Would you save a baby’s life if you could? Absolutely you would, it wouldn’t matter the color of his skin, or what nationality, we all would save a baby’s life if given the chance.

We were assembled in the Small Roi, Haiti Adventist Church to tell the community about renaming our school to The Saloman Childers School.

The school was being named for Ivy Saloman, who is the founder of Christian Flights International and known by many as the Mother Teresa of Haiti, and my good pal Bill Childers, who is in heaven now continuing on God’s mission and while here was instrumental in helping us establish our Pre School in Roi.

In attendance were many families, state school authorities, as well as community leaders all agreeing with our decision with the new name of the school.

To me our main reasons for the meeting were to discuss with the local community our continuing plans to start accepting young fellows with physical limitations in our Saloman Childers Pre School.

It has been hard for me to make the local community and others understand that I hadn’t come there as an evangelist as most people do.

I came to help the kids. I am a Christian, I tell them, and a believer, but their little fellows are the reason I was there, on a mission I think the Lord sent me there to do.

I think if my work plays a part in a handicapped child living, what an awesome reward. I thank the Lord for allowing me the opportunity.

As I sit here writing this it’s hard to imagine a child living because of our efforts, but they will, which is pretty exciting to me.

I have made many decisions in my life, many not according to the Bible’s principles and directions.

My prayer is that the Lord continues to give us the ability and knowledge to make the right decisions and continue following the mission He has placed us on.

That Sunday as I sat in that small Adventist church along with Brenda Cooper and Connie Bradshaw, two absolutely devoted missionaries, also present was Francios Filogene, the Haiti District Elementary School coordinator talking with the parents of those little kids.

Some were weeks-old babies, many you could tell were sick and malnourished, all looking lethargic never smiling. I felt depressed at the number of children with problems other than being physically challenged.

We had sent the message into the local area and hills with the information we were going to meet, talk and plan the near future of children who couldn’t walk.

Many loving parents who had babies who couldn’t walk had shown up.

I, like you, am accustomed to seeing almost any medical problem a child may experience, treated and the child helped. I saw on a television program a few days ago where almost one half million dollars was spent on a little fellow that kept him alive which was a miracle, the medical professionals stated.

Cost is not an issue here in our country. But in Haiti, a little fellow there has a slim chance of becoming a teenager if he has a permanent physical or mental problem, if they live at all.

Babies with a physical or mental problem in Haiti just don’t make it without intervention, they die.

We interviewed on two occasions all the parents who had brought their children there. I can’t explain how heart wrenching those hours were, seeing all those little hurting fellows and their mothers or grandmothers, knowing we were not going to be able to help but a few of them.

Seeing those parents with tears in their eyes when turned away was tough. I felt horrible, thinking if I had these babies at home they would be OK, but we were not at home - we were in the mountains of Haiti.

After all the people had left the church we sat there stunned and took time to regroup. A person has to. I turned and looked at Brenda and Connie and could see in their eyes they were hurting also.

I began to think I’ve been at this kind of stuff for almost four decades; how in this world have we as a society gotten to this point, children who cannot help themselves are about to die or become mentally retarded from lack of protein and minerals in their diets.

I will never in my lifetime forget a few of those precious faces that I saw there. They will be gone forever when I get back a few weeks from now. Trying to understand reasons why mothers I knew loved their babies had to see them die.

I thought Lord thank for Your blessing me with the ability to stay focused on this mission You have placed me on and Lord help me with my struggle of keeping the Devil who has had a major hand in this, at bay.

I have asked several people who live in Haiti, some close friends about handicapped people who lived there and was told, “There are not many people with handicaps here, but the ones who are here people stay away from them. They are considered the waste of society. Nobody wants to deal with them, sometimes their parents desert them like they were trash. If they live they are considered beggars; even with an education people will not hire them.”

Another person said, “Handicapped children in Haiti are seen as the manifestations of evil spirits; people don’t want to have anything to do with them. People are afraid to touch them.”

I could not get those babies out of my mind. They were not waste, they were not beggars, they cannot help they are a burden to society, and they couldn’t help they were born handicapped.

They were conceived in God’s image, and at that time they were perfect. They need someone to help them and their families fight for their lives. With God’s help and guidance we have decided we will try to help a few.

If you will support us we and that small community of wonderful Christian families in Haiti will try to help them with a dream that those babies don’t know they will have yet.

That evening after that heart-wrenching day was finished, I felt I needed some reason, some way to make sense out of this whole thing I was experiencing. I thought about what Jesus said about judging others, how he talked about us asking someone to let us help them to get a speck of sawdust out of their eye when we had a plank in ours, how he called us a hypocrite for not taking the plank out of our eye so we could see clearly how to get the speck out of our friend’s eye.

