News from Haiti

News from Haiti:

I'm posting news from an American family in Haiti close to my heart. Shelley and Byron Tlucek are missionaries to Haiti with their seven children. Shelley and Byron were in the US during the earthquake, but their five youngest children were in Haiti. Praise God their family, the other missionary families they work with, and the Haitian women and orphans they care for have survived. God continues to provide for their needs with food and shelter (Shelley reports their pantry and freezer were full before the earthquake hit, and 40+ people have been able to be sustained the past few days from those provisions).

Four of their five children in Haiti are currently at the US embassy awaiting evacuation, if possible. Their youngest daughter, Isabelle, age 3, is staying with close friend in Haiti. They do not yet have a passport for her to be able to leave Haiti. Shelley and Byron are in Florida trying to get a flight back to Haiti.

http://www.heartlineministires.org/

UPDATE FROM SHELLEY:

Byron believes that our children need to be evacuated, if at all possible. I confess to being resistant to this. Bodies are literally lining the streets, covered in sheets, many of them identified - but not all of them. As you know it is very warm in Haiti. This is a very bad combination, which will be made much worse if it begins to rain. The potential for spreading disease increases exponentially at this point. So, against my strongest desire, I am asking that you pray the embassy permits my children to be evacuated with Kelly Tobin.

FURTHER......please pray they issue an emergency visa so that Belle can fly with them. We do not have her passport as it was just turned into the Ministry of Immigration for the receipt of her new passport with our name. We have nothing. We are trying to work with the embassy - and have not been able to speak with a "real person" as of this moment.

JUST LEARNED that our tickets have been cancelled again. We do not know what to do.Isabelle is the biggest, BIGGEST piece of this very difficult puzzle. We cannot leave her. Oh, dear God, please do not make us leave her by herself.

At present we have run out of options - ONLY GOD CAN PROVIDE ANSWERS, DIRECTION, A CLEAR PATH.

We really need a clear path.

News on the home front:

While there was great seismic activity in Haiti, there was some smaller activity going on in my body.

I spent Monday horribly sick and returned to work my first night of three in a row cramping, of all things. I assumed it was dehydration, but after the cramping continued and worsened over three nights, I had some tests ran. It's looking like I have a small bladder infection causing all these problems, and a good course of antibiotics should return everything to normal.

The peanut is angry about all the seismic activity going on at home, but fine. In fact, when I tried to monitor the heartbeat for a minute at work, the peanut kicked the monitor violently. Twice. This child is going to give us a run for our money.

And yes, we have still not closed on our house. The underwriters are responsible for the continued hold-ups. We have no idea when we'll be able to get into our new home, but the good news is our loan officer is so frustrated by the underwriters that she lowered our interest rate again. We've decided that maybe all this waiting isn't such a bad thing.

In all these things, I continue to be grateful that God is in perfect control.