South Carolina Baptists continue to invest significant manpower and financial resources to aid victims of major earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.
Shifting emphasis in Haiti
South Carolina Disaster Relief is transitioning from sending medical teams to sending demolition, rebuild, and ministry teams into Haiti. Cliff Satterwhite, director, disaster relief group, South Carolina Baptist Convention, said the last medical team has returned home, and that South Carolina is working with Florida Baptists and the North American Mission Board (NAMB) “about our next role in Haiti.”
Satterwhite said demolition, rebuild, and ministry teams will require volunteers “who are in tremendous physical condition.”
Ministry teams of eight are needed to disciple and train leadership and work in child evangelism to help Haitian children overcome fear by using Bible stories of narratives where God helped individuals overcome their fear. Teams would help lead crusade revivals in the evening. Responding to requests by high school student ministry missions teams to go to Haiti this summer, Satterwhite said he can’t recommend sending students into the country because of continuing safety and security concerns.
“The earthquake resulted in the loss of about 230,000 people,” he said. “Careful discernment needs to be considered before sending volunteers into the country.”
Despite not sending large groups of volunteers into Haiti, South Carolina Baptists have made an impact there. State Baptists assembled 6,476 “Buckets of Hope” for Haiti relief through NAMB Disaster Relief. The buckets are arriving in Haiti as part of three shipments. From across the Southern Baptist Convention, more than 120,000 buckets were assembled and shipped.
Construction teams headed to Chile
A 17-member SCDR team returned last week from Chile, where volunteers were part of mass-feeding and rebuilding teams.
Satterwhite said the team divided into five smaller work teams once in Chile.
In Chill?n, a city about 250 miles south of Santiago, two team members were part of ongoing mass-care feeding in the country. Previous feeding teams helped Chilean churches coordinate and begin serving up to 2,000 meals per day. SCDR teams provided equipment and training.
Also, in Chill?n, and the cities of Talca and Molina, SCDR volunteers have been part of rebuilding efforts toward a goal of temporary homes. As winter approaches in the Southern Hemisphere, attention now turns to the coordination of these building teams, working to construct 500 12-by-12 prefabricated housing units for displaced people. A crew of eight volunteers can construct two of the units in a day, and each has a tin roof, door and windows.
South Carolina is serving as the lead state convention in providing aid to Chile following the February earthquake. – SCBC