One of Our Own in Haiti: His Story

So my parents asked me to write a little something on my experience in Haiti. So here it goes…I was out to sea on my way to my new home port in San Diego when I found out I was headed down to Haiti for relief efforts because they had been hit with a disastrous earthquake. At first I was upset and bummed out because it was going to take away from me getting to California but God soon changed my aspect on things. My first dose of seeing the wreckage was when the ship had its first medevac and boy was it eye opening; it was a young girl about 7 years old and she got pulled off the helicopter. She just had this dazed look in her eye then I glanced down and her whole leg was missing. At that point it all became real that I had been put here for a reason. Right now it wasn’t getting to San Diego on time it was to help these people of Haiti. So a couple of days later we were done flying helos for the night when we got a call that a coast guard helo was coming in with about 8 injured people. So we manned up our fire trucks and got the stretchers ready for what? We had no idea. The first person to come off the helo was a young boy about 4 years old who had to be carried off the helo straight to the intensive care area. As much training I have gone through nothing could have prepared me for seeing that. It was at that point I started to get a little mad at God for doing this to a nation that was already in poverty and struggling, I didn’t understand. But I knew deep down that God was doing something amazing with this I still don’t know what, but I just knew. I will say that I have never prayed so hard for so many people I didn’t know. Every night I would lie in my rack (bed) and pray for the people of Haiti for about 30 to 45 minutes just asking God to help the nation of Haiti in any way possible because they absolutely needed it more than I did at the time. I have thought about the whole situation and I think the lesson God was trying to teach through this was that he can take everything you have at anytime he wants to. I have learned many times in my life that he likes to teach us things through tough times. So that’s a small little insight on my first hand experience in being a first responder to the nation of Haiti. Remember God loves us all no matter what. Thank you for letting me take the time to write this out.

Very Respectfully
ABH3 Jeffrey Mullins
USS Carl Vinson
Air Dept. Crash & Salvage