured it out. It was eye-opening to see how some children can be faced with death just because their family may not know the right person at the right time, or have access to the resources they need. God’s timing is absolutely perfect! Junie will hopefully go on to keep growing and feeding, and in six months she will be able to get a surgery for her cleft lip. All of our hearts were touched by this beautiful moment where God was very much seen.

Some other highlights of these two days were delivering food and a mattress for two ladies who have been diagnosed with cancer, and most likely don’t have very long to live. At both houses, the team prayed over the ladies and their families, and even sang! Early Friday morning, most of the team members went to a nearby house and laid a concrete floor. The house had 4 rooms, and 7 family members living inside. The house was fairly big by Haitian standards, but with everyone helping, the work went by quickly. Children from the neighborhood flocked to the house to see what was going on. After we had helped the Haitian men who were employed to lay the concrete, we played with all the children that came to watch. We brought bubbles, small play cars, bracelets, and nail polish. The kids loved all of these things, and even the boys wanted their nails painted! The remainder of our team stayed back at the guest house to help organize pieces of fabric for Bundled Bottoms parts. Bundled Bottoms is a program that employs Haitian women to sew cloth diapers for the community. Through each of these activities, we have really seen so many wonderful things happen as part of God’s plan. We are so excited to see more of what God has in store for us this week as we place our trust in his plan. By – Rebecca Piersma