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ATLANTA (ABP) — The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has established a Latin American earthquake fund and sent an initial $5,000 for relief and rebuilding efforts in Chile.
Raquel Contreras, president of the Union of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Chile, said in a video posted on the CBF website that more than 300 of the union's 500-plus churches were suffering from the effects of the massive earthquake that struck near the city of Concepcion Feb. 27.
The quake killed at least 795 and left 2 million homeless in the long, narrow country that stretches along the western coast of South America from the Andes Mountains southward to the tip of the continent.
"I have heard about pastors who have lost their house," Contreras said. "I have heard about church buildings that lost everything. I have heard about brothers and sisters that have lost their homes. I have heard about the distress that the people have. It's been very, very hard."
Chris Boltin, director of short-term assignments and partnerships manager for the Atlanta-based Fellowship, said an ongoing CBF partnership with the Chilean Baptist group would likely lead to some opportunities for on-site service, but it is too early in the cleanup-and-recovery process to know what kind of tangible help will be needed.
Responding to two quakes
The Chilean response comes just as the CBF enters the long-term phase of earthquake-recovery efforts in Haiti, where CBF medical personnel were early responders to a Jan. 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 222,000, injured 300,000 and displaced 1.1 million in the Caribbean island nation.
Boltin said it will be a challenge for the CBF, which has fewer than 2,000 supporting churches, to focus limited resources on multiple international disasters. "We work diligently to keep the long-term, transformational strategy in mind when deciding how best to respond," Boltin said.
Rob Nash of CBF, right, Patsy Ayres of Austin, center, and Raquel Contreras, left, sign memorandums of understanding for a mission partnership in 2008. (CBF photo/Rod Reilly)
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Boltin said that in a meeting with CBF leaders Contreras, who was in the United States visiting family and attending meetings when the Chilean quake struck, reported that the Chilean Baptist union was dispatching two large trucks filled with supplies south into the most devastated portions of the country. The purpose of the trip was both to provide immediate relief and to determine the extent of damage.
"The most important need for us at this moment is for you to pray for us," Contreras said in the CBF video. "But at the same time you can give. You can give to immediate relief, because we need to give water. We need to buy diapers. We need to buy food for the people there. But then in a couple of months we're going to need people to go to Chile to help us rebuild our churches, to rebuild houses. So please be thinking that maybe in a couple of months you can go to Chile and help us to rebuild."
ABC Chilean missionaries delayed
Meanwhile, an American Baptist missionary couple who hoped to return to their home in Chile March 2 was delayed until March 15, due to closing of the airport in Santiago.
Dwight Bolick, who lives in Temuco, about four hours south of the quake's epicenter, said on an ABC International Ministries blog that communication is sporadic at best, but recently he and his wife, Barbara, have managed to connect with friends in Chile.
Lord Merino, pastor of El Salitre Baptist Church in Temuco, described the situation there as 80 percent normal but said it is far worse in Concepcion, where the military has taken control of trying to get food to people. But, despite a curfew, desperate people are looting supermarkets and "creating an ugly image for all of us."
The Bolicks work with the Convention of Baptist Churches-Chilean Mission in ministries of economic and leadership development. Their primary focus is with Mapuche churches in southern Chile .
The Mapuche are the indigenous people of southern Chile and Argentina. Most live on small farms in isolated rural communities called "reductions." They struggle with severe poverty, lack of sustainable livelihoods and culture-eroding effects of centuries of domination.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.