This weeks running schedule has me running a total 13 miles, not all at once mind you but crazy to think that in just 14 weeks I will be running a half marathon for Haiti! I am hoping to have the donations button working on my sidebar this week. I am also hoping that some of you were able to check out some information about
Heartline!
We’ve had a lot of babies born in our program since the start of 2012. Nurse/midwives like Melissa and Sarah, volunteer midwives, and Jen our pediatrician give their abilities and time to be the guardians of safe birth. Why? Why would professionals split their time and energy to spend months at a time here? Because they know it makes a difference. Birth can change everything.
We don’t just birth babies. We birth women. Women who spend over a year in our program and receive the gospel, learn how to exclusively breast feed and keep their babies close, women who learn to child space so they are not giving away babies that they can’t afford. Women who will hopefully have a skill, make money, send their kids to school.
Our maternity program is thug prevention. Agathe, our Haitian co-worker, teaches moms on how to raise their sons! She teaches them how to promote respect for women, respect for others, she teaches them how to model these qualities for their children. She does it by word and example. Always with a baby at her breast Agathe promotes mother/baby bonding and security.
A bonded child who is well loved and knows how to give love back is less likely to shoot others. A child who is not raised in an overcrowded house with not enough to eat is less likely to steal. A child going to school will be doing homework rather than robbery.
That’s why we stay up for a few days at a time helping women through birth. Birth is a tiny fraction of what our program is all about. It’s the prenatal care, the child development classes and the teaching that make the difference. Safe birth is only a day, albeit an important one, in that journey.
We’ve had a lot of boys this month. Boys who have a better chance at being well bonded, secure, well fed, educated and be successful contributors to their country. As I look at Harbor House and see successful teen moms I see that most times providing a map is all a woman needs. She can make the journey, she will take the right routes, all she needed was a guide.
A relationship with Christ, an empowered education on life skills, a chance to make a living can result in a healthy family. We teach women to choose men who will love and stay with their family. They can teach their boys to be those men someday. Save the families, save the country.
(*If you check out their blog you can see a picture of the women with their babies)
The passion that they have for the women and children of Haiti is driving me to run this marathon! Thank you Lord for transforming me and teaching me to be more like YOU!
As average as I am I am trying to grow and have faith in what I am called to do!
BE BLESSED!!!
I am running for 
(*Me feeding one of the babies when I was in Haiti in April)