In 2008, Michael Lindahl kissed his wife and six kids goodbye and boarded a plane to Haiti. The Woodbury dentist was traveling to Titanyen, a rural hillside town about 25 minutes outside of Port-au-Prince, with his friend and fellow Bible study member, Jeff Gacek. No stranger to mission work, Lindahl had been on several prior mission trips with his wife Amy. In fact, two of his children are adopted from Ethiopia, a result of one such trip.
But this was no ordinary mission trip. Gacek founded Healing Haiti in 2006 with his late wife, Alyn. This local, grassroots nonprofit was started as a way to support the local school and deliver fresh water to the town. But now, Gacek was ready for the next step. In 2008, thanks to donors, Healing Haiti was able to purchase16 acres of land that was the foundation for Grace Village. In 2009, building began with a feeding center, followed by dormitories for the orphans, a church and a guest house for missionaries. Gacek wanted to create a safe haven and support system for the many orphans of the town. This, he hoped, would include a medical and dental clinic.
Gacek needed Lindahl’s help. He needed someone with an understanding of dental procedures, someone who could rally others to help, someone who could ask for donations from corporations. “I was responsible for all needs, including finding all the supplies,” Lindahl says. “I started calling clinics in Minnesota, explaining the mission and asking for donations.”
It took a year and a half to collect the supplies and transport everything to Grace Village’s Medical Dental Clinic, which opened in 2012. In January of this year, Lindahl and a team again flew to Haiti, this time to set up the dental clinic. In one week, they constructed two sterile operating systems, installed a computer system for digital x-rays and were able to treat five patients, doing 18 extractions and several fillings.
Lindahl’s wife Amy, who has gotten heavily involved in the ministry herself, remembers one woman who was in desperate need of care. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” she says. “I don’t know how she could eat anything. There were 17 teeth all broken off at the gum line. Her mouth was full of infection.” Michael Lindahl removed all of those infected roots and then pulled the three remaining teeth. But, he didn’t stop there. He took impressions of her mouth so he could fit her with dentures.
Grace Village operates a year-long staffed medical clinic that consists of three exam rooms, a surgery ward and a three-bed recovery ward. The dental clinic, however, isn’t staffed year-round. Yet.
“I’m hoping to hire a Haitian dentist to permanently work at Grace Village and serve the needs of the orphans, employees and hopefully the whole town,” says Lindahl, who plans to make yearly trips to Haiti where he and his team will do as much work as they can. “The problem is finding a third-world dentist with a first-world education. It’s just not the same training.”
Becky Nelson, medical advocate for Grace Village, has brought her husband and four kids with her on trips to Titanyen. “We were blessed with the opportunity to open up the doors to the orphanage and welcome the kids for the first time,” Nelson says. “Many of them had been sleeping in cramped, dirty spaces on cardboard….they didn’t have a mattress or sheets or a toilet. Now they had their own bed and a playground. One little boy said, ‘This is paradise.’ It was a humbling experience.”
What was just a spark during that life-changing journey for Lindahl and Gacek in 2008 has now turned into an orphanage, home to 65 children, a feeding center, church, school and medical and dental clinic. Those rolling hills are now full of hope and promise, as a new generation of children is raised to know they are loved. And a lot of that love comes from right here in Woodbury.
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For more information regarding missions to Haiti through Healing Haiti, visit healinghaiti.org
