Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

The following photos are from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
**Please click photos to enlarge**

YWAM's Refugee Camp: Saint Marc, Haiti

Here are a few photos of the make-shift refugee camp at the YWAM base in Saint Marc. There were 56 people there. The YWAM base is preparing for up to 8,000 refugees.
**Please click photo to enlarge**

Saint Marc, Haiti

I went for a walk down the road the last day we were in Haiti and the kids wanted to take pictures...a lot of them!
**Please click photos to enlarge**

BENNIFIT CONCERT & RADIO INTERVIEW

Hello Friends!

I will be speaking at Sally Loo's Cafe (http://sallyloos.com/) in San Luis Obispo, California, on Friday, January 29th from 4:00 PM-10:00 PM. There will be various different bands playing, such as, Adam Pasion, Amy Williams, Crooked Wheel, Sierra Chavez, Matt Cross and many more throughout the evening! There is a $5 suggested donation. Kids under 12 are FREE!

-ALSO-

Sometime soon (I'm not entirely sure when), I am being interviewed by WTIP Radio in Grand Marais, Minnesota. I will be talking about my outreach to Haiti to help in the earthquake relief efforts. You can tune in and listen online at: www.wtip.org
I will email you and let you know the date and time of when it will be aired, so be checking frequently for updates!

Thank you,

Tyler Dean
http://tylerdean.blogspot.com
tyleredean@yahoo.com
(218).370.2078

HAITI UPDATE:

Hello from Haiti,

It was rather nice to not wake up to an earthquake this morning...unlike yesterday morning. Today wasn't exactly a very physical day until the very end but was crutial to helping the Haitians in need. I was making ID Cards and registering hundreds of refugees that are evacuating Port Au Prince. I did that from 7:30-3:30. During the few slow periods of time, we went over and played games with the kids (orphans) who were in our refugee camp at the YWAM Base and just loved on them. I really love Haitians! They're beautiful people.

After we finished making ID Cards, we walked a mile down the road to the abandoned hospital to see how it was looking. It is now completely gutted out, sanatized, painted and almost done with putting electric into it. When we arrived, there was a slight riot going on. There was one man who was telling Terry (YWAM's National Director of Haiti) that he owned the building but he obviously didn't. In the large circle of chaos, the locals were getting very frusterated with this man and he eventually ran off. Terry talked to the Haitian's and they all started cheering and clapping because they know that what we are doing is going to help the community greatly. Praise the Lord! After we walked the mile back to the YWAM Base, we arrived and there was a small semi filled with beans and rice to feed all of the refugees so we carried bag after bag after bag of rice and beans into the storage space. It got quite heavy after a while of carrying.

Tomorrow morning, we are leaving to the Dominican Republic at 5:00 AM to catch our Saturday flight back to California. Please be praying for safe travels, sleep and ease crossing back over the border into the DR.

When I return home to California, be checking my blog (www.tylerdean.blogspot.com) for pictures and many stories of the outreach.

Thank you all for your continual prayers, support and encouragement. It is so great, so thank you!!!!!

Blessings,
Tyler Dean
tyleredean@yahoo.com

HAITI UPDATE: A Rude Awakening!

Good Evening,

I have absolutely no idea where to start...there are so many stories....

This morning at 6:03 AM, we had a wake-up call...it wasn't from my alarm clock. I found myself jumping out of bed, sprinting down the cement stairwell with 30+ other people trying to get outside while the building was swaying. There was an earthquake...aftershock...call it what you want. It was intense.

It was horrible to hear the poeple in the refugee camp screaming at the top of their lungs during and after the earthquake. Some of the injured people that should NOT even be standing up, were trying to run. They were absolutely terrified of another quake. Please be praying for them.

After everything settled down, we had a great time of worship and prayer for each other then started our work day. We continued to clean the hospital down the road. Its becoming very nice. They have bumped the number of refugees (injured) up to 8,000 to come up here to St. Marc. The UN, Haitian Police and possibly US Military will be providing us security for everything.

We also worked at moving the refugees from the YWAM Base's arena to a different location to preparing the arena for doctors, YWAM teams, etc. To make a very, very long story short, the place we were supposed to take the refugees fell through and so we are still housing and caring for them. They are happy to still be here because they know they are safe here and well cared for.

