Just so you know, this is Kurt authoring this blog post. I'm usually not a very willing participant with this blogging stuff, but I've been encouraged to take my turn! Things have been busy around Bonne Fin lately. We've been blessed with numerous visitors and many work teams in the past month. Kirk H. has been serving as a medical intern at the hospital for the last several months. It has been wonderful to have Kirk around the campus. He's been a great example for our boys and they love spending time with him. His family came to visit recently, and we were able to spend some time with them.
It's fairly common in Haiti for vehicles to cross rivers while driving back roads. Below, is a picture of our convoy of Toyotas driving down a small river. I've never seen a vehicle as tough as Toyota Land Cruisers. You would not believe the beating they take on these roads and they just keep right on going. I'm impressed. Our minivans and light duty trucks would fall apart if used on these roads!
A large group of us went on a hike in the Haitian mountains recently. This hike was pretty mild. Not a lot of up and down and only about 3-4 miles round trip. We enjoyed swimming in a water cave at the end of the hike.
Hikers in action. We paid a little money this time to have a Haitian watch our vehicles while we hiked. Last time we did this hike, we came back to our vehicles and found 3 or 4 deflated tires! No problems this time!
After our hike, we stopped at a restaurant that just recently opened in Cayes. Pizza was good. One of the better restaurants that we've been to in Haiti. Kind of felt like we were swinging by Tobins Pizza after going to the park (okay, maybe not quite like that but it was nice)!
Valentine's Day "mystery dinner" hosted by the kids, their teachers, and Kirk H. Very good food and lots of hard work went into the evening. Much appreciated by all the adults.
A sonography tech, Rebekah, spent a month with us here at Bonne Fin. She needed some test subjects to train the Haitian doctors so Brenna and Joan were the willing participants! The doctor in the picture is Dr. Guito. He's a very talented pediatrician working at Hospital Lumiere.
I continue to see progress with my security guards. We talk about building "muscle memory" (ie. practicing techniques so often that when you need to use them you hardly even have to think. It just happens.) We're not quite to that point yet, but definitely improving. We recently had another training session with our guards. We learned a new "take down move" that they all seemed to enjoy a lot. Kind of makes you feel like a man when you know how to get someone on the ground in 1-2 seconds using nothing but your hands and the weight of your body.
One of the guards practicing a soft-hand technique on Kirk.
Below, is a pic of my chief of security, Jilbert. I consider him a friend as well as a co-worker. Our relationship has really blossomed. I've seen good improvements in him & am thankful to have been able to build a high level of trust with him. Of all our guards, he's the one that you really don't want to mess with. He knows the techniques well and is strong. One of his best qualities though is that he's a thinker. He knows how to diffuse tense situations without resorting to force. I'm really thankful to have him as my chief of security.
While doing our training recently, we took a 10 minute break. The guards came back late so they got to do 20 push ups.
In the middle of February, our friends, Mike, Amber & Andrew (Buzz) came to visit us. It was wonderful to spend time with them. Buzz braved the long hike to the hydro along with the rest of us. The picture below is a litter of young, curious pigs (not meaning the boys) that we discovered at the bottom of a deep ravine.
Hikers were able to successfully climb back out. Here's a group shot at the top. Worn out after the steep hike but having fun!
Joan, Mike & Amber spent (1) day helping out with a medical team that was here that week. This was a Pediatric team. The team went on the road and visited a few small villages within an hour or so of Bonne Fin. A couple doctors, several nurses, and lots of helpers took the medical care to these rural communities. The next few pictures are from the time spent with the medical team.
Couple darling girls, don't you think?
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Beautiful rainbow painted the sky above the hospital recently. Great reminder of God's many promises to His children! |
During our week with the Grimms, the game of choice was "Rook!" This was a common sight on pretty much every day of the week when we were together! Thanks Mike for being a good sport!
We closed out our week with our guests by heading to the beach. It was rainy on the mountain when we left and when we returned, but an ideal day just down the road at the beach.
So thankful for good friendships. We feel truly blessed to have family and friends that make the sacrifice to come visit us. It's always been a great encouragement to us and helps to keep us motivated and connected to all of those back in the states!
Okay, for all those that are still with me in this long post, I've got just a little more to share. We rarely give updates on these posts about the hospital and my job at the hospital, so I want to give just a brief update. The hospital continues to make progress. We're always striving to improve our medical care, improve the effectiveness of our workforce, all while trying to improve the financial picture of our organization. Our inpatient counts continue to increase which is a positive sign. It feels like our hospital is again earning a positive reputation with Haitians. At one point recently, we had over 100 patients in the hospital. That was the highest we've seen since it has been under our administration. We have a couple facility related projects in process currently. We're almost finished with our solar project and hope to be harvesting the abundant Haitian sunshine in the coming weeks. The solar project will allow us to provide good stable, clean power for the hospital while lessening our dependence on our diesel generators and our hydro generator. In addition, we're working on a renovation to one of our (4) wards in the hospital, the Medicine ward. This is our largest ward and the only one that has not been renovated. Lord willing, a work team from our home church will be coming next week to assist with this project. The work will involve plumbing, carpentry, electrical, flooring, and painting.
I feel like I'm settling into my job more and more and am gaining a better understanding of my role. I've got some great Haitians working with me & am glad to be past the "newbie" stage with them. My current responsibilities include things like hospital admissions, accounting, fund assistance, administration and security. When I started my job, I was focused heavily on security. In recent months, I'm spending much more time on admissions and accounting. I continue to focus on development of people. We have numerous employees with the supervisor title, but very few who actually know how to supervise or lead people and are willing to do it. My desire is to change that. The cultural challenges and the employee "baggage" can make this tough, but I'm thankful for every little bit of progress. One of the most exciting changes in the past year is my improvement with the language. I'm thankful that God has helped to loosen my tongue and for those of you prayer warriors that were praying specifically that I could learn the Creole language. A year ago right now, I was convinced that I was a complete dud when it came to learning Creole and that I wasn't ever going to get past saying a few greetings like "bon jou" or "bon swa." I've still got a long way to go, but I am thankful that I can handle most conversations during the day without the aid of a translator. At some point in 2015, I finally convinced myself to just start talking even though I didn't really know what I was saying. Kind of weird to express it this way, but that's when things started to click. Due to the way my mind is wired, it was hard for me to just wing it. I wanted to say everything just right and didn't want to guess at how to say something when I wasn't sure. Part of that is wiring in my head and part of it is pride. I didn't want to look stupid. Once I got past that hurdle and just "let 'er rip", I started to learn quicker. At this point I feel like I've plateaued again, so need to keep working on learning new phrases/words.
Last of all, I want to mention that we're still looking for God to touch hearts and call people to his work here at Hospital Lumiere. We've got numerous missionary positions open including our Medical Director role and Nursing Care Manager. Please be prayerful with us that God call medical professionals to this work. Perhaps you know of those that may be qualified. If not, we'd really appreciate your prayer support as we try to fill these positions. God bless!
