BGR Update: TEAMS ON THE WAY! :)

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Medical, student teams headed to Haiti
Feb. 25, 2010

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The placement of Southern Baptist volunteer teams in Haiti is beginning to accelerate as new sites for involvement continue to be identified.

A medical team from Nebraska, a student team from Georgia, and a medical team with professionals from various states will be working in different locations around Haiti in the coming weeks, said Jim Brown, director of the U.S. office of BGR. The team from Nebraska will be first to arrive in Haiti on Feb. 27.

"Southern Baptists have responded to the crisis in Haiti in a powerful way through their giving and now through their going," Jim Brown said. "As we look to assist the Haitian population through medical assistance and community development, the projects we identify meet short-term needs with a big-picture perspective. Our approach is to have a tangible answer to the needs of the people - now and in the months and years to come."

Baptist partners from Haiti and the Dominican Republic are coordinating with Southern Baptist relief workers to identify project locations and places for volunteer teams to use as a base of operations, said David and Jo Brown, BGR directors of the relief efforts in Haiti.

A large portion of BGR's focus will be to displaced Haitians living in temporary, makeshift camps. According to a recent report from the United Nations, the number of people who have left Port-au-Prince since the Jan. 12 earthquake has increased to 597,801 people from the previous figure of 511,405. An estimated 160,000 persons have come from Port-au-Prince to the border area with the Dominican Republic.

At one camp in Haiti's mountainous region, "People were blocking off small quadrants with sticks, stones and tape, and small stick frames were being tied together for very small houses," Jo Brown said. "The whole mountain is full of people setting up houses. Tarps, tin, sheets, whatever is available is being used and they are burning the fields to create more room."

The Browns returned four days later with Haitian and Dominican pastors and found the camp had tripled in size. "This type of settlement is repeated over and over in Haiti," David Brown said. "Most, like this settlement, have not been engaged by any relief organizations. This is the ideal location for BGR to establish community development projects."

BGR volunteer medical teams will work from the facilities of Love a Child, a Christian humanitarian organization and orphanage located 30 minutes from the border with the Dominican Republic. Injured Haitians flooded to the facility following the earthquake, Jo Brown said.

"Outlying hospitals are still transferring patients to Love a Child," she said. "They have surgery suites in full operation and a large number of pediatric patients, many without families. Families of other patients have set up a tent city on the grounds of the property. The two medical teams we have coming to Love a Child will be a tremendous help."

Tangible needs for relief and development at BGR project locations are being met through the distribution of $255,000, which will be used for food distribution and shelters.

According to David Brown, the project involves BGR and the Dominican Republic Baptist Convention (CBD) partnering with four Haitian Baptist churches in Port-au-Prince to extend emergency aid and assistance to empower 16 other Haitian Baptist churches to minister in their respective communities.

This project involves six food distributions, personal hygiene items and supplies for temporary shelter over three months. Each food distribution will provide food to feed a family for about two weeks.

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To donate to the Haiti relief effort, please click here. Every dollar given will be used 100% in relief efforts conducted in partnership with local Baptist churches.

A downloadable bulletin insert raising awareness about relief needs in Haiti is available at gobgr.org.

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GREAT news from Haiti!!!!

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ

AWESOME report we received just last night, the President of Haiti has accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and public telling he is a Christian even on the radio station. Also a church we have worked at in a Port Au Prince suburb had around 2,000 people there last Sunday. Before the earthquake had been averaging 150. God is on the move and it is exciting watching Him move and humbling to be a vessel He wants to use.

It has been a month now since the devastating earthquake and we continue to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ there plus those that are lost without Christ.
The earthquake did not cause any physical damage to the area we lived and continue to work in but Port au Prince is their lifeline for food and supplies. Trucks and buses traveled that way once or twice a week and since January 12 there has not been any. The main bank in the country has been destroyed and the few grocery stores also.

We received an SOS call from Jespert saying "if we don't receive some help to get food we will not survive". That was a difficult day with many tears and feeling helpless. But God answered their prayers and ours and made a way for us to get money to them to purchase food. January and now February we sent the regular support for the sewing class (which started back up just last week) plus extra dollars for food. Thank you to those that helped with that emergency. We have been able to send $1300 so far. We will continue to do that each month.

Also a group out of Florida, Heart of the Bride, which we have worked with for several years and they also minister in the NW in the same village where we minister, they too have been an answer to prayer. They left on Friday with a chartered plane with 13,000 pounds of food and clothing to help those in the NW but also the thousands of refugees that have fled from Port AU Prince to there. We will keep in contact with them and if they do that again see how we can help.

We will continue to send money to help where we know it will be put to good use and will wait on the report from Heart of the Bride after they return from that area to asses and hear from God what to do next. We will continue to trust God to make a way to finish the sewing classes and make a way for us to go sometime this year to present sewing machines to all the girls. But we also realize that their priority is survival and our priority is obedience to God's leading.

Please note: Our email has changed to : carolynrouton@yahoo.com
The old email address will still be accessable for a while too.

In Service together for our KING,
Terry and Carolyn Routon
503 Price Ln
Clinton MO 64735
660-924-3344
or
Good Hope Baptist Church (tax deductible donations)
806 SE Hwy 7
Clinton MO 64735
Mark on donation: for Routon's Haiti fund

Good News... Finally.

According to AP, food distribution has finally gotten into full swing. Let's hope this keeps up. There is still a staggering level of need there, please remember the people of Haiti and those on the ground there in your prayers.

If you have any info about the situation there, esp. from folks on the ground, please send it on to me.

What is Rich?

Sitting on my desk is a copy of the seminal work on Christian Social Justice, Ron Sider's "Rich Christians in a World of Hunger". Our Family Way devotions last week were centered on covetousness, and this week on giving. After a time, you begin to think that God might be speaking to you.

Admittedly, I have mixed feelings about Rob Bell, but I have to confess that three years ago, this video rocked my world:



Under the direction of the Holy Spirit, Paul wrote:

6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 9 As it is written:

"He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever."

10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
2 Cor 9:6-11 (NIV)

So many times this passage has been high-jacked in a lame attempt to baptize materialism, to justify the conspicuous consumption of consumerist church goers who on Sundays often give more thought to whether their outfit will crossover to the Mall after service than what God might want them to do with their lives.

The Hatian quake sent tremors through my soul. The evening afterward we say down to supper, and I found myself saying a short grace after every single bite of food on my plate, it was the most pensive meal I have ever received.

God has indeed been good to us. Here in the States, a homeless man has a greater net worth than a good percentage of the global population. Our families throw away more food in a day than some people see in a week. If we even have utilities we are "loaded" from a global perspective.

So, if you are reading this from Western soil, thank God, because no matter what your situation is you are loaded.