The past few days have been absolutely packed! This past Saturday was our Elder Christmas Party, planned and hosted by Marni and her wonderful team. 30 of our 35 elders from Titanyen were in attendance, 1 was out of town, and 4 were bed-bound but were visited individually.

Thanks to generous donations, each elder was served a delicious hot meal, either chicken or goat, served by Fleri Resto. We had live music and a time of fellowship and of course Christmas presents! Some of the favorites were the tarps, sunglasses and monkey bread!

Sunday was church, a baking party hosted by the Bjorkland family, and an EKS meeting, where we celebrated a wedding coming up this week. Monday, I met the EKS group to do a service project of weeding and cleaning the yard around the church.

But, of all those wonderful things, today was my favorite. Today I got a glimpse into what will be Hope Clinic. Since Healing Haiti expanded their elder care program into Cite Soleil, we have focused on food distribution, but we have now officially expanded our sponsorships to include medical care.

The clinic in Cite Soleil isn’t ready yet, but a doctor has been hired and has been training in at our clinic here in Titanyen. Today I got to accompany Dr Longor to Hope Church in Cite Soleil, where he performed individual exams on 10 of our 12 Cite Soleil elders in the pastors’ office.

The excitement was palpable, and even the pastors and a couple of other staff had their blood pressure checked just because they could. There was something beautiful in witnessing the sweet elderly saints learning how to take deep breaths for the doctor. It may be the first time in years, if ever, that these individuals have received medical care. The doctor had to help a couple of the ladies by giving them a piece of paper to blow on. If they could move the paper with their breath, they were doing it right.

We discovered many things: cases of hypertension, infections that need treatment and cataracts. But, for the first time, we can move beyond identifying the problems and start treating our elders to improve their quality of life. Tomorrow, we will get some prescriptions filled!