Archive for the ‘China’ Category
‘Hope Two’ for China!
On a recent trip to China’s Sichuan Province, Baptist Global Response staff visited “Hope Two,” a center that helps pregnant women who are survivors of the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Many women lost their one and only child in the earthquake and now are trying to have another child. In one resettlement camp, however, 75% of the pregnant mothers were miscarrying because of the high levels of post-traumatic stress they were experiencing.
A special room at Hope Two has been set aside for these mothers. It looks like a living room. Posters of babies decorate the walls. Obstetricians come to the center once a week to monitor the women, and hopeful mothers-to-be are benefiting from the “Bears and Books” provided by BGR partners – helping them mourn their loss and look to the future.
Praise God that the books and bears are providing comfort to these women! Please continue to pray about giving toward this project. A bear and a set of six books costs $11. The comfort and hope they are bringing to these young mothers-to-be is priceless! For information on how you can help, click here.
New video on China’s Sichuan earthquake
A new video from China explains how Southern Baptists and other believers are helping children traumatized by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
Thousands of teachers in Sichuan province are being trained in techniques of trauma counseling through a project in which Baptist Global Response is partnering with the Chinese government. Through BGR, you have an opportunity to provide crucial tools those teachers will use to help 150,000 traumatized children to verbalize their feelings, at a cost of just $11 per child.
The video will be useful to help you understand the important role these tools will play in helping children find their way to lives of meaning and purpose. They also will help Sunday school classes, small groups, and congregations realize the tremendous impact they can have on the lives of these precious children.
To watch the video yourself or screen it for a group, visit gobgr.org and click on the “Resources” tab at the top of the page.
A year later, ‘Books & Bears’ bring renewed hope to Sichuan survivors
One year after a massive earthquake devastated China’s Sichuan province, Southern Baptist gifts are helping the region’s survivors find healing and new hope.
A fragrance of gardenia
The following testimony came to us from a Chinese believer who served as a volunteer in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake:
My heart can’t stop thinking and praying for the people I encountered in Sichuan province. This morning I received a text message on my cell phone that said: “Within the past year I have lost nine close family members, can you tell me how I can live on?” I didn’t recognize the number, but I knew it had to be one of the people that I had met in Sichuan.
I sent a reply text, and the woman related to me that her son had met me outside one of the towns where we were dispersing supplies to those devastated by the Wenchuan earthquake. I had given her son my business card, and she had gotten my phone number from it and decided that she could possibly reach out to me for help.
It was amazing to me how God opened the door for me to encourage this woman I had not even met. I told her I would like to help out any way I could and will continue to call and talk with her. She seemed very encouraged. But this is only one life that touched me. There were more.
Let me go back and start at the beginning. The last time I visited Sichuan province, I had joined a group of believers there. One of the leaders was a Mr. Lee. On May 12, only minutes before the Wenchuan earthquake hit, Mr. Lee had arrived in Chengdu, a city south of the earthquake zone. He was coming to work with a school support system for children in poor areas, but his focus quickly changed to disaster relief and recovery and he has been there ever since. Mr. Lee has now stationed an earthquake relief center for believers in his hotel.
I have had the privilege to work with Mr. Lee and his group. Believers have come from all parts of the country to help. Volunteers were stationed in villages within days after the quake, striving to meet the urgent needs of the victims. As the needs of those villages became less acute, the workers began traveling farther and farther out, looking for people who had not received any help. These workers are there for the long term.
The government is working feverishly to rescue, feed, house and rebuild, but it is so huge there are areas that are not being helped. Those are the areas Mr. Lee and his volunteers are looking for and ministering in.
I was able to go out with Mr. Lee’s team only one day, but it changed my life. The village we went to is close to a town where 80% of the houses totally collapsed in the 8.0 quake. Most of the villagers have not left their condemned homes, but instead made very simple huts from plastic tarps in their courtyards or in more open areas of the village. On the day I arrived, the two-man distribution team had already been there for more than two weeks. Living in the area has allowed them to know the most urgent needs of the people. As they relay to Mr. Lee the needs of the villages, supplies are bought and trucked in for distribution.
On this day, we were distributing rice, cooking oil, and other needed supplies. There we are, working in the middle of total devastation, nothing but piles of rubble around us where homes and businesses had been. The landscape is spotted with the color of tents and tarps that shelter the residents.
As we are working, an old woman approached us and began to share with us how much good these Christian volunteers had done for the community. It was difficult for me to understand all of what she was saying because of her accent, but I knew she was thanking us. She left us and I thought she had just gone home – or to what had been her home.
Actually, she did go home, but as we were leaving the village, we spotted her coming down the mountainside. We could see by the way she was walking that she was carrying something in the apron of her shirt.
As she got closer, we could see what it was: 10 large gardenia flowers. She did not say anything but only proceeded to put them into our hands, with tears in her eyes. I knew she had nothing left of her former life to share with us but these gardenias. They were the only thing she could find to express her gratitude.
Our hearts were touched and we were very grateful that God gave us this opportunity to touch lives in need. A gardenia – the fragrance lingers in my memory, but now it will always bring to mind the face and tears of this woman and her village, one place we had the privilege to serve.
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Contributions to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund and the Baptist Global Response Disaster Response Fund help Southern Baptists respond in crisis situations like the earthquake in Sichuan. For information on how to donate to those funds, visit our Giving page.
China earthquake relief update
The Baptist Global Response news site has been updated with a new article about relief efforts in the wake of the May 12 earthquake in China’s Sichuan province.
To read more, go to http://www.gobgr.org and click on “China relief effort adds focus on ‘Hope Centers.’” High-resolution photos also are available in the BGR on-line photo gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/BGRimages/Sichuan080603.
