Archive for September 2008
World Hunger Summit, Oct. 10-11
A summit on world hunger is being held Oct. 10-11 in Nashville, Tenn., in connection with World Hunger Awareness Sunday on Oct. 12. Space is limited, but there are some spots still available.
The event, which is sponsored by Baptist Global Response and Brentwood Baptist Church, is intended to help Southern Baptists celebrate what God is doing through hunger ministries overseas and mobilize to make a difference.
Highlights of the event include a keynote address by Frank Page, pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., and a member of the Baptist Global Response board of directors. BGR executive director Jeff Palmer will deliver a “State of the World’s Poor” address.
The program also will feature workshops and testimonies by domestic and international hunger relief practitioners that will help churches mobilize against hunger.
The event is offered without charge. Participants are encouraged to bring a bag of rice, bag of dried beans, or a canned good to be donated to the hunger ministry at Mineral Springs (Tenn.) First Baptist Church.
More information is available from Dennis Eastridge, deastridge@gobgr.org; (615) 367-3678.
Updates from Georgia, India
The Baptist Global Response news and blog sites have been updated.
A news report from Georgia focuses on Texas Baptist volunteers who set up a feeding operation for displaced families in the Black Sea country of Georgia. Read more here.
A blog entry explains how Southern Baptist relief funds are helping people in need in India’s Orissa state, where Christians have suffered several weeks of violent persecution by Hindu extremists, and in Bihar state, where the breach of a river bank has cut off millions of people from supplies. Read more here.
Video of two interviews with victims of the violence in Orissa has been posted on YouTube.
Crisis at Sanyati Baptist Hospital
This just in from BGR prayer coordinator Lori Funderburk:
Last June, the inflation rate in Zimbabwe was over 1 million percent and rising. Today it is over 11 million percent and continues to accelerate. For many months an average worker has not been able to earn enough money to buy food. Some people have even stopped going to work because their salaries will not cover the cost of even one essential element.
Hospital workers and teachers have stopped going to their jobs. The staff at Sanyati Baptist Hospital left on strike. ( The hospital is not in control of the issues they are striking over.) The only staff remaining are the heads of departments and 27 nurses. The hospital has closed outpatient services and the pharmacy and will discharge all patients who are not critical. It will be open to local emergencies and maternity only. The laundry and ability to sterilize instruments is gone.
– Pray that those operating the hospital will have wisdom in this situation.
– Pray for the patients who will not have the means of medical care needed.
– Pray that Christians and the church in Zimbabwe will seek God and take a leadership role and that God will be glorified in the outcome of this situation.
