On Sunday morning, Dec. 26, a small group of Christians gathered for worship in a church on the Kanchipuram shore of Southern India.

Sometime around 9 a.m., the church’s organist, a woman named Lydia, looked up from her instrument to take in a horrifying sight—an enormous tidal wave was barreling down on the congregation. “People were screaming and scrambling to get away,” she told Kids for the Kingdom, a missionary organization based in Chennai, India. According to Lydia, 40 to 50 people were in her church that morning. A day after the tidal wave hit, she had come to a sorrowful conclusion: “I am the sole survivor.”

Weeks after a catastrophic tsunami swept through Southeast Asia, the sorrow has been multiplied thousands of times over. More than 150,000 men, women, and children are dead, and thousands more are missing. Millions are homeless with little-to-no access to clean drinking water and food, and millions more face the threat of deadly diseases.

Thousands of miles away, Christians in the U.S. are searching for ways to practice what James in his epistle called “pure and undefiled religion”—looking after widows and orphans in their distress. Those looking for ways to be merciful need not look far. Christian organizations and denominations are working round-the-clock to provide critical aid in one of the most massive relief efforts in history.

Within hours of the tsunami’s devastating landfall, North Carolina-based Samaritan’s Purse was dispatching relief workers to some of the hardest-hit areas in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, and Thailand. Jeremy Blume, a spokesman for the ministry founded by Franklin Graham, said Samaritan’s Purse workers are teaming up with indigenous Christian organizations in the affected areas to provide food, water, medicine, and temporary shelter. Graham joined relief workers in Asia during the second week of January.

Samaritan’s Purse is addressing the severe shortage of clean water by providing enough purification packets to decontaminate two million gallons of water—enough to supply 10,000 people with safe water for the next two months. The organization is also setting up systems that can desalinate ocean water and meet the daily needs of 12,000 people.

Darren Tosh, a Samaritan’s Purse worker who was dispatched to Sri Lanka just days after the tsunami hit, said the loss and the needs are overwhelming. “The tsunami may be over,” Tosh said, “but the disaster is just beginning.”

The relief efforts of other Christian organizations are just beginning as well. World Vision (WV), a Christian relief and development organization, has local offices in each of the hardest-hit countries.

In Indonesia, where at least 80,000 people have died, WV is distributing much-needed non-food relief aid, such as tarpaulins, cooking utensils, buckets, sarongs, soaps, masks, and mosquito nets to 25,000 people. In Sri Lanka, where nearly 40,000 have died, WV has already provided food, water, and medicine to thousands of survivors. In India, with a death toll near 10,000, WV plans to provide aid to 35,000 people over the next month. And in Thailand, where about 5,000 died, WV staffers have begun constructing hundreds of temporary housing units for the homeless.

Mission to the World (MTW)—the missions agency of the Presbyterian Church in America—has sent a disaster response team to Colombo, Sri Lanka, where the denomination has nationals already in place. The response team will help with medical, safety, and pastoral needs, according to Paul Kooistra, an MTW spokesman.

Christian relief organizations say the best way people can help tsunami victims is to make a financial contribution to a relief agency with contacts on the ground in affected areas. The overwhelming need will call for an overwhelming response from the Christian community, relief workers say.

MTW’s Paul Kooistra said there’s something else Christians can do: pray. “Please pray for the physical and emotional needs of these hurting souls,” he said, “as well as the spiritual response they may make to the Lord, as our team and Christians everywhere reach out with the compassion of Christ.”

(EP News)

What Some RP Contributions Are Providing

A number of RP congregations and individuals chose to send a contribution for tsunami aid efforts to World Relief. World Relief is the relief and development arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, of which the RPCNA is a member denomination.

How is World Relief using aid money in the affected areas? According to press releases, World Relief has partnered with local churches, local church associations, and relief organizations to accomplish the following:

In Indonesia

• Train volunteers who are distributing emergency aid.

• Provide food, clothing, and medicine.

• Bring in five water purification plants, each capable of serving 2,500 people per day.

In Sri Lanka

• Provide trucks filled with water, food, infant clothing, plastic sheeting, and cooking utensils that are distributing their cargo to different locations—a task made difficult by the damaged roadways.

• Prepare to send a team of disaster management advisors to assist the national partners.

In India

• Provide funds for immediate relief.

• Help with housing rehabilitation.

In addition to what World Relief has already done, they are setting the groundwork for long-term rehabilitation in all three countries.