We have had another busy, busy month here at Children of the Promise!  We are reminded every day that the Lord is faithful and that His mercies are new every morning. 

 

 

It's the everyday miracles that keep my hope alive
It's the way You move in little things that help me survive
And I know You move in greater ways
But this is great enough for me
What You do with my everyday is amazing
The things that seem impossible, I lay down at Your feet
And just when I am needing most You are there for me
And I know you've made the lame to walk
And caused the blind to see
But what You do with my everyday is amazing

When I'm down on my knees
And I can't make it through
When it's up to me
It's really up to You

 

Isn’t this song by Sara Groves amazing?  We often overlook or forget about all the everyday miracles that God blesses us with.  When I stop and think about this past month I see so many miracles that have kept our hope alive and have helped us survive through the tough days.  God knows what we need when we need it and He has moved in many incredible ways this past month to give us what we need to keep on going!!

 

We had some amazing and wonderful volunteers come to COTP this past month:

• Matt, Julie, Shannon, Wanda, Lou, and Susan from Indianapolis.  They did a combination of helping with medical needs that arose (Matt and Shannon are nurses), doing odd jobs around the compound (painting our gate, tearing down the roundhouses in preparation for building our ICU/Isolation building, sewing up screens to keep the rats out), helping with the babies in the volunteer house (Richard, Wisky, Daniela, and Yanise), and taking our stress level down by making sure there was never a moment without laughter!
• Mike Bonnema (Bud’s brother) from Minnesota.  We had the privilege of having Mike here for a few days at the beginning of September.  He is a great encourager, prayer warrior, and man of God.  We were blessed by the conversations we were able to have with him and by the many ways he encouraged us and supported us while he was here.
• Jessica from Michigan.  She is helping us by spending a lot of one on one time with our kids – doing crafts with them, reading to them, working with them on English, etc.  She will be here for a total of six weeks.  We are thankful for her love for our babies and for her love for the people of Haiti!
• Rex and Donna from Texas.  This is Rex and Donna’s 3^rd trip to COTP.  They always come at this time of year and stay for two weeks.  They spoil us in many ways and we love them and the help that they are to us!  Donna spends a lot of her day cleaning up the kitchen and doing the never ending task of washing dishes.  When she’s not doing the dishes we’ll always find her rocking a baby and giving them that extra attention they need.  Rex also loves to play with and rock the babies and he has kept busy by doing a lot of odd jobs (they never end!) that have been piling up and waiting for someone to tackle.
• Kim and Sarah from Washington.  Kim and Sarah are good friends that are both adopting from us.  They spent 5 days here getting to know their sons better and playing with all of the babies in the nursery.

 

Our numbers are changing!  And for once, when I say our numbers are changing, that means they are going down and not up!!  We are now at 66 babies – Can you believe it?  This is both due to the fact that we are finally seeing kids coming out of MOI and a couple of our babies have gone home to their biological families.

• Loubens went home to his biological father on September 15.  Loubens’ dad loves him very much and we know that he will be well cared for.  Loubens came to COTP on November 14, 2006 when he was 7 days old and he left at a healthy 22lbs at 10 months old.  We miss him but this is what COTP is all about – reuniting healthy children with their biological families. J         
• Wisky went home to his biological mother on September 25.  It was hard to see him go.  When he came to us just 5 weeks ago he was dying b/c his mother and grandmother had been neglecting him and not caring for him properly.  In the time that he was here, he went from 4lbs 10oz to almost 9lbs!!  We are so thankful that they live just down the road from us and we can walk down to his house and check up on him frequently.  We were able to see him just the other day and he looks fantastic!  Please join us in praying for Wisky and also for his young mother as she cares for him.
• After a long road of waiting, praying, and waiting some more, Evenson has gone home to his forever family!  On September 25, Maria flew with Evenson to Port-au-Prince where they met his adoptive parents.  His visa appointment at the US Embassy was on September 26, and they had flights home to Missouri on September 28&29.  Pray for a relatively easy adjustment for Evenson.  He is 5 ½ years old and all he has known is living at COTP.  He’ll be missing his friends and nannies here as well as adjusting to family life in an English speaking country!  Pray for patience and wisdom for his adoptive parents – John and Melony – and their 3 children as they do their best to make this adjustment for everyone as easy as possible.  Just when adoptions seemed impossible, God provided us with this miracle of Evenson being able to go home.  This gave us the spark of hope we needed to keep on working hard at these adoptions!

 

We have had one addition to our COTP family this past month.  Ruth-Nallie was brought to Children of the Promise on September 7 by her grandmother and her aunt.  Matt and Shannon from Indianapolis (both nurses) were here on the day that she came.  We took one look at her and started scrambling . . . she was very sick and in need of immediate medical attention.  On admission she weighed 3lbs 3oz.  Her grandmother was adamant that her birthday was April 18, 2007, putting her at almost 5 months of age.  Ruth-Nallie’s ribs stuck out horribly and she was struggling very hard to breathe.  My immediate thought was her heart – we listened and sure enough, she had a very audible heart murmur.  She also had a horrible cough, junky sounding lungs, and a high fever – most likely pneumonia.  We told her grandmother and aunt that we would do everything we could for her but our goal and mindset at that point was to keep her comfortable and give her all that we could . . . but we didn’t know that it would be enough to keep her alive.  Matt ended up putting an IV in her IJ (the vein that is in your neck) because she was so tiny and dehydrated that we couldn’t get a line in anywhere else.  I was glad Matt was here to do that because, even though I can put in IVs, I’m not sure I would’ve attempted one in her IJ!

