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Haiti earthquake: You can make a difference

1/16  Working on AIM’s strategic response to Haiti’s situation. We’ll be taking groups in there this spring and summer. We’ll be taking volunteers for certain specific tasks beginning next week.   We’re developing plans to ship in food, water, and shelter. We’ll need people to dis…
By Seth Barnes
Haiti Relief
1/16  Working on AIM’s strategic response to Haiti’s situation. We’ll be taking groups in there this spring and summer. We’ll be taking volunteers for certain specific tasks beginning next week.
 
We’re developing plans to ship in food, water, and shelter. We’ll need people to distribute them and people to pray along the way. Please continue to sign up below if you’re interested in going or how you can help activate the church to go.
 
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1/15  Miguel Shaul, made it all the way to Port-au-Prince and back to our base in the Dominican Republic. He was able to see first hand what many of you have been watching on the news. While it was a heart wrenching day for him, he made some solid contacts and now have specific people and places to help.
Reports from other parts of Haiti are grim: “Friends who were in port today said it is horrific.  dead bodies are everywhere.  there is nowhere to go. millions homeless and starving.  at this time i know that no one except military, political and medical aid teams are aloud in the country.  
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1/14  Buses of people are arriving, and the hospital is overflowing.
Many of the injuries are devastating and surgeries are being put on
hold because of equipment problems. Medical supplies and personnel
continue to be a huge need.
 
Miguel brought food and one of the local
churches cooked a meal for 250 people at the hospital. They are
looking to cook 800-900 meals tomorrow. They say, “Thank you all who are donating
money!” 
 
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Here are my thoughts on the situation:
 
Port-au-Prince is going to be a scene of increasing misery as water shortages and disease spread.
 
The problem is not so much getting supplies in by air or by sea as it is distributing them from there. The infrastructure is in shambles.
Refugees will flee the capital by the thousands. There is no future for them there. They’ll go to distribution centers set up outside the capital, or flee the country entirely.
 
One of the best ways to get food and supplies into Haiti is overland from the Dominican Republic. AIM’s strategy will be to find outlying communities that have been devastated. If you give, $25 can buy a person’s food for a month. $4000 can get a million dollars worth of medicines there.
 
Expect compassion fatigue. Please remember Haiti after the media has moved on. Every few years a major calamity somewhere in the world
affords the church the opportunity to demonstrate love in action.
Katrina, the Tsunami, now Haiti. The church will lead the way in showing hope.
 
If you’d like to help make a difference, please join us. AIM has a base close to the Haitian border and we’re mobilizing to bring aid – we have a logistics team flying in next week to back up Miguel. Here are three things I recommend:
 
1.  Get real time updates by putting your name and email address (kept confidential) in the comment section below. I’ll let you know what’s going on from a ground-level perspective. And I’ll help you learn how you or others you know can go as volunteers.
 
2. If you’re interested in possibly going at some point or want to commit to pray, let me know. We need to begin mobilizing people.
 
3. Please give. Send money through this link. We’d like to raise $4000 tomorrow to ship $1 million worth of medicines donated by Beacon Missions to Haiti. We will ensure that your money is not wasted, but goes right to those who need it most.

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