enjoying some of the children living in the tent city

Lela & Jimmy (son)

lela on phone with victor

lela with nurse

lela trying to sweet-talk me into going back to ukraine

Mayor, Thomas, Danny

Pastor Dumitru & Thomas

Hello friends. We are doing really well and have enjoyed traveling and visiting through parts of the United States this summer. The 12 passenger van that Harvest Haiti director Tom Schmidt loaned to us was perfect and took us over 7,000 miles without a single problem.

Dear Friends: Thanks so much for praying with us this past week. The tea last Wed-nesday came off very well though with a smaller group than was expected. But we were greatly encouraged by their response. As with others in the past, they were very warm in their welcome. We praise God that our list of contacts is growing and for the open doors which they have given us.

We also visited the YWAM base in Bulawayo 6 hours drive. We were disappointed that we did not meet the base director nor were we able to reach her by phone. We con-cluded that she was attending a regional conference in Mozambique with her hus-band who is the national director. We earnestly look forward to talking and meeting with them soon. This is one of the key organizations here that God has used mightily in the past to get many people on the mission field. We did, however, meet Joel and his wife who are also on staff at the base. They were obviously very discouraged and we were able to encourge and pray with them.

Please continue to pray for clearing of our personal effects which may arrive within the next week. Having a problem with the documentation. Please pray for favor.

Thanks for partnering with us. We are very encouraged and priase God for the oppor-tunity to serve here at this time. Blessings, Dhan & Dolly

Six weeks have passed since my surgery and I am feeling really good. I am back in the office full time and have not experienced any discomfort. Praise the Lord. I am able to drive and am very close to being 100% again. My only restriction (for the next 3 weeks) is that I am still unable to lift more than 5-lbs which means I can’t pick up my grandchildren. That’s the hardest part of this whole ordeal. Thank you for your prayers on Sandra’s and my behalf. We have felt very loved by each of you who have contacted us. God bless you, Danny

Hello friends. We have safely arrived in the US and are staying in the Ocala, Florida area right now. We have a cell phone which we will be using while in the US and the number is: 561.707.1608

Call us anytime, thanks & bye for now,
Rod and Debbie

We're doing well, PTL. Have already met with the leaders of a church in Harare and a pastor and an elder from another church in Banket—about 2 hours away. Very encouraging meetings. We are being told that many are now turning to the Lord and that the country is 'ripe for revival'. Our meetings focus on trying to understand the state and mood of the church and then our vision. The needs are very great and we ask that you pray for listening hearts by us and great wisdom. Our stategy for moving forward will come after we've met with a good number of the pastors/leaders.

Dear All, Praise God, we arrived safely. It was a long but pleasant flight via South African Airways from Washington to Johannesburg. The cabin service was exceptional. Two very nice meals, freshly laundered blankets, good headsets, helpful and friendly attendants all helped to make the long flight a good experience. We changed planes in Johannesburg and arrived in Zimbabwe fifteen minutes before the scheduled time.

All went well on arrival. We were met at Immigration by my sister. The Immigration Officer stamped out passports and instructed us to go to Immigration Headquarters today to have our immigration regularized. At Customs, the officer questioned us and in our response mentioned that we were going to be working with the Church here and he wished us well and waved us on. Today, our passports were taken to Immi-gration Headquarters where they were stamped. We were given until March 2009 at which time we can apply for an extension. This is normal practice here.

Still a little jetlagged, we were up at 2.10 a.m. your time (9.10 am here). My sister took Dhan into downtown Harare so he could get used to the traffic and streets.

This afternoon, we joined the crowd of shoppers who were stocking up for the week-end. At the farm shop, we saw a huge cauliflower (about six pounds). It is good to see that the land is still so fruitful. Tomorrow is the run-off so we will be catching up with some paperwork. Saturday, we look forward to meeting some contacts at a luncheon.

As we flew into Harare last evening, we were aware that we can no longer speak of Zimbabwe in the third person – this is where the Lord has placed us and we are deeply grateful to be a part of what He will be doing here.

During the past months, as we prepared to leave for Zimbabwe, God used many of you to encourage us and to demonstrate His love and faithfulness. Thank you for being part of our team.

God bless you all, Dhan & Dolly

JUNE 16, 2008:
Dhan & Dolly Lalsee Headed To Zimbabwe

Recently, we shared with the delay in receiving the residence permit for Zimbabwe and the pending sale of our home. Since then, we not only received the permit, we have also obtained transit visas from the South African government. Tickets in hand, we are now due to leave on Tuesday June 24th.

Our home is still not sold but both of us, independently of each other, felt the Lord saying to us that we must take the next step of faith by fixing a date for our depar-ture. Praise the Lord, supporting friends and churches in Grenada and Dominica provided most of the money for our fares. We’re still hoping for the sale of our home before long. Our personal effects for shipping to Harare via Durban will be collected on Friday June 20th.

