Colorado Connection

Here is the latest information from Compassion. You can keep up to date on the Compassion blog at http://blog.compassion.com/haiti-earthquake-update/

Jan. 16 at 7:40 p.m. (MT): Extensive and intermittent communication outages in Haiti are still the norm. The earthquake made transportation extremely problematic, which is creating major logistical struggles for teams attempting to provide assistance and gather information.

Port-au-Prince is chaotic, with flights having difficulty getting in and out of the city. At this time, it is extremely difficult to get material into the city.

We estimate that about 30 of our church partners have been significantly affected by the earthquake. We have made contact with many of them and have begun our immediate needs assessment.

We still do not have information about most of our church partners or the children and families we serve. We are diligently working to remedy this, as our urgent desire is to collect accurate information to share with all of you.

All but one member of our Haiti office staff in the affected area has been accounted for and they are working to contact other staff members outside of the affected area. Many of our staff are injured; many have lost loved ones.

Guilbaud Saint-Cyr, Haiti Country Director, is meeting several other non-governmental organizations to begin coordinating needs and action plans.

Dan Woolley has been reunited with his wife and is being treated for minor injuries in a Miami hospital.

At this time, we still have no official word on the location or health of the videographer, David Hames.

Our Haiti office is standing but we do not know how much damage it sustained.

As we receive new information we will continue to share it on this blog post, via Twitter and Facebook.

Please be in prayer for our staff, Compassion-assisted children and families in Haiti. Pray that God protected them from harm. Also pray for the government and leadership in Haiti as they respond to this disaster.

When we receive details from Compassion Haiti about specific children and how they were affected we will contact you.

Thank you for your understanding, your patience and your prayers.

As of right now there is very little information about the situation in Haiti. But when needs become clearer, much money and help will be needed. Please donate now to help the country staff and children in Haiti.

I’ll add more information as I find out or you can visit www.compassion.com to get the latest news.

Today Loveland Ski Resort opened, the first ski area in North America. I didn’t get out to ski, but Loveland opening this early is a good sign for a winter with lots of snow. I have new ski’s this year and am anxious to try them out. Come on out and enjoy the snow!

Rossignol Phanton 80

We’ve been staying at a cabin in Divide this week. This afternoon we had excitement when a bear came up on the porch, took the garbage can and pulled it off the porch. We watched him for a while, but when he popped the cover off the can, we decided that was enough. I walked out towards him with a big stick and he took off. Bears can run really fast!

We hiked our 21st fourteener last Saturday. The hike was not so hard, but we were in rain, groppel (Coloradoan for something between hail and snow) and high winds which caused low wind chill temps. We stood on the summit long enough to get a picture of the marker. One other person was silly enough to be up there and took our picture for the record book.

Mt. Belford - August 15, 2009

We had planned to continue to Mt. Oxford via a connecting ridge, but it was just too windy to keep going. So it looks like we will climb Belford again since going over Belford is the only trail to get to Mt. Oxford.

By the time we got back to the trail head it was turning out to be a nice day. Figures.