Archive for August 2008
TX, KY, OK deploying disaster specialists to Georgia
Disaster relief specialists from three Baptist state conventions are deploying to the Black Sea country of Georgia to help families displaced by fighting between Georgian and Russian troops.
A seven-member team from Texas Baptist Men left Aug. 27 to set up a feeding operation for some of the estimated 100,000 displaced people in the country, according to Jim Brown, U.S. director of Baptist Global Response. The team also is expected to help distribute relief supplies and work on a building shell for use as a relief center.
Another seven-member team from the Kentucky Baptist Convention is expected to depart Sept. 4, and a 10-member team from the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma will follow Sept. 7, Brown said. Each team is expected to be on the ground roughly 10 days. Before the Texas team leaves, a total of 24 Southern Baptist specialists will be in Georgia at the same time.
The Oklahoma team’s departure was delayed because that state’s feeding unit has been in Colorado, ministering to law enforcement officers providing security at the Democratic National Convention.
“We are hoping that if we hit it hard with these first three teams, they can help get relief operations set up so they can be turned over to local Baptist partners,” Brown said. “We understand also that Baptist volunteers from Ukraine and Armenia may come to help, and that local labor is available for rebuilding and repair projects.”
Brown said he and the North American Mission Board’s disaster relief coordinator, Terry Henderson, plan to have a conference call with disaster relief leaders in the Baptist state conventions early next week.
“By then, Texas will have been on the ground for three or four days, and we might have a better idea whether we are going to need any specialized ministry support teams and, if so, what kind of teams we will need,” Brown said. “If there is a need, we’ll see which states might be able to send teams to help.”
Complicating matters is the fact that the United States is entering its own hurricane season, Brown noted.
“Florida already has been hammered with severe flooding, and another storm is headed for the Gulf and no one really knows where it will strike,” Brown said. “It is projected to become at least a Category 3 storm. It’s possible that Southern Baptist disaster relief workers may be needed for response to storm events in the U.S., and that will affect our ability to field volunteers for Georgia.”
The Southern Baptist overseas team in Georgia is coordinating with other humanitarian groups and Georgia’s ministry of refugees, a team member reported.
“We just returned from meeting with these people,” the team member told Baptist Press. “An Italian group is going to be responsible for cooking for the larger part of the refugees and setting up a big kitchen at the tent cities. We offered to use our church building to store humanitarian aid.”
The team is working on getting the building ready to start feeding and working with refugees, the team member said, noting that the kind of supplies Southern Baptists are providing are in short supply.
“No one supplies hygiene items except for us and one other group, and they are still waiting on the boat from the U.S. to get USAID supplies — and even then it will only be enough for 2,000 families. We have already done this for 3,500 families by making local purchases with a few thousand dollars provided by Southern Baptists.
“Hygiene items have been the most desired items from the beginning. The second thing has been diapers and baby food,” the team member reported. “We did these things and they love us! People aren’t real fond of MREs!”
—–
Projects like this are made possible by gifts to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund, which is a “dollar in, dollar out” channel for relief giving. For information about giving to the World Hunger Fund, visit www.gobgr.org.
Baptist relief team enters Gori
Russian troops have pulled back from Gori, Georgia, and a Southern Baptist overseas relief team has entered the city to assess the need for humanitarian assistance.
“The city of Gori is in overall pretty decent condition,” reported one member of the team. “The destruction was mostly to army bases and government buildings. It seems like most homes were spared, although there were entire blocks of apartments bombed. You can see where all of the glass was gone and fires burned on the top floors.”
The team was able to get to the church building that will be the team’s command center for relief operations and saw that a building 100 yards away had been destroyed when the city was bombed. They were told several people died in the explosion.
Team members were able to hold an impromptu meeting with the governor of Gori on the street in the city center, the team member reported.
“We were asked to meet needs that are not being met by major humanitarian organizations,” he said. “We are going to buy and deliver things such as body soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, toothbrushes and other toiletries for several thousand people.”
On Aug. 25, the team plans to begin remodeling a building shell made available to them by a local Baptist partner. The building, which is strategically located, will be able to feed 400 people inside, and more outside, the team reported. It also will serve as housing for volunteers and eventually will provide classrooms and work space for community development projects.
“The refugees from surrounding villages whose houses were destroyed will need to be fed from this center,” the team member said. “They are expecting as many as 20,000 long-term refugees here. People from the surrounding villages – Georgian nationals living in South Ossetia – have been burned out and banished from their homes. It is doubtful they will ever be able to return to their villages.”