We leave Miami on Tuesday 24th and arrive at Harare, Zimbabwe at 9.10 p.m. (2.10 p.m. EST – Zim is 7 hours ahead) on Wednesday 25th. Track us as we travel and pray with us. Our itinerary is as follows:

This has been quite a journey, and we truly praise the Lord for His gracious provision and the ways in which He has demonstrated His presence and guidance throughout. We are assured that we are on His mission, and learning to trust Him has been an exciting adventure. Yet, a new phase of our lives begins once we reach Zimbabwe and we look forward to what He will be doing there with great anticipation.

Our partnership in this work has taken on deeper meaning during our preparations these past seven months. We are so grateful to God for making you a part of our team and for your faithfulness. You have not only demonstrated your interest in this mission, but also your deep commitment to the Lord and to the extension of His kingdom.

Please join with us in giving thanks to the Lord for His many blessings. Here are some prayer requests:

• For safety in our travel to Zimbabwe
• For the peace of Zimbabwe
• For peaceful run-off Presidential elections on June 27th
• For a reversal of the runaway inflation (over 1 million percent) and dire economic situation
• For favor in our ministry in Zimbabwe.

For the Love of Christ our Savior,
Dhan & Dolly Lalsee

JUNE 1, 2008:
Rod and Debbie Wray—Summer Plans!

We are excited about the youth teams that are planning to come in the next few weeks. We are also really looking forward to the summer. It has worked out that we have been able to get flights to the U.S and we plan to travel and visit from July 16th until August 27th.

Here is a basic schedule, although we are flexible and would love to see as many friends as possible.

We were privileged to participate in a baptismal service a couple Sundays ago. Our home church (the Simon church) held a baptism at Lilet river which is within walking distance from the church and 43 people were baptized. Many people we knew were baptized , including Max's wife (pictured below) and some of the young people from our Haitian youth team, and one of my construction workers.

We are so thankful that Dr. Roberts and his team rescheduled their trip to Haiti. (They had originally planned to come back in April, but were unable to come due to the riots in Haiti) . We had a great week of ministry together with the Dr. Roberts team: passing out and distributing food; medical clinic (Deb took on the role of being chief pharmacist and did a great job!) Tim did some translating for Dr. Jon; construction on the Orphanage for children with Aids.

We continue to work on the laundry room and other projects at the hospital. The tin roof area is for clotheslines where the clothes will be hung to dry and the cement roof area is the actual new laundry room. The new laundry is located on the very top of the hospital and the view is great.

Thanks so much for keeping in touch. We are always encouraged to receive emails. Please let us know if we can visit you sometime this summer during our time in the U.S. Thanks, bye for now,

Love Rod, Deb, Christie, Tim, Kara and Katie

Agape Flights Cay# 18089
100 Airport Ave.
Venice, Fl 34285
509-3479-1788

MAY 16, 2008:
Dr. Jon Roberts Heading Up Medical Team

Dr. Jon Roberts from Mountain View, MO is leading a team to Les Cayes Haiti to parti-cipate in evangelism and medical clinics. The team arrived on Friday morning and spent the night at New Life Children’s Home in Port au Prince. On Saturday morning Rod and Debbie Wray picked them up and drove them to Les Cayes, Haiti to start their week of ministry. On Sunday the team helped out with the Sunday School pro-gram and then distributed food bags of Beans, Rice, and Oil in a small village named Brefet.

On Sunday afternoon everyone went to a baptismal service where 43 people were baptized. It was an amazing baptismal service at a nearby local river. More to come.

APRIL 28, 2008:
Baby Hope Update

Many of you have been praying for Baby Hope for close to a year now. She was left at the Hospital in Les Cayes, Haiti and has been in the care of the Wray’s and the staff at the hospital. As you can see by the picture, Baby Hope has improved and is enjoying a very good quality of life. She is loved by many people and has an unending number of visitors each day. Please continue to pray for Baby Hope as she grows.

APRIL 28, 2008:
Wings Of Faith Team From Ocala, Florida

The other news is that our Wings of Faith team arrived safely in Haiti and is ready to start work. This medical team will be seeing between 800- 1,000 patients over the next 4 days. This team was very excited about going as their trip was an “on again, off again” trip due to some of the problems in Haiti. As you can see, they are overjoyed to be in Les Cayes, Haiti and are ready to get to work.

DECEMBER 3, 2007:
From Betty Daniel, India

Dear Pam, Thank you very much for the mail. What happened to the previous donor who wants to support to India work. Yes, we will admit them in the hospital with this
condition and pay for their operation. Many cases are beyond operation, the doctors manage these cases with medicines. We now conduct Awareness Programmes for this condition to prevent further cases. Some times we are also doing our work on cervical cancer which is devastating mothers in this place. We do a preliminary labor-
atory test to refer them to the hospital. The lower socio-economic group comes to the hospital in a very late stage by which time it metastasizes to other place.

We will be compiling the report by next month. This is the reason why we need a place to buy a place for dispensary so that we will be available for them when they are in need. I have also given the needs of our mission to serve the Lord effectively.

