Global Aid Network Mission Reports

Many of these areas where our teams are located and have visited are not the most devastated, so there is a lack of government support.  We have experienced people who are truly thankful with open hearts.  Through building trust with these people, we believe there is great opportunity to share the Gospel with them.

As we work with our partners and disciples we look forward to fulfilling our vision:

To help transform East Asia and send lifetime laborers to the world by

• being people who truly follow Jesus
• boldly proclaiming Jesus
• making disciples
• multiplying Christ-centered leaders and spiritual movements

Through this earthquake experience, we see our partners and disciples hearts touched and transformed as they serve in this disaster relief.  We want to bless the earthquake victims and as we see our people serve we see them blessed and grow in their leadership capacity.

The following is one of the experiences our earthquake relief teams have encountered since the earthquake.

To help the children express their hurt and sorrows, one team asked them to express their feelings by drawing pictures. Lo Ren is a 12 years old and lives in Xialba Zhen.  She drew this picture and then explained it to one of our staff.

Many people are hit by bricks.

Many people dead.

Many people crying.

The Sun is crying, the cloud is crying too.

One mother shouts “where is my son?”

A little girl said: “Where is my mom and dad?”

When the mother finds her child, she smiles.

Lo Ren was outside the school, when the earthquake happened, she said she ran to one place, then another and another.  She stopped at a tree but was afraid the tree would fall down and kill her.  So she ran again…

After sharing her experience has helped her release some of her sorrows, fears and anxieties.  She smiles.

The above is just one of the thousands of stories.  Jesus told us to mourn with those that mourn and to share the love He has given us with those who need help.  We would like to ask you to join us in this effort…

This summer in 500-1000 volunteers from around China are raising money to come to the province where the earthquake hit.  These volunteers are eager to assist the survivors.  Love and help is what they will bring.  However, they do not bring experience.  So, the organizer of the volunteers asked the GAiN staff specialist in disaster response to come in and train the volunteer leaders so that they could train the volunteers in how to help.

For four days, the GAiN disaster specialist took them through a very basic but very intense course on disaster response, specific to this disaster. He briefed them on how to do an assessment of needs. The volunteer leaders trained on safety in the field as well as crisis management and contingency planning (in the event of another earthquake).  They briefed on how to brief and de-brief teams.  They trained in how to work with the government and the local leaders.  They trained in compassionate listening in a way that does not re-traumatize the survivors (a pretty common mistake when people who aren’t professionals try to do counseling).  They trained in appropriate ways to distribute aid without causing a riot using Jesus model of feeding the 5000 as the model (this same model is what the UN High Commission of Refugees recommends not coincidentally).   They looked at the spiritual dynamic of disaster and wrestled with why these kinds of events like the earthquake happen from a Christian perspective.

The volunteer leaders then went through exercises in establishing and implementing ways to help.  Together they evaluated the data and came back with recommendations of how to help and each idea was tested by the GAiN disaster specialist to ensure that it was appropriate in this situation.

Based on their and other assessments, these were areas that the volunteers will focus on.

• Distributing plastic covering to waterproof the tents
• Distributing school supplies and mosquito coils.
• Distributing coal for cooking.
• Setting up someone in the area to make wheelbarrows for the survivors to clear rubble and re-build.
• Distributing shovels and sledgehammers for clearing rubble and re-building.
• Compassionate listening while there with as they interact with the survivors.

 But the main other strategic goal that came out of discussions revolved around the two biggest needs we found.  This will be discussed in our next blog. 

Sunday, nine of us went out to assess three camps in the Sichuan Province.  We arrived around two o’clock in order to visit three villages near the mountains.  With us we had brought seven tents that could house 10 people each, about 500 bars of soap, mosquito coils and toothbrushes.

  The first group that we visited was a refugee camps on the grounds of a plastic factory.  They were from the mountain region that had experienced with the earthquakes that had destroyed their villages.  I think I was the first westerner that they had met…maybe ever.  I was definitely a curious sight to them.  The government had placed in the on the grounds of a plastic factory as when they were in the village they were not welcomed.  The pollution was terrible from the factory.  There were approximately 400 people here in 23 tents, two families to a tent.  These represented two tribes.  No one died from this first group.  They were being served by one toilet, the corn field and the river for places to go to the bathroom…..mostly the river and cornfield.  They were foraging for wood for cooking by cutting green wet wood in the forest.  One well that pretty much could run continuously for water.  I tested it and it was fine.  The children were really responsive to being played with.  They also loved it when our volunteers played Chinese checkers with them and talked.  They told us that in the morning the line for the toilet takes hours.  They have no job as they were mountain farmers.  This village had ten kids 12 and under.  All kids 12 and older were at boarding school.  They really appreciated our mosquito coils for their tents and took them all.  Mosquitoes were eating them alive they said.

The second group had stayed in their village though it was rubble.  Most had tents or tarps.  A few had died including the mother of the only baby in the village.  Now no one could nurse them.  I asked the Chinese staff with me to explain that any woman who was a mother in the last ten years could nurse him as the baby would latch on and re-start milk flow but that was thought to be culturally too weird.   They reported that they were feeding the baby powdered milk (I hope that is not true and that it is formula).  One lady showed me her house.  It had not fallen completely down.  She wanted me to tell her that it was safe to move back in.  I couldn’t as structural cracks were everywhere and the walls were bent.  One of our volunteers asked me to do it anyway, but I told him that he could do it only if he would also say that he would be willing to let his daughters stay there too!  He decided to tell her it was unsafe.  This village had around 800 people.  No toilets except for the toilets in the damaged homes that they could get to.  This village had around 30 kids 12 year and under.  Only one government group had seen them as they were a little hard to find.  We gave them our tents and the balance of the soap and toothbrushes that we had left.  They were so grateful some started singing.

 The third group was in a village.  The village seemed very affluent when it was standing.  Almost half the population of this village was over 60 years old.  One man I met was a 96 year old man (I hope I look and get along as good at 80!)  He said when the earthquake began; he walked outside and hung on to a tree.  He wanted to show me the tree so we walked over together.  He offered for me to come into his makeshift shelter and smoke cigarettes with him (hospitality as cigarettes are expensive) but it was starting to get dark and we had to leave.   We had one other family come to see us and ask us to come to their home.  With a weird sense of pride they showed to us a rock that had come into their living room during the earthquake that measured about 12 feet in diameter.  Absolutely massive.  It had rolled down the mountain and into their house.

In this area, toilets were again a need as was wheelbarrows, sledgehammers and shovels to clear the rubble.  Also they needed a way to dry the rice at harvest.  They had no toilets as well.

In all three locations, all the tents were very leaky as it is the monsoon season.  Blue tarps would be great in covering the tents to protect them from the rain.   

Several things struck me.  The government has done a great job of addressing shelter and water and food.  They are to be commended for this.

Fuel for cooking, waterproofing tents, recreational equipment for children, and especially TOILETS were the biggest physical needs we found and this was confirmed by several other groups.  The other need was their need to talk. All of them wanted to talk and be listened to.  They also were despondent over not having work and the thought that they can’t go back to their old ways….especially the farmers who are illiterate for the most part.  There is a real need of micro-enterprise and re-training these men.