(ABP) — Baptist volunteers from Texas and North Carolina are joining the international disaster-relief effort being called the largest in history, after earthquake-spawned tsunamis struck 12 countries in Southeast Asia and East Africa the day after Christmas.
Texas Baptist Men plan to send 12 volunteers to Sri Lanka to do water purification. The volunteers will take two water purification units with them, along with parts to build eight more once they are on site.
In addition, Texas Baptist Men plan to send four 10-member emergency food-service teams to Southeast Asia — three to Sri Lanka and one to Thailand — as well as help set up a refugee camp in Sumatra, said TBM Executive Director Leo Smith.
Meanwhile, a three-person assessment team from North Carolina Baptist Men is scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka the morning of Jan. 8. They will work with representatives of Hungarian Baptist Aid to prepare the way for other teams who will focus on water purification and meal preparation for the thousands of Sri Lankans displaced by the tsunamis.
Baptists in other states are gearing up for response as well.
In Arkansas, the state Baptist convention has established a relief fund to support volunteers and supplies to be sent in coming weeks. The convention is recruiting volunteers, including doctors, nurses, emergency medical technicians and certified disaster-relief crisis chaplains, who will be organized into teams to work for two-week rotating periods during the next three months. Later, teams will be organized to rebuild, repair and provide other ministries.
As the number of dead in the tsunami area topped 156,000 Jan. 3, government officials in the affected area continued surveying the massive human and economic needs. Governments worldwide have pledged more than $2 billion to aid victims in the 12 affected countries, with $300 million coming from the United States.
Private donations are pouring in as well. In the United States, former presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton will lead fund-raising from citizens.
South Asia has a substantial number of Baptists, which is expected to facilitate the work of Baptist relief volunteers. About 1 million Baptists reside in India. Nearly 130,000 Baptists are in Indonesia. Another 629,000 Baptists live in Myanmar. Sri Lanka has about 3,000 Baptists.
At this point, the primary need in Baptist relief effort is money to finance need-assessment teams, said Paul Montacute, director of Baptist World Aid. Needs will be met most effectively and systematically if Baptists develop an encompassing strategy, something Baptist World Aid is in a unique position to do as an international body.
The entity connects groups with resources to where those materials can be used. “Our role is to bring people together to work together in times like these,” he said.
“I think [this tragedy] touched everyone's heart,” he said. “Now we need to transfer those heart feelings to head feelings. It may be easy writing a $25 check now, but what about six months from now?”
Texas Baptist Men became involved in the relief effort at the request of David Beckett, a member of Currey Creek Baptist Church in Boerne, who is serving as a missionary in Sri Lanka with Gospel for Asia.
Children's Emergency Relief International, an agency of Baptist Child and Family Services in San Antonio, has been invited to set up child-care centers and help establish foster-care programs in Sri Lanka.
Gospel for Asia contacted the family-services agency and asked its personnel to set up five child-care shelters in eastern Sri Lanka and to help the Sri Lankan government develop foster-care programs and train local people to manage them.
Each emergency care center will house up to 1,000 orphaned children. The tsunami victimized about 30,000 people living in the 60-mile stretch along Sri Lanka's eastern coast where the centers will be located.
Buckner Baptist Benevolences of Dallas is making its existing inventory of shoes, socks and other materials available to its ministry partners working in Southeast Asia, including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist World Alliance, said Jeff Jones, operations director for Buckner Orphan Care International.
The Baptist World Alliance has sent a medical and relief team through its relief arm, Baptist World Aid, and Hungarian Baptist Aid.
Meanwhile, Denton Lotz, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, issued a pastoral letter to Baptists in Asia Jan. 4 expressing the grief of Baptists worldwide and pledging long-term support.
“Millions of people are continuing to pray for you, and in thousands of worship services worldwide, brothers and sisters are calling upon our gracious and merciful God to bring relief and comfort to those who have suffered,” Lotz wrote.
His pastoral letter addressed the question of why God permits disasters. “As Christians we believe that God is good, all the time, but we know that this good earth also suffers pain and loss of life, tragedy and evil,” Lotz said. “The cross of Christ reminds us that God suffers and endures the pain and consequences of evil, and takes this evil upon himself in the cross and turns it into redemption and resurrection.”
“We cannot answer the philosophical questions of evil, pain and suffering,” Lotz wrote, “but we can point to Jesus Christ and see that in taking upon himself the form of a human, God has accepted our suffering and pain and suffers with us.”
“This is the great Christian message of comfort,” Lotz said. “In Jesus Christ, God is suffering with the homeless, the hungry, the orphans with those who have lost wives and husbands, daughters and sons, sisters and brothers.”
– John Hall contributed to this story.