On Jan. 12, W.D. Reed
watched television news of the earthquake that devastated Haiti.
He sensed God shaking
his heart with just as powerful of a personal “earthquake.”
“Everything in my life
came into focus and I knew God wanted me in Haiti,” said Reed, a new member of
Biltmore Baptist Church in Arden.
During six years in the
Navy, Reed traveled the world and saw starving children in countries like
Ethiopia and Uganda. Although he was not a Christian at the time, he felt God’s
tug telling him to “Feed My children.”
He completed nursing
school at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College but fell into a life
filled with drugs and alcohol. One night after a long party he told his wife,
‘We would be better off dead than raising our daughter in this life of drugs
and alcohol.’”
That very night, Reed
told his wife the only time in his life he was truly happy was in his church
youth group, so they decided to leave their drugs and alcohol-ridden lifestyle
behind and walk back into a church.
Contributed photo W.D. Reed, with nursing and construction experience, said a trip to Haiti with North Carolina Baptist Men was a God-given appointment. He is applying to go back full time to set up rural medical clinics. |
At Alexander Missionary
Baptist Church that Sunday he fell under such conviction he walked to the altar
during the sermon, fell to his knees “and wept as I prayed for God to save me.”
Over the next 14 years
Reed continued to work in agency and travel nursing and earned his bachelor’s
degree in construction management. In November 2009 he joined mission-minded
Biltmore Baptist and felt more intensely that God was preparing him for foreign
missions.
Then, the earthquake
struck.
“My whole life came
into focus just like a camera lens comes into focus and it was like God was
speaking directly to me that day when He said, ‘Your mission never changed – I
still want you to feed my children,’” said Reed. “Suddenly, I knew why God had
led me to go into the service to learn different cultures, go to nursing school
and to get my construction education – it was all to prepare me for Haiti
because they need medical and construction help over there more than anything
right now.”
When he stepped onto
Haitian soil with a team from the N.C. Baptist Men, he was shocked at the
animalistic behavior he witnessed.
Already the poorest
country in the Western Hemisphere before the earthquake, he saw hungry women
standing in lines miles long for food at distribution points. Men were not
allowed in the lines because the youngest, strongest men had gotten to all the
food first at the initial post-earthquake food distribution points. It was very
common to see women fight on the streets over bags of beans and rice.
Mothers were leaving
their babies at Petionville Community Hospital in Port-au-Prince because they
couldn’t feed them. Reed did third-world, hands-on nursing when he used glass
thermometers to check temperatures under tarps, carried patients in the
hospital from trucks driven by frantic family members and, sadly, watched
patients die in front of him in the emergency room.
According to
Reed, the most life-changing day in his 10-day trip happened Feb. 20 – his 50th
birthday. That day, the hospital got a desperate call from an 88-year-old nun
who managed a local orphanage.
“The nun asked if we
could come down to the orphanage to get the 40 children because none of them
had eaten in three days,” said Reed. Dr. Steve Daub, a Greensboro family
practice physician on the mission’s team, assessed all 40 children, ages
newborn to three years old, and brought 19 of them in most critical need to the
hospital while the Haitian government took the other 21 children away to an
unknown destination.
“Dr. Daub said the nun
kissed each child as they left her orphanage and when he asked her if she would
come to the hospital to get food, she refused and said, ‘No, I’ll just stay
here,’” said Reed. “She put the children first and had apparently resigned
herself to die there and I don’t know her name or what happened to her because
there wouldn’t have been a funeral or an obituary.”
“She may have been lost
physically in this world, but, spiritually, she was right on target,” Reed
added, with a look in his eyes that said he had left part of his heart in
Haiti.
In the hospital the
mission team fed the children milk and watered-down Pedialite to acclimate
their bodies to food again. Reed cared for the sickest orphan — a one-year-old
baby girl whose parents likely died in the earthquake. She was catatonic and
unresponsive to any feeling or pain. Reed picked up a red-tip marker and wrote
“Francheska” on the bottom of her foot because no one knew her name.
As far as Reed knows,
“Francheska” is still living today.
Reed said the events of
that one day confirmed that what the team was doing in Haiti was right because,
on his 50th birthday, God delivered 19 orphans for him to help care for. “That
day God said to me, ‘Remember when I told you to feed My children — now you are
doing it,’” said Reed, who says that this 10-day mission trip affected his life
so strongly that he is currently applying through the North Carolina Baptist
Men to be a full-time volunteer and plans to go back to Haiti to set up rural
medical clinics.
(EDITOR’S NOTE —
Goldthwaite is a writer in Canton.)