Later I had time to ask questions of old time missionaries, residents of the town, and educators. Since I’ve been home I began reading everything I could get my hands on, and searching on the Internet, I found several things that helped me to begin to understand some of the reasons for what the families said and what we saw.

To begin with Haiti is the second poorest country in the world and the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and children bear the brunt of the poverty. Many people live on less than $1 per day. Two-thirds of the labor force does not have formal employment, but is unemployed. Politics, a struggling economy, and geography have all contributed to Haiti’s extreme poverty, prevented a return to stability, and caused great suffering among Haitian children.

When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492, the island of Hispaniola was called “Hayti,” or mountain land, by Arawick people. The indigenous population was decimated by diseases introduced by European and by enslavement. Today there is not a trace of the Arawick culture on the island.

Under Spanish and then French rule, Haiti became a slave-import center through the 18th century. With the country’s natural resources, cocoa, cotton, sugar cane and coffee, all in high demand in Europe, colonial powers brought slaves from West Africa and forced them into labor.

In 1804, a guerilla war waged by runaway slaves living in the mountains resulted in the first and only successful slave revolution in history. Haiti declared itself an independent republic. The island was divided in 1844 into two separate countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Decades of political unrest, class and racial divisions, and violence have contributed to Haiti’s decline into abject poverty.

After a brief period of political stability in the early 1900s Haiti endured decades of dictatorship under the notorious Duvaliers – “Papa Doc” and his son “Baby Doc."

True democracy continued to elude the country as corruption, military coups, and violent protests have in recent years caused other governments to intercede.

United Nation peacekeeping troops are now struggling to keep peace, and with very little foreign aid trickling in, all hampered by violence and uncertainty the hope of stability continues to elude the Haiti people.

Agriculture constitutes the primary economic activity in Haiti. Coffee, cotton and sugar are exported; most families grow substance crops on small plots. Suitable agricultural land is scarce in Haiti, damaged by years of deforestation in surrounding mountains that have been stripped bare for fuel and to clear land for substance farming.

Today Haitian families are in a daily struggle for food. The mother in Haiti is usually in charge of food security for the family. She plants, harvests, sells, and cooks. She must get up before dawn, planning her family’s existence that day or she goes to market to sell her produce, often returning after dark.

During the day the children have fended for themselves. Once home she nurses the hungry infant who has been on its back all day. The older children eat what little food there is to cook. The toddlers are often lethargic, their bodies bloat, and their hair turns orange due to malnutrition and trace mineral deficiency. Diarrhea, malaria, or pneumonia many times invades their weakened immune system, and another child dies.

We at our Saloman Childers Pre School for two years have been educating and feeding several of those little fellows, more than 100 so far, which is just a speck considering Haiti’s overall problem.

To our children and their families it is the most important speck in their lives.

We were at the church interviewing a group of parents who had children born that can’t walk. As I mentioned above, mothers who have children that can fend for themselves will do as best as they can if it means taking food from the baby, a little guy who can’t walk or fend for himself doesn’t have a chance of survival.

Would you save a baby’s life if you could? Absolutely you would. My dream of saving a few of those babies who can’t walk is becoming a reality. While in Haiti this time I met with officials at the Soge Bank about our banking, I met with midwives who will locate and keep us informed on the little guys, I met with school officials, I met with the UN peacekeepers.

The most important people I met with were our families and friends in our community who will see that our program stays on focus. It excites me knowing we are almost ready to see my dream come true.

I will be going back to Cap Haitian, Haiti in a few weeks to meet with several more people who can make the families with crippled babies’ dreams of them surviving a reality.

On May 26 the US State Department issued a strict travel advisory for Haiti and ordered all non-essential U.S. Embassy personnel to leave the country and advised all Americans to leave, and that only emergency travel be planned to the country.

I will have to take that into consideration. With friends there to advise, house and help, we will make that decision soon.

The Lord has certainly blessed us with trusted people to administer our program in Haiti. The people at the Soge Bank in Cap Haitian, the Haitian School officials, and Roger Honor, our school director, four wonderful teachers and Ivy Saloman the lady whose dream gave us our chance to help our preschoolers, and soon little handicapped babies.

I know I will have to keep praying asking the Lord to help me keep focused on His mission He has placed me on. And I say again the Devil has his advocates; some closer than you can believe have been and still are involved in our area. I pray that the Lord will help us keep them at bay.

We really need your help, feeding the 60 little guys in our school a meal a day that will help keeping them from starving; we now know if we don’t it may be too late.

We also now know the lack of food caused several of our first graduating class to be brain damaged; after four years of instructions they can’t retain enough information to be successful first graders.

The Group Inc. is the sponsoring agency that will accept tax-exempt donations for our Haiti project. Any help will help us care for those babies. Make checks to The Group Inc., 980 Sugar Valley Road, Calhoun, Ga. 30701. See our work on our Web site at (thegroupof.org) and you can make a contribution through the site.