Tomorrow, please be praying for us as we start receiving bus loads of refugees, teams, doctors, etc. I am signing off for tonight due to tiredness. Thank you all so much!

Blessings,

Tyler Dean
tyleredean@yahoo.com

HAITI UPDATE: January 19, 2010

Hello folks,

Just to warn you, this is going to be a quick update because I am exhausted and I've tried to type this 4 times but the power keeps going out...anyways....

This morning, we woke up at 6:00 AM to start our day. I spent the morning a mile down the road at the abandoned hospital washing it out and sanitzing it to get it ready for the refugee camp. We are preparing for 2,000-3,000 people who are wounded, to be arriving in St. Marc at the hospital we are cleaning and two local schools. Relief aid personel will be staying at the YWAM Base here in St. Marc, too.

After lunch, I worked at the refugee camp that is here at the YWAM Base, doing medical work. I've never done anything quite like that. It was intense. We worked with quite severe abrasions, burns, head trama, broken bones, etc.

Here is a quick story from a kid who is at the refugee camp here at the YWAM Base. He was found dead underneath a fallen building. They put him in a coffin and took him to the morgue. While the doctor was going through the morgue, he heard pounding and opened the door and the child was alive! He has severe head injuries (and more).

That's all for today. Time for bed. Thank you for your continual prayers!

In Christ,

Tyler Dean
tyleredean@yahoo.com

HAITI UPDATE

Hello friends & family,

This morning, we woke up at 1:00 AM to leave to the border of Haiti. We arrived around 8:00 and passed within 5 minutes. They didn't even stamp our passports or anything. Thank you so much for your prayers!

Two and a half hours later, we arrived in Port Au Prince, where the earthquake did by far the most damage. We had police escorts on the front and back of us from the border all the way into the capitol city. They escorted us into the city's main police station across the street from the presidents palace, which was totally smashed to the ground. I don't really know how to describe what it looked like inside the city streets of Port Au Prince...it was what I would imagine a war zone to be like. Buildings were totally flattened...cars crushed, cement on the streets and poeple wondering everywhere, looking for hope. I heard we didn't even see the worst part(s) of the city, either.

After going to the police station, we departed up to Saint Marc, where YWAM Haiti is located. We will now be staying with them until Friday. We will be VERY busy here and working long days. We don't plan on going into Port Au Prince too much, if at all anymore due to the dangers in the city and the needs here in St. Marc.

Everyone from Port Au Prince is evacuating and going north, up to St. Marc. The YWAM base has a field on the side of the building which is now turning into a refugee camp. Anytime now, we will be getting tons more people. We are racing against time to set up an old abandond building the government is letting the YWAM base set up into a refugee camp and a make-shift hospital. There is also a school on the northeast side of St. Marc where we will be turning into a camp, too, along with our YWAM base here in St. Marc.

There are thousands upon thousands injured and needing medical help and food. Please keep these people in your prayers. Also be praying for us, to share Christ's love with them and to help them in any ways possible.

Thank you all so much for your prayers. We apprecaite them greatly and need them!

Love you all!

Tyler Dean
tyleredean@yahoo.com

HAITI UPDATE: The First 48 Hours

Hello from the Dominican Republic. Our journey began on Friday, January 15th. We left Pismo Beach at 7:45 PM to go to Los Angeles. We stopped in Santa Barbara to pick up more medical supplies from Pacific Rescue. After a long drive, we arrived at YWAM Los Angeles at 12:30 AM.

Before we knew it, we were awake at 3:30 AM to catch our flight to Chicago, then to Miami and finally to the Dominican Republic (DR). Our flight was delayed one hour from Miami to the DR so we arrived on the Carribean island around 12:50 AM. We breezed straight through customs and found our van driver from YWAM Dominican Republic.

After an hour drive back to the YWAM base, we arrived around 2:15 AM and helped load a van with medical supplies and water that departed at 3:00 AM. Due to arriving late into the DR, we couldn't go into Haiti that morning. After a very long day, we were finally able to sleep...at 2:45 AM.

This morning (Sunday, January 17th), we woke up early to talk over our plan of action. It has ended up good good that we did not leave to Haiti very early this morning. We were able to set up more of a game plan on how to get into Haiti and how to get out on Friday, to catch our Saturday flight back to California.

