Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
"...‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.
[ 'For my home was destroyed and you took me in, my belongings were gone and you provided for me, I was in pain, and you visited me to show your love and compassion.']"
“Then the righteous will answer him, ['Lord, when was your home destroyed and I took you in, your belongings gone and I provided for you, in pain and I visited you to show my love and compassion?’]"
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."...
Matthew 25:31 -40
We are a small developing ministry building crisis and disaster response teams; training and equipping the church to be effective ministers of love and compassion. Sheep.
We are similar to Billy Grahams Rapid Response Team (of who we are also members, but now called to build more teams). BGEA works alongside Samaritan's Purse. BGEA does the spiritual care- SP the practical helps. We do both on a much smaller scale (so far) as we build our trained spiritual care teams, and provide help anywhere we are needed. We also train others to provide effectively for local crisis response, when we are not needed for disasters. (Visit our web page)
What we do not have, is an international budget nor salaries. We do not have a professional photographer, nor the man- power to always have pictures to show the work we are doing - like right now. We also have the sensitivity to respect the privacy of who we are working with, so pictures are not always a priority.
100% of donations go to deployments - we do not even reimburse ourselves for many expenses, fully committed to this ministry. I (Jamie) am acting director, and ordained and endorsed as a chaplain - do not take any pay, working more than full time. None of our board members of staff are paid.
The majority of donations from large corporations like Walmart, now go directly to the Red Cross, making the task of grants and fundraising difficult, and time consuming, for small scale operations and other NGO's. (You will no longer see Teen Challenge outside Walmart.)
Our volunteers must self-deploy - simply because they love Jesus, and desire to share His love and compassion with others - we are able to provide housing, most meals, and usually on-sight transportation for our volunteers.
We are not all professionals - though we have a mixture of professionals and "lay" persons. We are recruiting teams that include mental health, chaplains, R.N.'s, fire and rescue - peers of all types, men and women.
We had truly hoped to get more people interested in training before a disaster hit - especially locally, but everything happens in His time.
Now is the time. The secular world is responding in droves. This is our opportunity - the church - to show the sacrificial love of Jesus - in action.
We need financial donations for expenses, material donations of cleaning supplies, and MATURE CHRISTIAN VOLUNTEERS.
We will be driving trucks down to Schenectady to pick up donations from Convoy of Hope, tomorrow morning - renting a truck if we do not have one provided.
We have a team in VT hiking into the hills to minister to people cut off, at the invitation of the Red Cross. (Perhaps pictures and stories will follow tonight)
We are in contact with non-government and government officials.
We are in this for the long haul. We COVET your prayers for the victims of this disaster in NY and VT, safety of our volunteers, and provision for this work to continue.
Please stay tuned to this blog for daily reports and needs. Please post your availability, or contact me with your contact information at: jamie@hesedhope.org
In His Loving Service,
Jamie and Dave and Hesed Hope Staff
www.hesedhope.org
No comments:
Post a Comment