Because I Got Bit by a Mosquito

An account from my father about how he contracted a mysterious, possibly life-threatening illness while stationed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He attributes the power of prayer to his healing.

Tinsa Ann Harding
12 min readMay 9, 2023
“Macro of a Mosquito on a leaf” | Photo by Syed Ali on Unsplash

This story was told to me by my father.

After we arrived in Haiti in 1992, we temporarily stayed in an apartment complex — my wife, my baby son, and my mother-in-law. It had a swimming pool where many of the residents cooled off in the tropical heat. The windows were always open even though they didn’t have screens and Port-au-Prince was full of mosquitos.

Within a couple months, we had grown to know the other residents in the apartment complex, and we found out that the people downstairs had gone on leave. To be nice, they let a missionary family stay in their apartment because one of the family members was suffering from dengue fever and the best medical help in the country was to be found in the capital city.

When our neighbors returned, they organized a barbecue for the neighborhood. We attended the party and enjoyed lounging around the pool with the other neighbors. The missionary family was also there, and the man who had been suffering from dengue fever told us that he was fortunately making a…

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Tinsa Ann Harding

Writer & explorer sharing stories from the ends of the earth. Focusing on nonfiction adventures and reflections... | https://linktr.ee/birthdaydonations2024