We will be departing to Haiti at 2:30 AM (In roughly 7 hours). We have a 54 passenger bus that we will be taking to the border of Haiti. We are riding with a team from Pennsylvania. There will be 25 people on the bus with us. We will be packing up the bus with our medical supplies along with 10 cases of water that we purchased today.

From the border, YWAM Haiti will pick us up. Please be praying for safety crossing the border and for safe and smooth travels to Port Au Prince and to the city of Montrouis, where we will be living. It will be at least a 7 hour bus ride tomorrow...not including however long the border crossing takes.

Thank you all for your support and continual prayers. Your prayers are GREATLY appreciated. I will update you as I can throughout this week. Once again, thank you so much for all of your encouragement, support and prayers!

Love,
-Tyler Dean

Another story from the field in Haiti....

Here is another story from Philip in Haiti.



What a crazy couple of days. We received word that Samaritan’s Purse would be setting up a staging area at the mission compound where our other eye clinic is being established. So we spent the morning planning what we needed to do in the next week and then went to the compound about half way to Port Au Prince to see if Samaritan’s Purse had arrived. We still have little to no cell phone service which makes things so much more complicated. We found out that a group of the inmates that escaped when the prison wall collapsed was hijacking vehicles in that area and that Samaritan’s Purse was not there. Due to issues with communication, we do not know when they will get there. Our plan is to partner with them and be involved in their water treatment program and distributions and medical clinics.

Right now Port Au Prince has not been secured enough to let most humanitarian aid teams in. The UN is working but there are still so many dead bodies and everyone is still sleeping in the streets. The situation is extremely desperate and thousands of people that lost everything in their collapsed homes are trying to escape the city and go stay with loved ones and friends in the outlying provinces. We are working on getting a food distribution system in place to meet the needs of the refugees and the families that are receiving them. We want to be able to provide food as well as clothing and clean water. Most of the people we have become friends with have taken in family members and are trying to help them deal with the trauma and fear from their experience in the quake. We want to be able to meet their physical needs but also the emotional and spiritual trauma from such a devastating event. The people are so traumatized from the event itself that they have not even really begun the process of mourning for their lost loved ones. Pray God will give us the chance to minister mercy and grace to as many as possible.

We sent a search party consisting of a big truck with 3 motorcycles on back into the city again this afternoon to look for Dago- one of our close friends’- brother and for Julie Wirries. We praise the Lord that just after the team reached the city we received word that Julie’s son had already received communication that Julie was safe. PRAISE the Lord! We do not know anything more than that at the moment.
We had a prayer time with Dago and the team as we were sending them out and it really was a sweet time as God met with us and they saw how much we loved them and were concerned for their safety.

I will let everyone know how things develop. We will be working north of Port Au Prince until we see the opportunity to partner with some groups establishing sites of ministry once the city is secured in the next day or two. Once most of the bodies have been removed and the houses that are still livable are reoccupied, things will be much easier. Then the long and arduous process of rebuilding and dealing with the homeless and hungry and sick begins. The airborn diseases and contaminated water supplies are a definite concern.

There are constantly bodies being brought through our area in open trucks being taken to morgues and graves north of the city. Every passing body is a reminder of the extent of the event. We would love to set up a food and clothes distribution center here in Montrouis. As food and fuel becomes more scarce, the prices are going to continue to rise and make it even harder for the average Haitian to support their normal household, much less the extra people they are bringing in.

Please pray for the people of Haiti. They are so afraid right now and hurting. We hate it. To see people you love so desperate is heart wrenching. We still don’t have cell service to call our family and internet is limited but know we love you and miss you and praise God you are alive and safe there. Seeing so many people lose children and parents and siblings helps us have a new perspective of how blessed we really are. Mom and Dad and Megan and Luke we miss you. We love you. We wish you were here to help us. Know we will be careful and yet not shy away from the opportunity to go wherever God leads us.


Blessings,

Philip Causey

URGENT: HAITI OUTREACH UPDATE....

Hello Friends,

This is the latest update on my Haiti Outreach...as of 7:02 PM, Wednesday, January 14, 2010.

