Prayers Needed for Haiti

Most of you know we hope to adopt a little boy from Haiti. We received this e-mail today from the director of the orphanage we are going through. It is so easy to forget how hard most of the world has it. As I am cutting flower-shaped meat and cheese for our girls to entice them to eat there are mothers all over the world struggling to even give their children rice. Dixie the director of the orphanage says she has taken in several babies who are 2-4 months old and have never had milk!!! They have had mush or water only and are severely malnourished. I cannot as a mother imagine making the agonizing choice: keep my baby and watch her starve or take her to an orphanage and hope my government allows her to be adopted. Please pray for these precious families. "Religion that God our Father accepts is this: to look after the widow and orphan in her distress."

The situation in the last few days has increasing gotten worse in Port-au-Prince. The price of food has sky rocketed in the last 4 months. Gasoline is now $5.93 USD per gallon which has caused taxi fares to also increase. For the average person and even those of us blessed with donations, day to day life is difficult. Our food bill has increased by 1/3 or more.

Over the weekend, rioting started in outlying cities and yesterday we had some in Port-au-Prince. Today, the crowds broke the gates to the Civil Court building and also to the Palace. They are breaking store windows and stealing things out of stores. They are burning tires in the streets and breaking windshields on cars.

All government buildings are closed. We tried taking papers to the courts but the court clerk told us not to come. Our son, Mark, had gone to school in PAP before the rioting started. Our driver picked him up at noon due to the problems. They had trouble finding a safe route home.

Mark just talked to one of his school friends on the phone and they are blocked at a market in the city and crowds just broke a window in the car next to them.

I told my staff that they would get more sympathy if they had mothers marching with their starving children! This violence does not help food prices nor make any sense to the rest of the world!

We foresee tomorrow being much of the same. We do not see the courts or Immigration being open.

So far, it seems quiet in our area. There is some road blocks on the mountain road but not as far up as we live.

Please pray for all of our staff and the babies that everyone will be safe. Pray for Haiti and that food costs will decrease so mothers can feed their children.