While Alabama Baptists are in high gear heading up national Southern Baptist tsunami relief efforts in Thailand, the Birmingham Baptist Association (BBA) has agreed to assist the International Mission Board (IMB) and the Georgia Baptist convention in Indonesia.
Beginning in August, the association will concentrate its resources on an island — unnamed for security reasons — off the coast of the larger Indonesian island of Sumatra. In conjunction with Georgia Baptists, who are leading relief work in the region, Birmingham Baptists will be some of the first to take the love of Christ to the people of that island.
“There are no relief agencies on the island, and they (government officials) are allowing us to come offer humanitarian relief,” said Ricky Creech, BBA director of missions. “We have been challenging every church in our association to develop intentional strategies for reaching people, and this is the Macedonian piece to the Acts 1:8 Challenge.”
Creech said the association is planning to take teams over every month until the end of 2006, doing work such as water purification, construction and medical and dental ministry.
Though he anticipates that it will be predominantly Birmingham Baptist churches that work on the island, any other Baptist or evangelical church is invited to go minister there.
Keeping the ball rolling
Jim Brown, world hunger and relief ministries consultant for the IMB, said the concentrated giving of resources will help relief efforts “get out of emergency mode and into more long-term work.” Birmingham Baptists will be the ones to keep the ball rolling after work on the island is up and running, Brown said.
So far, the BBA has raised $50,000 for tsunami relief. Georgia Baptists, with help from the BBA on the one particular island, are spearheading work in Indonesia in a manner similar to how Alabama Baptists are organizing relief work in Thailand.
Most of the 14 teams slated to go work in Thailand over the course of the next year and a half are already full, said Tommy Puckett, director of disaster relief for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM).
“It’s a God thing,” Puckett said. “Alabama Baptists have responded super well, and there are just a few individual spots still open.” The first Alabama team to Thailand left July 17, with the next one following in mid-August.
For information on BBA’s ministry in Indonesia, call 205-599-3245.
For information on how to volunteer for one of the state’s trips to Thailand, call Puckett at the SBOM at 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 229.
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