Luthern Charities

Dawn and Mark visited this past weekend and I learned some interesting facts from Mark. He is a coordinator for Lutheran Charities and it is his job to facilitate a team to go into a devastated area and help the people. For instance, he served in the post Katrina effort. His latest assignment was to Haiti to help the injured Haitians. His team was stationed in the Dominican Republic and patients were flown in from Haiti for care. After the initial glut of people the work diminished and his team left the Dominican Republic. His team was recently requested to go back to The Dominican Republic and take care of other issues they were having. Mark refused to allow the team to go back. As he explained it to me, they were to be set up in a large hospital as their base. The owner of this hospital is a Haitian and the Dominicans hate the Haitians with a passion. The hospital owner recently died and his family is presently squabbling over his assets and ownership of the hospital. The Dominican regime sees this as a opportunity to take over the hospital and get rid of this Haitian influence. Mark did not want his team to get enmeshed in such political warfare because it made security so difficult if not impossible. He says, when they get everything settled down maybe then they will go.