Well, our God is a God of everyday miracles and Ruth-Nallie is still with us.  She is a fighter and a sassy little thing!  She is now 4lbs 3oz and looking fatter by the day!  She still has a lot of obstacles to overcome but she has made it farther than what we ever thought she would.  After a few rough weeks her lungs have cleared, the pneumonia is gone, and she no longer needs any oxygen.  Through a series of God-ordained events, we were able to have two different doctors from the States look at her and assess her.  They helped us in diagnosing Ruth-Nallie with Pierre-Robin Sequence.  She has a cleft palate that will eventually need to be operated on and also micrognathia (abnormally small lower jaw).  Because of these complications it takes extra work for her to keep her tongue from occluding her airway and it is also impossible for her to suck from a bottle.  She does a great job at positioning herself to where she is most comfortable and can breathe fairly easily.  She also has a VSD (hole between the ventricles in her heart) that will also eventually need surgical intervention to repair.  She is stable so for now we are working on getting her to gain weight and become stronger and healthier so that she’ll have the best chance at surviving surgery.  Ruth-Nallie is a miracle and we are so blessed to have her with us.  She lives upstairs with me and Daryl and we love holding her, praying for her, and seeing her change and grow.  We have been blessed by the equipment that people have sent for her including a syringe pump and a feeding pump.  Pray that she will continue to grow stronger and healthier every day and that she will not become sick or start to struggle more.  She is a precious and beautiful little girl and we are so thankful for the miracles that God is working in her little life and for the lessons He is teaching us along the way.  Please keep Ruth-Nallie in your prayers as well as us as we care for her and make decisions regarding her care.

 

As I mentioned earlier, we are starting to see movement out of MOI!  As of now, we have 6 children (Jesse, Isabelle, Reubens, Mathieu, Nadege, and Wilnise) out of MOI and in the final stages of the adoption process!!  Reubens and Wilnise are within just a couple of weeks of going home!  We are so excited to see this progress!!  This is another everyday miracle and we are excited to see these children go home to their forever families, also allowing us the ability to take in more babies that are sick, malnourished, or orphaned with no where else to go.  Pray for more files to come out of MOI and for everything in the adoption process to run smoothly.  Pray especially that Moise’s file will come out of MOI soon.  Moise is going to the same adoptive home as Jesse and Isabelle and we would love to see them all go home together and soon.

 

Arlyn has arrived at Children of the Promise and he’s learning the ropes of his job and all that it requires.  In case you don’t remember, I’ll give you a little reminder of who Arlyn is and what he is doing here.  Arlyn is from Smithers, British Columbia, Canada.  He is 21 years old and has committed to being the “maintenance man” at COTP for the next year.  This will require maintaining (and fixing) anything and everything at COTP, running to town to pick up/drop off volunteers at the airport, picking up supplies and mail in town every week, and making us strong Canadian coffee every morning. J  Arlyn is very handy and we are enjoying having him here.  He even does a great job with the kids and has taken a special interest in Daniela – even to the point that he took her for a night to give Maria a good night of sleep! J

 

COTP is located right next to a small Haitian Church.  They have recently started offering Sunday school for kids and have invited our older kids to come.  Since we can’t send all 17 of our older children every Sunday we usually let 5-6 of them go at a time and rotate through all the kids.  They love getting all dressed up and going to Church.  One or two of our nannies will go with them to make sure they all behave and sit still. J  We love having this opportunity available for our kids and it’s great to see them so excited about going to Church . . . . or dressing up and going “out” . . . I’m not sure what.  Either way, it’s good for them! J

 

Other than the minor ear infections, bouts of diarrhea, and scratches and scrapes, our kids have been very healthy.  For that we are very thankful. J  Daryl continues to stay busy with overseeing the nannies, adoptions, and general running of the place.  He also is busy being my translator. J  I’m taking Creole lessons and feeling much more comfortable with the language than I did a few months ago, but I still frequently need his help. J 

 

We are enjoying having so many long-term volunteers here right now. Between Blake, Katie, Maria, Arlyn, Daryl, and myself we can usually get a lot accomplished in a day and not feel totally worn out at the end.  We enjoy Blake and Katie and appreciate their strong commitment to COTP but we are anxious (as are they!) for their adoption to be completed so they can head home to the States with their two children.  Pray that they will come out of MOI soon so that they can be home for Christmas.  Join with us in praying that all of our children that are in MOI right now will have their files signed out before Christmas so that they will be able to go home by the end of this year.

 

Our apartment continues to be a wonderful haven for us and we are blessed to have such a large area all to ourselves.  Right now we have Yanise and Ruth-Nallie living with us.  They are both a joy and a testing of our patience. J  Yanise struggles with sickle cell and what we are guessing to be cerebral palsy.  She can be very fussy and hard to figure out but she has the most precious smiles and loves to snuggle.  It’s strange having two 5 month olds at totally different developmental stages living with us.  Yanise weighs 12lbs and Ruth-Nallie weighs 4lbs . . . Yanise is three times the size of sweet little Ruth-Nallie!  Thankfully, Yanise sleeps through the night.  Needless to say, we are looking forward to our week-long vacation to Cancun next month.  Please pray that while we are gone things will stay quiet at COTP, Ruth-Nallie will behave herself, and us being gone won’t put too much strain and stress on Katie, Blake, Maria, and Arlyn.

 

God has moved in both big and little ways this past month and it’s great to reflect back and see what He has done in our lives and in the lives of these beautiful Haitian babies and children.  It is my prayer that our eyes will stay open to the everyday miracles – they are all around us.  Keep your eyes open – you’ll see them too! J

 

Have a great October!!

 

In Christ Alone,

Daryl and Sara Huinink