Saturday August 6th Update 2

       Well it’s been awhile since I’ve written an article because I haven’t been a part of a normal shift for the last several weeks. As of yesterday I will be part of a shift again for at least the next two weeks.  I’m sure most if not all of you know that our numbers in the CTC have been getting lower and as of right now we don’t have any patients at all. We had a few on Tuesday that were getting well quick so we discharged them early Wed. morning so they could get home before the rain came from Hurricane Emily. We had a lot of preparation to do before we got the 20+ inches of rain that was predicted for our area as well as the 50-60 mph winds. One of the things that we had to do was take down all of the plastic that separates the CTC from everything else. The plastic had been nailed to posts that were spaced about every 8 feet. Once we tore down all of the plastic we took it inside to one of the empty rooms and then we also had to bring in all of the buckets, civets, totes, etc. Steve and I also put plastic up on the windows that go into the nurse’s room to keep the rain from blowing in onto our supplies. I also hauled in about 7 loads of gravel with the gator on Wed so the place wouldn’t be swimming in mud when the rain hit. 

       We spent the day yesterday just kinda waiting around for what was suppose to happen to actually happen. I was sitting in the hammock gently rocking in the breeze for a while as I watched the clouds come in over the mountain with lightning and a little thunder. As time went on I could feel the breeze pick up and before long the rain started to fall. It went from a nice little drizzle to a downpour that came down blowing sideways. It wasn’t long before I had to go inside because the rain was starting to get me wet on the porch. It only rained enough to drop a couple of inches and then we got news that the storm had lost strength and wasn’t gonna hit us dead on as previously forecasted. With the amount of preparation we did and with how little rain we got it almost seemed like our efforts were in vain but I know that it’s better to be safe than sorry. I spent pretty much the entire day today (friday) getting the CTC rearranged back to normal. It took awhile to put the plastic back up because it was well over 100 feet of plastic but I was able to get it up without any problems. If you look at the picture you can see that I'm putting plastic around the entry door to the CTC from the mission compound. Also if you look in the background of the picture you can see the tarped off windows on the CTC that needed to be taken down as well.

       Thanks again for all of your prayers and please do continue to pray for us and for the Haitians.

                                                                                                            ~Jared Stump