4.7 x 2

No, not a mathematical equation but a 4.7 magnitude earthquake times 2. Feb 22nd we woke up at 4:30am to one 4.7 quake followed by 2 aftershocks in the next few hours. Feb 23rd we were shaken out of bed at 1:30am by another 4.7 quake quickly followed by an aftershock that felt almost as strong. My good friend Rachel, who is the director of our Hope House Orphanage, managed to put into words exactly what I am feeling. "If this earthquake were a person, I would punch him right between the eyes!". While the fear is not gone, it is mixed with anger at this point. "Enough already" seems to be what many are saying. While the somewhat "small" quakes are not causing major damage like the 7.0 on Jan 12th, they are causing major damage to people's peace and feelings of safety. So many sleep outside even when they have safe homes to sleep in. We don't know what each of these small quakes might be doing to the buildings we sleep in. How many 4.7's can it withstand before it falls? I think often of the people who felt the first quake and then spent hours or even days trapped in a collapsed building. What must it do to them to feel these quakes? I can't even imagine.

Somebody asked me the other day if life was back to normal. I thought about that and realized that life will never be like it was before January 12th. So I guess we have to find the "new normal".

The mission clinic is still as busy as ever. We have medical teams coming in every weekend and spending a week doing surgeries and caring for post-op patients. There are still many people that have had little or no medical care since their injuries on January 12th. Grant is busy every day moving patients around whether it's just from the clinic to the school (where the post-op ward is) or all the way into Port au Prince to one of several hospitals. He is receiving calls from doctors working in hospitals in the city to take critically ill patients in need of emergency surgery and transfer them to other facilities. He is looking forward to having the help of some more of his collegues from Halton EMS in the near future. I am looking forward to him maybe having an entire day off.

We did have a chance to get away for a week thanks to many friends and family that encouraged us to do so and helped finance it so we were able. It was a much-needed time of rest and refreshment and loads of fun, family time. We were even able to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics live on TV. We were watching NBC and at the very start of their programming they showed the video of the new "We are the World" song that has been produced to help Haiti. There was alot of footage of Port au Prince in it along with the Haitian people. When it was over, there was silence in the room until one of the kids said "I want to go home" followed by a chorus of "me too". Never before has our family been ready for a vacation to be over. Haiti and it's people have certainly planted themselves in our hearts and made Haiti home.