HORNS OF PLENTY:
Baptists Minister to Venezuelan Disaster Victims
___By Kenneth MacHarg
___Latin America Mission
___LAS TUNITAS, Venezuela--It's been a year and a half since floods and landslides devastated the Venezuelan coastline, but the scars remain fresh on the land and the lives of residents.
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KAREN HORN and her husband, Darrell (above), have coordinated disaster relief and, more importantly, have helped Venezuelans cope with spiritual questions that plague victims of catastrophic natural disasters.
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___"These people will never be the same because of the disaster," said International Mission Board missionary Karen Horn. "Although people are starting to rebuild their lives, it's almost like a chapter they want to close."
___The disaster brought many opportunities for ministry, but residents may not consciously connect the cause-and-effect relationship, added Horn, a former Texan. "The people coming to the Lord now would not consciously give a direct connection that they have been traumatized and have a hurt and that God is beginning to fill that hurt."
___While the work of Horn and her husband, Darrell, is more like "normal missionary work" now, the areas where they work still carry the scars of the disaster.
___Neighborhoods still look like war scenes from Chechnya or earthquake devastation in
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EVIDENCE of catastrohpic natural disasters still scars the Venezuelan coastline near Las Tunitas.
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India, with the exception that most buildings are buried or filled up through the second floor with rocks and mud, bodies of family members still entombed inside.
___Nobody really knows how many died in the disaster, and few are willing to guess.
___"The government says 30,000; I think 50,000, but residents along the coast say more than 100,000," said Darrell Horn, who headed Southern Baptist disaster relief for the past year and a half.
___"I really don't know how many died," added Rebecca
Dominguez, a Venezuelan from an independent church who has led her congregation in relief work along the coast. "Just last week they dug out a house and found a whole family, including a baby, buried in there."
___Reminders of the disaster are visible all along the coast. In some places, the water line is a block or more away from where it was before. The sweep of water and mud dumped tons of dirt into the ocean, and rescue workers added to the fill as they removed debris. Many former residential neighborhoods have been declared cemeteries by the government because so many bodies are buried under rubble.
___Other damage is equally serious but not as visible.
___"It not only broke up families but destroyed social roots and traditions," said Berenice Cabrera, who heads relief efforts for the Evangelical Council of Venezuela. "Communities were broken apart."
___Churches were among the first to respond to the needs
___"I remember feeling a sense of frustration seeing the chaos on TV," Mrs. Horn said.
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MORE than 100,000 people may have died in floods and landslides devastated Venezuela's coast a year and a half ago.
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"When I looked at the disaster, I thought, we have a small window; we have a year and a half for people to have a tender heart toward the gospel because of their hurts. I knew that if a team could mobilize quickly and impact physically, we could also impact spiritually for the kingdom."
___Southern Baptists did respond quickly, releasing $25,000 from hunger relief funds to purchase food and another $50,000 for disaster relief. Horn, a former minister in Texas churches, was appointed as the team leader for disaster relief and quickly moved to meet some of the more pressing human and spiritual needs.
___Pure drinking water became an immediate need. Horn worked with the Venezuelan military to ship in several large water purifiers from Miami.
___"This was a miracle because we couldn't get anything into the country, but through the military we got the machines," he said. "It was a blessing of God that it happened."
___Baptists from Alabama and Texas sent in teams to set up the machines and train local leaders on how to use them.
___"There were no jobs along the coast," Horn explained. "So we would find a brother in the Lord, often the pastor of a Baptist church, and pay him to take care of the machines."
___The Horns also organized food and clothing distribution in the affected areas, using Baptist churches as distribution points.
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VENEZUELANS still are recovering. "Although people are starting to rebuild their lives, it's almost like a chapter they want to close," explains Karen Horn, a missionary with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.
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___"We tried to have Christian people who were able to minister to the people when they came to get water," Mrs. Horn said. "We were meeting a specific physical need, but they became opportunities for us and the Venezuelans to share the word. Many church members distributed tracts and words of comfort to the people."
___Meanwhile, her husband began working with two Baptists, one from the IMB and one from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, to provide a workshop on dealing with trauma.
___As life settles back to near normal, Christians are moving from emergency relief to church building.
___"Through the efforts of many, quite a number of people came to know the Lord," Mrs. Horn reported. Relief workers believe a high proportion of those who died were children and teenagers. Because of that, many youth are coming to the churches to ask questions and seek guidance, and many of them are finding Christ.
___Cabrera believes God is using the disaster to motivate the churches and raise up new leadership as well as to lead people to faith. Now Christians in Venezuela face the challenge of training the new believers.
___"Groups were formed all along the coast, small home groups meeting the people's spiritual needs," Mrs. Hale said. "When you have that many people come to the Lord and being saved, you can get into a leadership crisis. We believe that after people are saved, they need to be discipled into the fold of the church."
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