My brother Scott is currently in Pakistan, with a group of 6 others from his church helping build shelters for one of the remote villages. I just got a quick update that I thought I’d share, as it really illustrates what is still needed in the area. Bryan is the lead there, I believe, and John is the local pastor.
Bryan has some prayer requests. The most important is the physical safety of the team. They are working in incredibly steep areas where the possibility of dangerous falls is always present. Trails and roads are falling away in after-shocks. Currently they are cut off from any ground transport, even by hiking. This is part of the reason they will do all their work in this one village. A prayer concern is that a helo comes in that can take them out on the 18th. It is their only way out. Apparently communications are iffy at best. Right now there is a lot of helo traffic but that is going to decrease because the team and construction gear has already been dropped. They are also concerned about resupply. They have three days of fuel for their stoves and three days of food, primarily power bars! They are assuming, hoping, they will be resupplied by helo’s coming in. (In fact one landed while we were talking) The helo’s in their area are Swiss and German, by the way.
They are linked up now with 7 members of a Swiss team making a total team of 14. They are building their own shelter right now and then will continue on building others. They are relieving another Swiss team who had a medical emergency.
The positives: They continue to be greeted with overwhelming grace, thankfulness and courtesy by the people there. They were introduced this morning to the villages’s second oldest citizen, 120 yrs old. They will meet the oldest sometime this week, 135 yrs old!!! The village has a population of about 7000 right now, 60% men, 40% women. Somewhere between 1400 and 1500 were killed
during the quake.They desperately need at least two female doctors - please pray for that. Many women are injured and not being treated due to the rules about male/female contact.
Bryan reports that there are medics there from Cuba who are doing a great job with the men. Many Korean teams are in various areas doing great work. They have a great working relationship with the Pakistani military who are present in the village. They are working directly with a 22 yr old Lt. who is a great guy. Bryan said that all the military officers he has met are first class and would be leaders in any military. The military presence is necessary because of an unexpected problem. The outgoing Swiss team reported that the first shelters they built were taken apart and the pieces then sold by various persons in the village! The military is now choosing who will receive shelters and is watching over them. The officer is disgusted with the behavior of some of the village people who seem clueless about what is going to happen to those who don’t have shelter.
Praises: Team morale is high. No one is sick. They have been keeping their rules about drinking only bottled water and eating very carefully, mostly their own stuff. The Swiss teams have had major sickness due to not being so careful! As Bryan and I talked the weather was beautiful but about to change. They are expecting rain over the next three days. (not snow yet even though the altitude is 6000 feet where Bryan was talking to me.) I told him of my prayers about blocking with the snow - he reports that appears to be working! Keep on praying and commanding the weather.
Confidence level is high that they will be able to get enough shelters built to protect this entire village. One other good news thing - one of the guys brought a whole bunch of balloons with him (I think it was Scott) and that has proven to be important. They have been handing out balloons to kids and playing with them and the whole village has turned out to both watch and play themselves. I gather that play has been hard to come by with so many dead.
That’s about it. Bryan’s main concerns are that the guys keep safe as they fatigue over the next 10 days or so, that they receive resupply on food and fuel, and that they get timely helo transport out so they can make their return plane trip!
I think that is about it for the summary. They feel our prayers and we need to continue to pray in earnest. God keep them and help us all to hold them up.
John
It was indeed Scott who brought the balloons; I was down visiting him last week while he was priming them. i wasn’t sure if the kids there would appreciate it, but looks like they are, which is just great. He also brought 3 0-degree sleeping bags from Wal-Mart for $40. His plan was to give two to whomever needed them back there, and when they were done in two weeks to leave the other.
This has been a pretty bad year as far as natural disasters go. We started off with the tsunami that killed well over 200,000 people. We then had Hurricane Katrina, which while it only killed about 1,000 it pretty much destroyed New Orleans. And then we have the earthquake. The current tally is about 80,000n dead. What’s worse is that unlike the tsunami and hurricane, the survivors have winter coming which is likely to kill many more.
I’m pretty proud of my brother for doing this. It’s something to spend your two weeks of vacation building emergency shelters in December, especially in an area that’s been in the news due to the conflict over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. But it needs to get done, and I’m really thankful that Scott is able to help how he can — from building shelters to balloon animals.