Pam, Pastor Daniel (my husband) lost his mother 3 days back. We took the body to their native place and buried her there. Danny lost 4 people this year, his father, mother, elder brother and his brother in law. Please he is a bit depressed but now getting back.

As we were returning, our car met with an accident, we were waiting for a signal and a sand lorry loaded with sand came very fast and hit us at the back. The lorry's front portion was inside the back portion of the car. Our car hit a two-wheeler in front and 2 people on the 2 wheeler were crushed on to the front van. We could not move the car as the car was pressed against the Lorry. The driver thought all 6 of us died, so he jumped and escaped form the scene. I came out of the car crying JESUS, only that mush I know. Then I shouted for help, people witnessed the entire scene, they came and pushed the lorry back and then Danny drove the car back. The 2 initially we thought were dead on the spot. Just then an ambulance arrived and we shifted both of them to the hospital. Both of them collapsed when they shifted them to the
hospital. We were held up there in that place for more than 5 hours.

We were crying to the Lord saying no one should be dead because of this accident. PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!!!!!!!, after 6 hours the doctors told that there was no major wound on their external and internal organs. IT IS A MIRACLE, all the public said that the LORD WHOM YOU WORSHIP saved them. Jesus We can relax after we heard the news.

We are in need of your prayers. Our regards to all at home Pam.

With much love,
Betty

We hope you are doing well. We just wanted to give you a brief update on baby Hope. The bandage has been removed, as you can see in the photos, however, Dr. Bill's special patch is still in place and there is no drainage from her head.

Baby Hope is being very well cared for. The nurse in the picture is Lindsa, who came to Port au Prince to care for baby Hope. She has really grown attached to Hope and takes very good care of her during her shifts at the hospital. When Lindsa isn't on duty as a nurse, a number of the other nurses, cleaning ladies and sometimes family members of other patients all take turns caring for Hope. She has definitely become the hospital mascot and everybody loves her.

We don't know if her head has shrunk in size, or if she has made any improvements medically speaking. We do know that she is very responsive, doesn't like taking her oral medicine, and loves to be held and visited. Her mouth is really filling up with teeth now, and she is a strong little girl.

Deb and I are providing diapers and milk powder, / baby food, and the hospital is allowing her to stay.

Have a great weekend, Rod and Debbie

When we arrived at the hospital this morning Baby Hope was lying in her crib con-tent to watch all the movement around her.

We were able to talk with the PA that is coordinating the surgeries.  She ex-plained that they did not put a shunt in Baby Hope’s head but did a procedure called ETV or Endoscopic Third Ventriculostomy.  According to the PA Baby Hope was one of the fortunate ones that had a doctor with the skills to perform this procedure.  Her thoughts, it was better to have this procedure instead of having a foreign device installed in the body.  Before we left, Baby Hope had fallen asleep and was sleeping peacefully.  Sandy sat with the baby while Cullie and Fredo took Chivanne for a walk to buy soap and shampoo a block or two from the hospital.  We do know that Chivanne and Baby Hope may be moved to the Healing Hands guest house in Petionville since the hospital is short on space for the hydrocephalic babies.  Chivanne did say she thought Hope’s head felt lighter and we could see her eyes looked more natural, not as much pressure.

We have a tropical depression passing over Hispaniola today so Cullie went on the motorcycle to check on Baby Hope so he could get through traffic.  Just before he arrived Baby Hope was brought back to her bed after successful surgery.  Cullie talked with the PR woman with Project Medishare and she said from all she knew Baby Hope’s operation went very smooth. Cullie talked with Chivanne making sure everything was going well.  She said everything was fine and she was content.  Baby Hope slept the whole time Cullie was at the hospital.

Knowing the bad weather was coming he headed back home.  When Cullie got to the foot of the mountain heading home he was glad he was on the motor-cycle, he may have gotten wet but he did not get stuck on the road because of all the traffic.  God is good and we thank Him for His hand of protection.

To bring you up to date with what is happening.  Thursday morning we went to locate Healing Hands for Haiti so we would know where we were going the next day and we would be on time.  After finding Healing Hands we were able to talk with Jony.  He filled us in on the necessary information of where and when the operation would be performed and gave us contact information for the American missionary who was the interim caregiver until Baby Hope was taken to the hospital.   (The temporary care taker of Baby Hope lives within eyesight of where we used to live off of Delmas 75.)  Our neighbor Fredo, a Christian young man, introduced us to a Christian young woman named Chivanne, about 25 years old, who has been part way through nursing school.

(Note: The original article is below---October 4, 2007)

Helping to move things out of the Bernice Johnson center:

When he picked it up, he discovered an abandonned baby inside. The little 6 or 8 month old baby girl has a serious problem.   Her head has filled with liquid and expanded to where it is twice the size it normally should be.  We have no infor-mation as to what the baby's name is, or who her mother is.

Although the baby's mother is not here, many of the ladies who are taking care of other patients at the hospital are taking turns caring for the new baby.