I am driving down to Los Angeles tomorrow evening and flying to the Dominican Republic on Saturday. From there, I will be taking a bus to Haiti to help in the earthquake relief efforts. Would you please pray about helping me financially to help the people in Haiti. You can give online at: http://www.ywampismobeach.org/donate.html

You can also give by mail. Here’s how….
Write a check made out to YWAM.
Enclose a note indicating it is for Tyler Dean’s Haiti Outreach.
Mail To:
YWAM Pismo Beach
791 Price St. #119
Pismo Beach, CA 93449

I will be giving updates as I can. Please be praying for myself and my teammates and for the Haitians for safety, guidance and the Lord’s will to be done while we are down there.

Thank you and God Bless,

-Tyler Dean
tyleredean@yahoo.com

URGENT: Help me go to Haiti!

Hello friends & family,

I am going to Haiti on Sunday night to help with the earthquake relieve effort. Would you please pray about helping me financially to go and help the people of Haiti.

You can give online at:

http://www.ywampismobeach.org/donate.html

You can also donate by sending a check made out to YWAM to:

YWAM Pismo Beach
791 Price St. #119
Pismo Beach, CA 93449

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
Thank you,
-Tyler Dean

Earthquake in Haiti.

Philip Causey did a DTS here with YWAM Pismo Beach last year and is now a missionary in Haiti. Here is a story from him after the earthquake that hit a few days ago.
(In the photo above, Philip is on an outreach in India during 2009. Click photo to enlarge.)



Shaken In More Ways Than One

Some people that work on our campus here in Montrouis live in Port Au Prince, in the area that was the hardest hit by the earthquake. Without cell phone communication after the quake, they were not able to get through to their families and only could listen to local radio talk about the thousands of homes that had collapsed. We could only spend the night in prayer and prepare to take them to search for their families first thing this morning.

As we made our way to Port Au Prince, it was clear that we were in for a tough day. We were able to get through streets strewn with debris and power lines. Every hospital had closed gates and thousands of wounded and dying on the sidewalk outside. We stopped in at one hospital to search for our friend’s wife. While we were there, we started treating people with non-life threatening wounds...digging chunks of cement out of gaping wounds, cleaning head wounds, etc. Kerry had one girl that a mom begged him to go and check on. When he got there, she was completely covered with a sheet. When Kerry pulled the sheet back, he was sure she was dead. Covered in flies with a gaping head wound, disfigured face, Kerry was able to find a weak pulse and get her to respond. She is 19 years old. He got her some water and tried to see if there was anything he could do but he had to just tell the family how to care for her as she waited to see if the hospital would open. Kerry prayed for her and her family and left broken hearted.

We picked up a 12 year old boy that some friends and his parents were carrying down the road on a door as a stretcher. They needed a ride to the hospital. While in the back of the truck, we tried to help him but he had a major head injury and a crushed shoulder. I was so broken as I weeped over the little guy. I felt so burdened that we had to talk to him about his faith before he died. We got down on our knees as he looked at us through swollen eyes. He gave a testimony of loving Jesus and believing that God was waiting for him if he was to die. We prayed and wept with him. We dropped him off at the hospital and left not knowing his fate. Keep him in your prayers. On the way back home, all I could do is cry...just seeing all of those dead bodies just tore me up inside. All I could think about was, "I hope they know Jesus." When we got home, I worshiped and praised God for everything. I fell asleep for about 20 minutes and got woken up by another aftershock.

Those are just a few of the people God sent our way today but we feel overwhelmed yet grateful that God is letting us be a small glimmer of light in such a dark time. I have never seen a war zone but I would have to suspect it looks similar. We could not count the dead bodies in the streets and on the sidewalks. Everyone is afraid to go back into the buildings so they all have sheet tents built in the streets. One of our good friends that barely escaped before his house fell, spent the night standing in a parking lot with over 2,000 other people praying God would let them see one more day.

Just keep us in your prayers. On top of everything else, we have some type of sickness that everyone is getting here. Logan, Joy, Shelly, Pastor Rick, Caleb, and Bob have all been very sick with fever and intestinal problems. Joy and Logan are still in the bed.

We know God is good all the time, and he is in control! We will try to keep you updated as internet is available.

Blessings,
Philip Causey



Philip works with the Reeves family in Haiti. Feel free to visit their website at:
http://newvisionhaiti.blogspot.com/