Mangine Family Update- February
*** Sorry for the delay in updates. Life has taken a hard and unexpected turn since the January 12th earthquake.***
Friends, family and faithful supporters,
Wow. Where to begin? In less than one minute of time one month ago, our entire lives changed. It’s hard to think about how to compress all this into a page.
I guess I should start by saying that we are so thankful for God’s protection on our family and our organization. You’ve probably all seen the pictures in the news—the fact that we made it through with not only our lives, but with no injuries and our houses standing is a miracle.
The afternoon of the January 12 my whole family and all of our staff were at home. I had come home from working outside the home and was tired so I went upstairs to take a nap. While I was laying there, I heard a noise beginning that sounded like a big truck dumping a load of rocks. Loud noises around here are nothing new so I just disregarded it but then the whole house started shaking. And I jumped up and started running. And by shaking I mean rolling beneath my feet. Rolling such that I could barely walk because it was tossing me over. My first thought was not earthquake. My first thought was that our house was collapsing. That happens sometimes randomly in Haiti—these huge block buildings will collapse due to poor construction. I thought that’s what was happening. And the thought passed through my mind, “I am probably about to die.” I ran outside and down the stairs, trembling with fear. I grabbed my children to me and tried to make sure that we were all accounted for, still not sure what had happened.
It was Nick who first said, “Wow, we had an earthquake.” Up until then it didn’t register. And then when it did, my ears opened to the wails of those around me on the street. I vividly remember making a conscious choice to push the fear aside and clicking my head into go mode. And for the most part, that’s where we’ve lived since.
I could spend time briefing you on all we’ve done, but truthfully, you can follow the day by day chronicled events on my blog: www.mangine.org. You’ve seen the pictures on the news, so to tell you that our city is broken would be redundant also. (Incidentally, we have received quite a bit of media coverage of what’s going on here in Jacmel. My cousin is compiling a bunch of the articles on a blog you can check out here- http://manginehaiti.blogspot.com/) if that interests you.
What I’d like spend the rest of the time telling you about is how we’re doing now—a month later. The truth is, how we’re doing changes from day to day. Actually, sometimes it changes from moment to moment. Our heart grieves for this country we love and now call home. The latest I heard is 212,000 are now confirmed dead. In a country of 7-8 million people, that’s an excruciating number to absorb. Our own little city of Jacmel, we’ve lost nearly 10% of our population. At other times, we’re incredibly inspired and in awe of the spirit of the Haitian people. They are strong and tenacious. They grieve and rebuild at the same time. I’ve never seen anything like it.
From a spiritual perspective, we are in a time where most of us on our team feel pretty spiritually dry. It’s hard to see God here with us at times, but we know he’s there. As you think about us and pray for us in the following days and weeks and months to come, please pray for us. I have spent days on this update trying to think about what to ask you to pray for, but the truth is, I just don’t know. So much is happening that writing out a bullet list of needs just seems like something that would be unending. It seems so daunting, and not something I can wrap my mind around. So please just pray as the spirit leads you to lead for us.
It’s customary for me to close my updates with a thank you for all of the ways you have supported us. As you are probably not surprised to hear, there’s been an increase of financial support coming in through Joy in Hope lately to help us our communities in this disaster. For this, we are so very thankful. However, I am even more grateful to all of you, our regular supporters, who have always been there for us, giving generously and sacrificially from the beginning, in a PRE-earthquake Haiti. Your commitment to us before this tragedy encourages us and helps us believe that there are people who will be in it with us once the story completely disappears from the news.
We love you. We’re thankful for you. We need your support and encouragement, but mostly your prayers.
Love,
Gwenn, for all of us