A seven-member team of disaster relief specialists from Texas Baptist Men is scheduled to leave for Georgia Aug. 27, according to Jim Brown, U.S. director of Baptist Global Response. A similar team of specialists from the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma will follow soon after.
Depending on God for every need
Mark Hatfield, who directs Baptist Global Response work in Sub-Saharan Africa, sends this note from a Southern Baptist field partner involved in the food boxes Southern Baptists have been delivering to needy people in Zimbabwe. Many of those food parcels are going to retired people who have no pension.
An Irish lady who has been in Zimbabwe since the 1960s took me to the Harare airport on Friday. She recently retired and received her pension from her 40 years of teaching in Zimbabwe. My mom taught more than 40 years in Georgia and now has a comfortable monthly retirement. This godly Irish lady received her pension in a lump sum, drove to the grocery store, spent her whole pension and walked out the door with a small bag of groceries.
As we drove to the airport, I noticed the gas gauge on her little car was well below “E.” The first place we stopped to get fuel did have fuel, but no power to pump it. Many other places we passed had no fuel. We drove back into town and found a filling station with fuel. She pulled out a 25-liter coupon someone had given her and pumped that amount into her car. I don’t think she knew where her next tank of fuel would come from.
She never complained but, in the course of our conversation, I learned just how much this lady and her husband depend on God for their every need. And God has proven faithful.
In-Home Care Kits shipped
This note just in from Lori Funderburk, BGR’s international prayer strategist:
“Several months ago, BGR initiated a pilot program encouraging Southern Baptist churches in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee to pack In-Home Care kits that would be distributed among caregivers for people with terminal illnesses such as AIDS. The BGR area director for Africa reportsthat the container holding 739 five-gallon buckets (weighing 7,390 pounds) has been shipped.
Please pray that the transport of these much needed materials will be quick and the customs and duty processes would be easy and inexpensive.
Also ask God to bless the hands that will be distributing these buckets as well as the hands that will be receiving them.
Georgia-Russia conflict
Southern Baptists are organizing an overseas assessment team to evaluate relief needs in the Black Sea country of Georgia in the aftermath of fighting between Georgian and Russian troops and allied militias in the region.
While foreign embassies are evacuating their citizens, thousands of residents of Georgia’s South Ossetia region have been forced from their homes by the fighting, according to news reports.
“I just got off the phone with partners updating me on the situation,” said Abraham Shepherd, who directs work in the EuroMidEast and North Africa region for Baptist Global Response, a Southern Baptist international relief and development organization. “Internally displaced people number over 100,000 and are pouring toward Tiblisi and the surrounding area. They are in bad condition.”
The United States announced Aug. 13 that it was undertaking humanitarian assistance to the region, according to the Associated Press, and called on Russia to guarantee that relief workers and supplies would be able to move about freely.
“Please pray for wisdom in determining the timing to enter the conflict zone to provide relief,” Shepherd wrote. “Pray for cool heads to prevail, for the sake of suffering people, and for a permanent solution to the ongoing conflict.
“Ask God to comfort the loved ones of those who have died, to give healing to the injured and stamina for the people who have been displaced,” he added. “And pray that believers in the area will be comforted by God’s love.”
–––
Contributions to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund make relief projects like this possible. For information about giving to the World Hunger Fund, please visit our Giving page.
Two thank you notes
We have received, in the past few days, two notes of gratitude for the help Southern Baptists recently have sent to people in need. In one case, the note was in response to medicines sent to Sanyati Baptist Hospital. The other note expressed thankfulness for the food parcels being delivered to families in Zimbabwe.
Mark Byler, the medical director at Sanyati Baptist Hospital, wrote: “This shipment was God sent. On Tuesday we were down to the last two liters of IV bags. We only had two types of antibiotics left.”
And “Lindie” wrote: “It’s been a while since we have had bread at our house. … I would never have been able to buy 95% of the groceries in the box with my own money, so we are feeling very ‘spoiled.’ May God richly bless [Southern Baptists] for thinking of others in such a special way.”
IDP crisis in Georgia
This from our Baptist Global Response prayer coordinator, Lori Funderburk:
Military conflict between Georgia and Russia has driven more than 100,000 people from their homes. Most internally displaced people (IDP) are pouring into Tiblisi, the capital city of Georgia. The IDPs who moved toward Russia are better off, as Russian and North Ossetia have provided medical care, tents, etc. BGR and partners are eager to form a team to go and assess the needs in Georgia.
– Pray for wisdom in determining the timing to enter the conflict zone to provide relief.
– Ask God to give BGR and its partners a strategy that will provide for the needs of the many people who are suffering.
