This is the story of Francois and his family...

[All italics are copied from my dear friend, Aaron Bruner's, blog that he wrote on Francois a few days ago].

One of the most profound moments of this trip for me was the story of Francois and his family. Let me take you back to Monday night. January 25, 2010.

We came home from after a long day of working in Haiti. When we got back to the orphanage in Jimani, Sara Choe and Sarah D. started making tons of hot chocolate for this church that Ashley and Aaron had visited a few days prior. We wanted to bless them with some comforting warm drinks.

So Jacob, Sara, Sarah, Aaron and I went to Bethel church around 8pm or so.

I remember walking inside the church and seeing refugees laying on mattresses taking up the entire church. Most had their legs and arms in casts, wounds and bandages. They all just laid there while the pastor was preaching.

We set ourselves up in the corner waiting to serve them hot chocolate after the service.

While waiting, I decided to go with Aaron to walk around the grounds by the church. Here there were refugees and families living in tents and on park benches pulled together with sheets draped over them.

This is when we met Francois...

He appeared to be a strong man with gentle speech as he approached me.  We had traveled to this site bringing hot chocolate to the families and the victims of the tragic earthquake that had paralyzed this nation.  Our hope is that they would feel the sense of home even though they now resided in a foreign land.   Francois asked what we were doing there and I had the opportunity to share why God had led us there.  He expressed his thanks to the many people who had flown in from the outside out of the goodness of their hearts to love and comfort his people.  He proceeded to inform me of his current situation.

Just two weeks earlier, Francois was in his house in Port-au-Prince.  He and his wife, Elina, lived in a 5-story building near the center of town.  As he was working on the bottom floor, the earth began to shake and suddenly, the building collapsed.  Five floors came crashing down on top of him.  At this time, his pregnant wife had been in their home on the fifth floor and fell straight through the floor landing a few feet from where he stood.  Instinctively, Francois leapt across the moving floor to sprawl himself over his wife for protection.  It was the only thing that he could do.  Thirty seconds later, the ground stopped and chaos ensued all around them.  People were desperately searching for their families and injuries and death increased exponentially as the Haitians began to recover from the trembling.  Francois arose from being the protective blanket over his wife to find out that she had begun contracting.  She was nine months pregnant.

For five days, his wife experienced tremendous pain as they fled for the Jimani border, hours away from their home.  "How was she going to survive?" he would ask.  "Who will help us?"

Arriving at the border, Francois began asking questions.  Medical teams swarmed the mobs of people pouring through the lines and they quickly assisted Francois and his wife.  She went into labor and he waited to find out whether or not he would be widowed or if he would have a new addition to his family.  He sat praying and asking the Lord for his sweet mercy.  Moments later, news arrived that she had given birth to a baby girl whom they would call Francelina.  Overcome with joy that his family had survived this tragedy, the only thing Francois could mutter was "God saved my family".  And it's true.  Only a divine creator concerned with the intimate details of his children could provide a solution to something so seemingly impossible.  
 
When we met Francois and his family, Francelina was only ten days old. I have never held a baby this young before! I don't ever hold babies. So this was very exciting for me. It was all so surreal hearing their story, holding their baby in their "home" which was a tent with a mattress and a backpack that was sitting in the corner. This was their life as of that moment. There was a young kid and an older man, perhaps the father, laying right next to Francois' tent. They both had broken arms. It was all just so surreal to comprehend that each of their lives have forever been changed within a matter of seconds. And this is where they are now...
  

At this church/hospital, the clinic was understaffed, there were language barriers, and there was a shortage of medical supplies.  One of these was baby milk/formula.  Three other families had newborn babies at this clinic but the milk had run out that morning and it was now 10pm.  The need was great considering the babies had not eaten since that morning.  His wife could not feed their child because she was unable to produce milk.  It all seemed so eerily similar to the story of baby Moses.  I had to act.  I could not bear to see another family suffer the loss of a child like that.  So I left with Sarah to find our Dominican driver.

We tore through the streets with reckless abandon as we interceded and begged God to provide an open store or pharmacy with the supplies we needed.  We arrived at a local store whose supplies I'm sure were drastically decreased than what they had before hundreds of Haitians had poured in through the border.  But we asked anyway.  Sure enough, they had just one box of 12 bottles.  This I imagine could last the three families for a little over two days.  It was not enough so we continued.  I had visited a pharmacy before asking for phone credit, so we headed there.  As we charged up the stairs, I kept thinking about Moses and Francelina.  I was overcome with anguish for both families.  My Spanish rattled off of my tongue with astounding fluidity as I communicated our needs.  God was definitely in that considering their dialect is strikingly different from Mexican Spanish.  The woman behind the counter smiled and placed three palettes of twelve bottles each atop the counter.  Praise God!  We paid and made our way back to the compound in hopes of arriving before the gates closed.  We made it.  I ran over to Francois and informed him of the news.  A strong but gentle man sank into a deep sigh of relief with tears welling up in his eyes.  The only thing he could do was thank us and thank God for saving his family.  We were able to capture his story on video with Steph's camera along with many other stories.  The WR marketing team is working diligently in sharing their stories.
 What is really funny and "ironic" about this story is that earlier that evening Aaron and I had gone to the store to buy more minutes for our phone when Sara Choe and Sarah D. were making the hot chocolate. We walked to the first little stand right down the road in which they were out of minutes. They pointed us in the direction of another little shop. We went there and no luck. This happened about 5 times before we finally came to this pharmacy at the top of the building, which ended up being the same pharmacy that Aaron found the milk for the babies at. Had the first store had the minutes for our phone, we would have never went to that last pharmacy and Aaron would have never thought to go to that pharmacy to get the milk because he would have never known it existed! So while we thought it to be a nuisance at the time of looking for minutes, it ended up being a vital role in the mission of the baby formula later that night. Besides, at the top of the stairs when you enter the pharmacy, there was a HUGE picture of Jesus hanging on the wall which I pointed out to Aaron when we went there to get the minutes for the phone. Funny how God knew all along...Awesome how HE works!