A crowd of people waiting to see what is brought out from the cleanup. Please pray for these people and their overwhelming losses!

Dad’s Facebook status last night read, “Saw too much today – really overwhelmed by it all. Good night. I am, well…”  This made my heart really heavy for him.  On one of the pictures of the rubble he had posted, his comment said that they were starting to do some burning to cover up the smell of all the dead bodies.  It is very easy to write a blog post, say a quick prayer, call dad throughout the day, and forget quickly what he is going through as I pick up and go about my daily business.  But, then, I see the pictures and read the comments.  That changes my heart and my prayers.  It breaks me for the Haitian people, and breaks me for workers, like my dad.  The picture at the top of this post is just one of the many, many heartbreaking ones he has posted.   

They moved to work on the Presidential Palace and the police station.  Many groups are camping out on the roofs of buildings.  Before moving, he reported to my mom that they had been bitten by bed bugs and that the hotel was quite infested.  Lovely!  So, for those of you who read my prior posts and thought my mention of a “hotel” meant dad was vacationing in Haiti…  Ha!  Not quite the hotel most of us would envision staying in. 

Every time I talk to him, he is extremely busy.  You can hear noise in the background, and he says the whole city is buzzing, as everyone works really hard.  They have had trouble on and off with the chlorinators on their water systems.  Please keep this specific situation lifted up in prayer.  Also, they are working so hard and quickly running out of supplies.  He said the world is there- there are Chinese and Germans, along with others and the Americans, of course.

Again, you can follow dad’s updates on Twitter @52bharper or on Facebook- Bob Harper.  Here are the latest pictures:

Dad- the facial hair is growing

Clean water for the police station- 400 gallon tank

Notice it says "Self Heating" and "3 yr. shelf life"?! Looks like someone will need a detox when they get home...

Dad was able to translate for her, and got her into the doctor faster.

Federal Building. They pull bodies out and bag them, and search for tax papers. Taxes won't be collected. Citizens may be happy about this, but this means no means of income for island.

Here is an example of the handy work of dad's team.

Youth With a Mission tents- they are camping out in front of the Presidential Palace

Dad in front of the drip water bucket filtration systems. Texas Baptist Men sent them, 10,000 have arrived!

On a side note, for those of you who miss the “health” aspect of this blog.  Know what we sent dad with to make sure he stays healthy while in Haiti?  Colloidal Silver!  He is using it as his hand sanitizer, and spraying it in his mouth, ears, nose and eyes several times a day.  He also takes it orally.  Colloidal silver is great when you go on trips and when you come down with something at home.  So there is your tip for the day .

First, a mom whom I had seen throughout her entire pregnancy and planned on assisting with her birth very unexpectedly lost her baby.  Then, a family friend lost his five month old baby.  And, to top it off, two other long time patients had miscarriages- one of whom was expecting twins.

Two funerals in one week can certainly make anyone yearn for the next week to start quickly; to say the past few days have been hard is an understatement.  Plus, I think you take everything a little bit harder when you are a sleep-deprived, hormonal, nursing mom.

I don’t share all of this with you to ask for your notes of sympathy or prayers for me because I had a rough week.  I just wanted to share this to point out some very important lessons I feel I have learned while watching these families gracefully walk through their tragedies.  Man, I hope if I had to experience the same grief that I could handle my situation with the grace that these families did!  I have cuddled with Harper longer this week, cherished the mundane moments and held him a little tighter than normal.  Watching other people loose their children really humbles you as you hold yours.  I told the Lord each morning that I trust His Sovereignty and know He has a plan, even if we don’t always understand it.

In our culture, something I see on a daily basis, is that we are so busy and we really fail to realize how blessed we truly are and cherish every moment.  This is especially true during the life stages of pregnancy and infancy.  How many moms come in savoring every day of pregnancy, especially at the end?  Hardly any!  More often than not, in the last trimester of pregnancy, I am encouraging moms that they will have their babies soon.  They are begging me to use any tricks I have to help them have their babies sooner than later.  They tell their growing babies, “It’s time for you to be evicted!  Mommy wants her body back.  I am so tired of being kicked in the ribs and having to go to the bathroom all the time.  I am so ready to have this baby!”  And what about new moms?  Yes, they appreciate their babies and talk about how cute they are.  But, I know I am just as guilty as anybody, there are also the constant complaints about sleep deprivation and having to feed around the clock and never getting a break.

Well I have a whole new perspective after the past few days.  Unexpected, horrible events have a way of stopping you dead in your tracks and really making you look at life with a whole new perspective.  You know what?  Those parents who lost their babies would kill to live out the worst days of pregnancy and miss out on all those hours of sleep to hold their babies.  I should be so ashamed that I have complained at all, I am so blessed, and I don’t deserve any of it!  If I am blessed to experience the nausea of a pregnancy again, hopefully because of these precious families letting me watch them deal with their tragedies with such poise and grace and being able to learn so much from them, I won’t complain about how I feel.  Instead, I hope I will look at it from the perspective of how blessed I am to carry life.

What a wonderful thing that our bodies are made to force us to rest when we are growing a baby, that they won’t allow us to eat things or breathe in air that would harm our growing child.  When I get to the stage where my joints ache from carrying all that weight, hopefully I won’t moan about it.  Instead, I will hopefully be so grateful to have made it to that point in pregnancy; and, I will cherish every second I have knowing exactly where my baby is and feeling his/her every move.  Right now when Harper is still wanting to wake up constantly, and he wants to nurse after only having gone an hour since the last feeding, I am trying to take my negative thoughts captive.  In this season of Thanksgiving, I have learned a really hard lesson about truly, truly being so very thankful.  What a new, hard perspective to attain!  I hope I can pass this lesson on to other families because we are so blessed…  Beyond measure!  Hold your family extra tight, cherish life!!