Asia (MNN) — A Christian child sponsorship ministry is doing all it can to help the evangelical church respond to the needs of tsunami victims all over Asia. With the death toll approaching 300,000, the needs are not going away, says Compassion International’s David Dahlin (dah-LEEN).
One Compassion child was killed in the tsunami, but many other Compassion children were affected. “Where we were hardest hit in our existing projects was a long the coast of India, where the tsunami wiped out a lot of homes and fishing villages there. So, a lot of the children’s families lost their fishing boats and their fishing nets and really all of their belongings.”
Compassion is currently strategically working through the process of seeing if they need to expand their outreach through the local church in other areas. Banda Aceh is one area Dahlin says he’s praying about. “Aceh, where a lot of the relief work is going on, hasn’t been very open to Christian work. And, there’s some hope that because of all the international influence during this relief effort that maybe that province will become more open to Christian churches and even Compassion’s work.”
While long term relief is Compassion’s specialty, their also providing for the emergency needs of victims in some of these creative access areas. “In those circumstances we would be much more careful in terms of how we are communicating our Christian stance of the Gospel so that it doesn’t get misinterpreted that this is kind of an underhanded way to proselytize in an environment that’s heavily Muslim in Indonesia or heavily Hindu in India.” But, making clear they’re doing the work in Christ Name.
If you’d like to help sponsor children through Compassion International go to http://www.Compassion.com or call 800- 336-7676.
