January 29, 2010
Aundrea Ludlow
Experience in Haiti filled with ‘God moments’ for area nurse
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
Even as Aundrea Ludlow shudders at the memories of the horrors she saw in Haiti, she is filled with awe as she remembers the God moments she experienced there.
She’s a wife, the mother of four and a nurse who was in the middle of a mission trip in Haiti when the 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit the small Caribbean nation.
She first heard of Haiti when she was a student at Holy Family School in Jasper and “it tugged at my heart.” More recently she was reminded of it when a fellow nurse went there on mission trips through the Village to Village program.
Her visit in mid-January was her second time there, and when the Jan. 12 earthquake hit she was riding in a truck about 25 miles from Port-au-Prince. “We thought we had a flat tire, and then we saw people running — and we saw houses falling.” (Related: Jasper mom anxiously waited for news from daughter on mission trip in Haiti)
As her mission team arrived in the village of Pouille, she encountered her first “God moment.” All of the villagers were safe. “They were all at church for a dinner. There were a lot of God things,” she said.
That night, with people too frightened to return to their homes, everyone slept under the stars. “They all prayed together in Creole,” Aundrea remembers. As radio reports filtered in about the damage in Port-au-Prince, she realized “it was bad.”
The next morning her group packed up its medical supplies and headed for Port-Au-Prince. She remembers being scared that “I wouldn’t know what to do because I’m not an emergency room nurse.”
As they drove into the capital city, refugees were streaming out. “The tap tap [cabs] were overflowing with people,” she said.
The Americans found a place to stay in an orphanage, and then they set up a make-shift medical clinic on a street and “we started giving care.” People came with head injuries, broken bones, “open fractures with bones exposed. We did the best we could.
“We used wooden spoons as splints and we sutured. We had lots of antibiotics and dressings. We worked for six solid hours. I was so weak because I hadn’t eaten.”
She said, contrary to news reports, “it wasn’t a mob or unruly. Anything you could do, they were so thankful.” After she treated the ankle of a woman, the husband stayed to serve as an interpreter. “He said, ‘You helped me. Now I’m helping you.’”
She remembers nibbling on cheese crackers during the day. “We were trying to ration our food because we didn’t know how long we would be there.”
As the day went on, she became weaker and weaker. She was wearing a bracelet that said, ‘I can do all things through God who strengthens me.’ I could not stand because I was so weak and so dizzy. When I couldn’t stand, the Haitian guys stood behind me and held me up.”
At the end of the day, “we started hearing something in the distance. I thought it was voodoo, but they were praising God. They were singing ‘Praise God, I’m alive!’ up and down the streets.”
The next morning, she traveled to the American Embassy and then back to the orphanage. The situation was “getting more unsafe.” On Friday, she went to the airport, and was able to get on a C-130 cargo plane heading for Florida.
Once on American soil, she experienced another “God moment.”
While she was in the Miami Airport — surrounded by thousands of travelers — someone tapped her on the shoulder. When she turned around, she saw a woman standing in front of her sobbing.
Aundrea realized it was someone she had talked with when she was in line at the Nashville airport earlier in the week. The woman had flown to Aruba, and Aundrea had gone to Haiti. When the earthquake hit Haiti, the woman had been frantic with worry about Aundrea. “God put us together there in the Miami International Airport. She grabbed me, and cried and cried. There were a lot of God things.”
Aundrea’s time in Haiti made her re-evaluate her life, she said. “During the aftershocks, a friend looked at me and said, ‘I guess Haiti is as good as any place to die.’ You think you are right with God, but it brings it all into focus.”
She believes that the “power of prayer is what got us through. You could truly feel it.”
Aundrea had a happy reunion in St. Louis with her husband, Michael, and their four children. “I was happy to see them,” she said, adding that at moments in Haiti “I didn’t know if it would happen.”
And as they drove to their home in southern Indiana, she remembers her husband looking at her with an awareness that she was planning to return to Haiti. He said, “You want to go back, don’t you?”
She answered, “Pretty much.”
“I felt guilty about coming home,” she said, “and as soon as it’s safe, I want to go back. You can’t let something like this scare you off.”
Aundrea believes in the effectiveness of the grass roots efforts in Haiti such as the Village to Village program and the twining program which links Catholic parishes in the United States to parishes in Haiti. Many parishes in the Diocese of Evansville have been involved in that program for years.