Marjorie's Story

Marjorie is the 24 year-old Haitian woman pictured above, whose concrete-block house collapsed on her during the January 2010 earthquake. Because of her severe injuries, Marjorie's left hand was amputated by a British medical charity responding to the earthquake. That charity flew in all the orthopedic doctors they could find after the earthquake in order to handle the serious crush injuries caused by the scale of destruction.

Marjorie also had nerve damage to her right leg and a large gash on her head. After her operation, the British charity asked if Heartline Ministries would provide aftercare and other help for Marjorie, because they needed the bed for another orthopedic patient and Marjorie was not doing well.

Hearline missionary Tara Livesay went to pick up Marjorie in one of the ministry's trucks. Tara says, "Marjorie was one of the saddest people I had met. She cried the entire ride to Heartline and once there she sat totally alone, dejected and depressed."

"Honestly, she seemed without hope. It was obvious watching her that she had no desire to be alive and was deep in depression/mourning. After I dropped her off at Heartline, I got back in my truck and cried. I could not blame Marjorie for hating life and I felt totally helpless to cheer her up."

We can all only imagine the emotional trauma we would feel after losing a hand and suffering other serious injuries. Marjorie became one of the long-term patients in Heartline's care. Volunteer doctors and nurses who flew in from the United States kept volunteering for months and kept the newly formed Heartline Hospital open. There were so many patients with serious injuries, they felt there was no way they could close the hospital. The Heartline patients who stayed in the hospital also began bonding with each other, forming a new community of caring.

With loving and Christ-centered medical care, the patients began to heal. Heartline's staff made arrangements for physical therapists to come from the United States and work with patients who needed therapy, and arranged with other medical organizations to get prosthetic limbs to help the Heartline patients who needed them.

Patients designated time in the evenings where they would gather to sing and pray together. Severely injured people singing, clapping and praising God with gusto together is the most inspiring thing the American medical volunteers say they have ever seen.

Heartline worked with each patient to help figure out their future. Many had no homes to return to--their previous homes were rubble. Marjorie was one of the many Heartline patients who had nowhere to call home anymore.

Many of the medical charities who came to Haiti released patients who had suffered amputations and other serious injuries to live in crude tent camps, saying they were medical organizations only. Heartline felt they could not in good conscience release their patients to the horrible and unsanitary conditions of the tent camps.

Heartline co-founder John McHoul investigated and found that while most of Marjorie's neighborhood was damaged, the buildings closest to her house were still intact and structurally sound. If the rubble were cleared away, Marjorie's house could be rebuilt on the spot where it stood before the quake.

Marjorie lived in a very congested urban area where many buildings had collapsed and yet many remained whole. Much of the devastation was caused, in part, by poor construction standards for buildings. Because money is so scarce for most people in Haiti, people try to build as cheaply as possible and end up taking shortcuts--not using rebar to reinforce concrete walls, or thinning the concrete mixture too much with water and sand to save cost. The result after the earthquake? Well-constructed buildings standing right beside buildings that were heaps of debris.

Paige Porter Livesay, the 15-year-old daughter of two Heartline employees, ran a half-marathon in the United States this past summer and raised over $50,000 for Heartline's housing fund. Marjorie and her family received a new wooden house to replace their collapsed concrete one because of this fundraiser.

Together with Marjorie's family, Heartline employees and fellow patients worked together to construct Marjorie a new house, like the one pictured at the top of this blog. The houses are built from kits, made by Maxima Building in Haiti. The homes have been tested to withstand earthquake and hurricane forces. Marjorie even helped in the construction of her new house. In the picture above, Marjorie is looking out the window of her house while it was still under construction.

Missionary Tara Livesay says,"Of all the patients I met during those first weeks after the earthquke, Marjorie was the one that I thought about most. When I returned to Haiti...I met a different young woman; she had begun the long process of healing...She had learned to smile again."

Please help purchase more housing kits so people in Haiti like Marjorie can rebuild their lives. The kits to build two houses cost a total of $2,500. Whether you can give $5 or $500, please help me to raise the funds to build houses for the many homeless people of Haiti.