Chilean Baptist youth in quake zone respond to needs
3/8/2010By Tristan Taylor
MOLINA, Chile (BP)--A gray-haired woman stood before a small gathering of church members in Templo Evangelico Bautista (Evangelical Baptist Temple) of Molina, a town hit hard by the Feb. 27 earthquake that shattered central Chile. As the 15 people rose from their folding chairs and bowed their heads, the woman began to lead the prayer.
“We pray for the people in all places who suffer,” she said tearfully, her voice cracking with emotion. “People who don’t have food. People who don’t have water. They have great need in this moment. Help the Chilenos, Lord.”
In addition to praying, the Baptist church of Molina has made itself available to serve as God’s hands and feet in tangible ways. While still recovering from the quake and its powerful aftershocks themselves, the church’s youth are leading an effort to help other survivors in their area.
Since the quake, these Chilean Baptist young people have been caring for the people of Los Lizamas, a community about 10 miles outside of Molina. Los Lizamas sits between two municipalities, neither of which has yet claimed responsibility for the 12 families who live there — about 60 people. Since the Feb. 27 temblor, families in this area have lived outside their collapsing homes and struggled with limited resources, existing in a jurisdictional no man’s land, receiving only sporadic, limited help.
But Baptist youth of Molina are standing in the gap. They are sending teams to Los Lizamas regularly to distribute food, water and diapers.
“These Chilean Baptist youth are pretty well known and build a relationship with the people there,” said International Mission Board (IMB) missionary Charles Clark while visiting Molina as part of a Baptist quake-relief assessment team. “It’s wonderful to see this many young people and the heart they have.”
The youth are part of Centro Misionero Jovenel (Center for Young Missionaries), a new missions education program directed by Chilean Baptist Herman Osses. The center trains students in their late teens and early 20s to become missionaries to other parts of Chile and the 10/40 Window, the geographical band from North Africa to Southeast Asia where most of the world’s unreached peoples live.
Students in the program receive proactive, on-the-job training for two years. During training they live in a facility the students built behind the church to use as a base for mobilizing projects. When they complete training, participants are sent to their fields of service.
“This is basically a missionary center for young people,” said Clark, who serves as the IMB’s strategy leader for the part of South America that includes Chile. “This is new. They are still building it and trying to outfit it. This earthquake has been further motivation for them.”
While visiting Baptists in Molina, Clark and fellow members of a disaster assessment team left relief supplies to be distributed by these young people. The assessment team —which included officials from the Chilean Baptist Convention, the IMB and Texas and South Carolina in cooperation with Baptist Global Response, a Southern Baptist relief and development organization — also pledged to support Molina Baptists’ plans to establish a feeding center to assist up to 5,000 Chilean families in the area. This will be one of several feeding stations where Southern Baptist volunteers will likely be needed as Chile quake relief plans take shape, Clark said.
Meanwhile, donations for Chile earthquake relief may be directed to the Disaster Response Fund at gobgr.org. One hundred percent of each donation goes to meet human needs. Updated prayer requests can be viewed at imb.org/pray. Information also will be updated through Twitter at #QuakeResponse.
Tristan Taylor is an IMB writer in the Americas.
