Nataliya

Please pray for the children of Haiti

I arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti this past week to visit some on-going projects OP is helping to fund.

Even if you are born healthy in this country, survival is a real struggle, look at the statistics; one of every five children dies at birth. One-half of all children die before the age of fifteen. For the average Haitian man, life expectancy is 48 years and for women, 50. Diseases long forgotten in the US still take thousands of lives in this, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Now, imagine a special needs child being born here and surviving, what are the chances?

This is why we’re partnering with a Mission that has a long-standing history of doing an excellent job in Haiti. They have a medical clinic, a small hospital, dental, x-ray, complete pharmacy, and several facilities for the elderly and for abandoned and orphaned children. Their new goal is to build a special facility to help these disabled and usually abandoned children.

Many mothers in Haiti, knowing how difficult it will be for their handicapped child to survive, simply abandon them by the roadside, sometimes they are left where they are born.

Haiti after the earthquake

Our partners, at the Mission, have taken many of these babies in and cared for them in a facility separate from their three orphanages. The building is called “Heaven’s Waiting Room,” because they expected these babies to quietly pass away due to the severity of their handicaps. However, with love and care, these children have not only survived, but thrived! Praise God! Because of this, the needs of the facility grew, and after the earthquake, they became dramatic. When they asked us for help, we had to respond.

Orphan’s Promise is currently helping to build a new facility; a properly equipped place for handicapped kids in Port-de-Paix. A place where they will receive love, care, food, medical attention and physical therapy to help them overcome what they can and live as full a life as possible. Specialists we are partnering with are training caretakers, and in some cases, a parent, to provide the best conditions possible for these little ones. They are all precious in God’s sight and we are called to help care for them. “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for Me.” More later from Haiti, please keep these precious babies in your prayers.

Nataliya Khomyak
Director of Operations