During the week of July 25, a single storm system moved across multiple states causing flash flooding from Missouri to parts of Virginia and West Virginia. The flooding resulted in damaged homes and buildings, loss of life, and whole towns left underwater, especially in the greater St. Louis, Mo., area and a large area of southeastern Kentucky. Brethren Disaster Ministries and the Material Resources program have been responding as possible and requested.
Coming this October, Brethren Disaster Ministries will be offering a short-term rebuilding response to the 2021 Kentucky winter storms event. This three-week response will be in partnership with Fuller Center Disaster Rebuilders.
Brethren Disaster Ministries has directed grants from the Church of the Brethren’s Emergency Disaster Fund (EDF) to various needs in recent weeks. A main focus has been the needs of Ukrainian refugees, with major grants going to Church World Service (CWS) relief focused on Ukrainian refugees sheltering in Moldova, to aid displaced Ukrainians with disabilities through L’Arche International, and to Child Life Disaster Relief programming for an orphanage in Ukraine.
Material Resource staff Scott Senseney and Jeffrey Brown loaded three 40-foot containers with a total of 1,120 bales of Lutheran World Relief Quilts, shipping them to the Republic of Georgia. The two men are on the staff of the Material Resources program based at warehouse facilities at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Md.
“This shipment has been in the works for quite a while but FINALLY is on its way,” reported Loretta Wolf, director of Material Resources for the Church of the Brethren.
The Church of the Brethren’s Material Resources program–which processes, warehouses, and ships relief materials on behalf of a number of partner organizations–recently made shipments to South Sudan, Haiti, and Guatemala. Warehouses are located at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Md.
Children’s Disaster Services (CDS) is holding two volunteer trainings this spring, in Pennsylvania in mid-May and in Washington State in early June.
Lisa Crouch, associate director of Children’s Disaster Services, a program within Brethren Disaster Ministries, has offered some helps and hints for talking with children about the situation in Ukraine.
All believers are called to continue praying for the people of Ukraine and all impacted by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Please also pray for world leaders and Russian leadership that a miracle will happen, and a road to peace and justice will be found. Brethren Disaster Ministries is monitoring the needs of response partners and mapping out the Church of the Brethren response.
In an ISWAP/Boko Haram attack on Kautikari town on Jan. 15, at least three people were killed and five people were abducted. Two churches of Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria) and more than 20 houses were burned. Kautikari is one of many communities devastated in Chibok and other local government areas in Borno State, Nigeria, where churches and Christians are targeted.
