Today six pastors and three laypeople from southern Chile churches brought flour, rice, pasta, water, coffee, tea, sugar and toiletry items to Concepcion, Los Angeles, Laja, and Cerro Verde for distribution by the churches.

Lord Merino, a pastor in Temuco and Director of the Southern District, writes about what he saw today.

"The hardest thing to see, apart from so much destruction, was the people’s hunger.   To rise up as a country the first thing we need to do is eat, and the people are so hungry that it seems difficult for them even to rise up.  I gave away the money you sent to women and children of Cerro Verde that were so hungry.  In the end nothing was sufficient.  There are so many stories.  It was complicated even to take a photo without feeling morbid and being afraid of offending them, that they might think we were just tourists.  As the curfew was about to fall, we were giving away even the crumbs of bread we had in our pockets.  To have a little clean water was a privilege.
 
The woman in the photo is Mariela, with her little son.  She is the secretary of the Cerro Verde church.  She and her mother, also, lost their houses.  Many others in the church lost their homes. 

People are walking along the coastline, dazed, without anywhere to go, with a lost look in their eyes.  We did not see many children in the streets because it is not safe for them.  The curfew only allows six hours in the daytime to walk around and they use it to look for water coming from springs higher up the hills, trickling over the sides of the highway, or to look for food wherever they can.
 
Help from the government still has not gotten there.  Distribution of food and water is a chaos.  The women need clean clothes and intimate wear.  They don’t have blankets, bedding, bed clothes.  They are living in unstable, makeshift shelters for six days now.  They can’t bathe.  They sleep by day and guard their things through the night.  We just hope it doesn’t rain because that would be the end."

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send your donation to:

OGHS - Chile Earthquake Relief

International Ministries

P.O. Box 851

Valley Forge, PA  19482-0851