Swimming, Patient Friends, Dr. Larry Mellon, and a Hospital in Haiti

Something pretty great is happening at Highview on 

Saturday, February 24, 2024

295 Highview Drive

HAITI DINNER AND SILENT AUCTION

Tickets and Information available by contacting me, 

Highview's Missionary in Residence

at rabreithaupt@hcckw.ca 

or check out www.hcckw.ca.

But what does that have to to with the book pictured here?

Well, there's a story for that.

I'm not swimming anymore.  Not as part of my regular fitness routine at least.  There are reasons, and it's all good.  But I only mention it here because it's an important part of the story, and it's going to end up in Haiti.

The thing about swimming, or any other thing you do regularly enough, is that your meet people and they become your 'that' friends.  In this case, my 'swimming' friends.  The folks I don't have any other common orbits with, but when we see each other in the change rooms or in the pool or in the jacuzzi after our swim, we're all friendly and finding out enough about each other, and what makes the world interesting because they're interesting.  But all of this is, of course, in quick conversations as we are getting in and out of the pool and drying our hair and stuff.

Maggie and Joy (not their real names) are two of my swimming friends.

Hang on.  This will actually get us to Haiti, I promise.

On my last day of swimming, I didn't know it would be my last day of swimming, so I didn't really say a proper goodbye.  It's like that, actually.  Because sometimes you don't even run into each other to chat.  But I had given Maggie my business card at one point when she expressed interest in my pashmina, and it led to the conversation about my times in Thailand.  Yes, we'll get to Haiti.

So six months after my last day of swimming I get a call from Maggie.  She wants to have a tea and invite Joy.  How lovely.  But I explain that I am heading into a rather demanding fall and it would be best if we set this up as a Christmas tea, perhaps, if that's not too far off to make such plans.  It wasn't.

So early in December, once my head stopped spinning from the jetlag return from Thailand, I sat for tea in Maggie's lovely home, and she and Joy and I found out oh so much more about each other than ever we could in the quick conversations at the pool.

For example.  Maggie, who is a very spry lady in her 90's, had many years ago spent two years as a nurse at the Hospital Albert Schweitzer at Deschapelles in Haiti.  (Told ya.)  

What?  Tell me more.  So she did.  With great respect she talked about a man named Larry Mellon who, being born into wealth, was drawn into so much more than the 'entitled' life could offer, and ended up a medical doctor in one of the poorest countries of the world.

As the name of the hospital suggests, Dr. Mellon had been inspired by the similar kind of medicine practiced by Albert Schweitzer in Africa, driven by the shared desire to "find the place of maximum need."  It's what led Mellon to build his hospital in the Artibonite Valley, a place deserted by other doctors due to the hopeless conditions in which the inhabitants lived.  

And now an aside, because more dots are connecting for me.  A quote from Brian Stiller's book "Find a Broken Wall" (2012) where he encourages Christian leaders (and all of us for that matter) to consider our 'job search' a little differently.

Instead of searching for the good places, 

rewarding salaries and benefits, 

popular communities and nice people, 

look for rundown, bankrupt communities 

in need of someone to lift and lead (29).

This is exactly what Mellon did.

Near to the end of our Christmas tea, I realized I wanted to know more about this intriguing man and his medical mission in Haiti.  So I asked if ever there was a book published or anything else I could read.  Maggie easily lent me the book pictured above, published in 1964.  I have not been disappointed.

I'm not finished the book.  And I'm still learning so much.  The hospital still exists, but I've only started to poke around to find out more.  If you're also interested, here's a possible link to information today:  Current information on the hospital.  If nothing else it will give us all a perspective on how the situation in Haiti today is affecting everything.

And it all comes back to what's happening at Highview on Saturday, February 24.

We aren't directly connected with Dr. Mellon's hospital.  But we are partners with Auberge des Vieillards (Inn for the Elderly) in Pignon.  The seniors and disabled residents there are also living midst the turmoil of a country in prolonged chaos.  It's another 'broken wall' if you will; another 'place of maximum need.'

We want to help.  

We hope you'll join us.