MTW Disaster Response: Working Hotspots around the World
Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, Haiti … these are just a few of the locales where Mission to the World’s Disaster Response Department is at work.
“Our volunteers respond rapidly to calls around the world to bring medical care, crisis counseling support, and engineering/construction assistance after a disaster strikes,” said Doug Mallow, director of the MTW Disaster Response Department. “We partner with church planters already in the field to strengthen church plants and gain access to areas that may not have been previously open to the gospel.”
Those areas are scattered across the globe. In Zimbabwe, MTW is sending an advance needs assessment team to help a local church minister to those affected by a cholera outbreak. In Nicaragua, MTW is returning to the Mosquito Coast to provide follow-up construction help to a village devastated by the hurricanes of 2007. And in Haiti, MTW is sending a counseling team to train local pastors and leaders in the aftermath of 2008’s Hurricane Ike.
MTW missionary Esaie Etienne and his family escaped their home in Gonaives, Haiti, with just the clothes on their backs. But six months later, God is redeeming this tragedy.
Within weeks of the storms, 300 families in Gonaives received food via MTW’s Disaster Response ministry. One month later, the ministry sent a disaster-trained medical team to provide medical care for 250 people. And these outreaches have opened up relationships and connections that have now facilitated the beginning of a church plant in Gonaives.
“Since the storm, we have started a church and are averaging 100 worshipers each week,” said Etienne. “Now we’re trying to purchase land near our home for a church building.”
The Disaster Response Ministry plans to continue its unique church-planting work in 2009.
“We respond as a small, self-sustaining, mobile unit that allows us to set-up and live in the refugee camp with the refugees,” said Mallow. “This opens up incredible opportunities to show the eternal truths of the gospel … even in closed countries that otherwise would not have been accessible. Our prayer is that even in these extreme circumstances, God will use our hands to show His love to His children.”
To learn more MTW’s Disaster Response Department, contact Doug Mallow at doug.mallow@mtw.org.
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