Relief Efforts

We've been privledged over the past few days to join forces with many of Willow Creek's partner churches over the past 3-4 days to help with the relief effort. Mark/I know what a blessing it is to work for a big church like Willow, but we were especially touched this past week when the church was able to tap into its "disaster relief fund" and send money down within 24 hours of when we requested it. Here are a few photos from Saturday.

Loading the truck with mattresses, food, clothing, water and wheelbarrows (to help shovel the mud out of any houses that were salvageble). Mark, in black, is loading the truck in this photo.

One of our partner churches in Santo Domingo, Nueva Vida, has a recently installed water purification system and clean drinking water project in their community. Following the storm, they have been giving out free drinking water to all of their neighbors, and we took advantage of their offer and took 40 5-gallon jugs into the interior.

Here is the water project from the outside. The bikes outside the window are for the delivery boys who take the water to the homes that ask for the water to be brought to their home.

This photo is of when we arrived at one of the pastor's homes, which has now been converted into a distribution center for the entire community. From there, all of the goods/supplies are brought to the refugee centers (full of people who lost everything in the storm) and I was able to deliver new flip-flops to some of the small children.