Written by The following was originally posted on Feb 3, 2010 by Mickey Noah at Baptist Press. I received it in an e-mail from a friend. I have summarized and posted it here. Please keep praying for the people of Haiti. If you can get trained in your state and go help them.
Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) medical teams are among the first Baptists to minister in Haiti.
SBDR medical volunteers from Mississippi and Kentucky arrived on Feb 1, 2010 and treated 550 patients. The Mississippi team is operating a small hospital out of a Haitian Baptist church located on the edge of one of Port-Au-Prince. The Kentucky team is working at a clinic near the presidential palace.
An incident command team from the North American Mission Board will leave Atlanta today Feb. 4, to serve in Haiti. They will link up with the Florida Baptist Convention, who are on the ground in Haiti for the second time since the earthquake.
This team will be busy planning logistics, lodging, transportation, feeding and communications for SBDR’s eventual “D Day” (the day dozens of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief teams will begin to be deployed to Haiti, a process that will extend over many months.
Persons who have returned from Haiti say nothing prepared them for their first drive through downtown Port-Au-Prince. One has reported he thought he had seen it all after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but now says “I’ve never seen anything even close to this disaster, even Katrina,”
As additional SBDR teams arrive in the Haitian capital in the days and weeks to come, they need to know why they’re going before they get there. “The mission ought to be clear,” “Folks need to be mentally, emotionally and spiritually prepared.”
Another volunteer said: “I would tell disaster relief people that they need to be prayed up before they get here, because they don’t know what they’re going into and what they’re going to be dealing with.”
Initial funding for these relief efforts will come from the International Mission Board’s disaster relief fund. Contributions can be made online, www.imb.org, or by mail, International Mission Board, P.O. Box 6767, Richmond, VA 23230.
Regardless of the SBC channel, all funds received for this purpose will go to relief efforts; none will be used for administrative costs.
Southern Baptists can contribute to “Haiti Earthquake Disaster Relief” through their local church or directly to their state convention, the North American Mission Board (www.namb.net) or the International Mission Board (www.imb.org).
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