As disasters strike it can sometimes be difficult to connect with how our work really impacts people’s lives. This can be especially true for slow-building disasters like droughts, where there is really not one specific event or moment in time that stands for the disaster. We hear and see in the news how people are suffering and we read about how much is being raised in response and how these gifts are being used, but it just doesn’t sink home.

Sometimes we need a story. To connect us with the life of another. To see the face of one impacted by a faceless event. To have it sink home. That’s the way I felt after reading the ACT Alliance story of Galemo.

As it turns out the act of collecting water and food falls, literally, on the backs of the women in Ethiopia. As the drought has worsened conditions, causing wells to run dry and ponds to disappear, women like Galemo must walk farther and try carrying more to save on multiple trips. Even then this is at times not enough. For Galemo, she is only able to pause for a moment to speak about her story as she hopes to get back home to do chores in time to head out for a second multi-hour run for water.

So as I read about the gifts of the ELCA, especially those pre-position in Dec of last year, being used by partners like LWF to provide drinkable water to communities, I think of Galemo’s story. Of how something that seems so simple as providing a glass of clean water for someone can have such an impact. This is what it means to be there, waiting, ready and capable. To not only be Disaster Response but also Disaster Prepared.

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Gifts to ELCA International Disaster Response allow the church to respond globally in times of need. Donate now.

The new country of South Sudan was officially brought into being on July 9. In the new capital of Juba thousands came out to celebrate this historic moment and lament the tragedy that has gone before it.

As this new country takes its first steps it is still struggling with the legacy of violence between northern and southern Sudan as well as issues of poverty, health and education. Take a moment to read the ACT Alliance story South Sudan: warm welcome to unsteady nation to learn more about how the ELCA through its partnership in ACT has been and will continue working with the southern Sudanese as they become citizens of their own country.

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Gifts to ELCA International Disaster Response allow the church to respond globally in times of need. Donate now.

Pastor Eric Olaf Olson and his congregation of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church and school in Plainview NY were amazed by turnout for their “Cranes of Compassion” event held to help raise awareness and funds for the relief effort still continuing for those affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Led by current and alumni Japanese families whose children have attend the church’s early childhood center, those who attended the event were treated to sushi and curried rice made by the owner of a local sushi restaurant. They also learned how to make tsuru, Japanese for crane, origami to be shared with one of the Lutheran congregations of Sendai, Japan.

Thanks to many hands making light work the group was able to surpass their goal of making over 1,000 cranes! As another way of showing solidarity with our Japanese sisters and brothers they also raised over $3,500 for ELCA Disaster Response to help meet the continuing needs of those affected in Japan.

Our prayers of thanksgiving go out to Good Shepherd and the attendees of the Cranes of Compassion event as they continue to live out a vision of accompaniment where even the act of folding paper is God’s work being done through our hands.

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Gifts to ELCA International Disaster Response allow the church to respond globally in times of need. Donate now.

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

I’ve been working in Minot, North Dakota this week.  Historic flooding brought the Souris River here over its banks, defeating levee attempts and devastating Minot and other communities like Burlington.  Over 5,000 homes and hundreds of businesses are flooded in these communities.  This flood has been very slow to recede, with water still over the first floors of many structures, and as such, hundreds of homes and businesses will probably need to be condemned and torn down.  A boil order remains in effect for the Minot water system for the foreseeable future.

This flood has acutely impacted the Lutheran community.  Lutherans are the majority religious group in this part of the country.  Four ELCA churches have sustained flood damage.  First Lutheran in Minot and Peace Lutheran in Burlington have extensive damage in their basements, with yet unassessed damage from humidity on the main floors.  Augustana Lutheran and Christ Lutheran in Minot had significant amounts of water in the sanctuary of the buildings.  We were not yet able to enter these churches to assess the extent of the damage, but it will certainly be heart breaking.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week with Bishop Mark Narum of the Western North Dakota Synod.  Bishop Narum has been in Minot nearly every day of this crisis, ministering to the affected communities and supporting the clergy here.  Bishop Narum estimates that the combined damage to ELCA churches in this area will be well over $1 million.  With hundreds of members’ homes flooded, along with the churches, rebuilding will be a long and difficult journey.

Bishop Narum gathered many of the pastors and other leaders at Bethany Lutheran Church on Wednesday morning for fellowship and mutual support.  At least 10 ELCA pastors’ homes are flooded, along with the rest of their community.  We spoke as a group about the long-term plans to coordinate volunteers and restore homes, churches and lives.  No one here doubts that this will all come to pass, but for now, there is deep pain.

We need to rest for this moment in the experience of all that has been lost.  I met Gary Johnson, the council president of Augustana Lutheran.  Mr. Johnson shared with me that his grandfather was a founding member of Augustana.  Gary’s three children and a grandchild were all baptized at Augustana.  Generations of worship and prayer hallow a place like Augustana, and it is deeply painful knowing that it sits, for now, cut off and surrounded in a watery place.

I fellowshipped with Pastor John Streccius and Pastor Nathan Mugaas, both of Zion Lutheran Church in Minot.  It was a reunion of sorts, as years ago, during my first call after seminary, I used to attend sermon text study at a church in Hoople, North Dakota where Pastor Streccius was serving at the time.  Both Pastors Streccius and Mugaas have flooded homes at this time, and they and their families are staying at members’ homes.  John and Nathan are sustaining pastoral ministry among the people of Zion Lutheran Church, with about a hundred members with flooded homes, even as they also deal with their own losses.

In the midst of so much ambiguity and loss, signs of hope and progress are emerging.  Local planning of volunteer efforts here is underway with Lutheran Social Services and other local organizations.  Training for homeowners is being offered this week on how to safely enter and clean up a flood-affected property.  Yesterday, Mayor Zimbelman informed us that he wants  Lutheran Disaster Response to oversee the volunteer efforts for clean-up in Minot, and he announced the same publicly in a press conference later in the day.  It’s a daunting task, but many organizations together will cooperate to serve here.

I was very appreciative this week for Sherie Heine and her mother, Pat.  Sherie is vice president of the Western North Dakota synod council.  The Heines hosted me at their home in Minot, since every motel room in town is currently occupied by evacuees from the flood zone.  Sherie is leading an important initiative for the synod to raise funds to assist the flooded churches.

Please pray with me for the people and pastors of Minot and Burlington impacted by these terrible losses, and for the many others in North Dakota and elsewhere affected by floods this spring and summer.  They will need the whole church to help them recover.  They will need sustained prayer.  They will need volunteers, when the time is right, to help clean up and rebuild.  And they will need financial support to help restore the damaged congregations, as they plan and hope for a new future of ministry here in the Souris River Valley.

In service,

Rev. Kevin A. Massey
Program Director

Reduced rains have led to drought throughout the Horn of Africa leading a severe water shortage and higher food prices as crops and animals pass away and are eaten for survival. Many have had to leave their homes in search of food and water. Below is the story of Luley Hassan Aden as shared by Faith Kagwiria, who works at the refugee camp in Dadaab.

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Luley Hassan Aden is a young woman of 19 years, living on the outskirts of section L10, Hagadera Refugee Camp in Dadaab, North Eastern Kenya. This is where many newly arrived people from Somalia, like herself, are settling. This afternoon she is resting and cooking in a space between her Tukul (a small Somali type of “lounge”) and her “house”, which is a tent she received from the LWF three days ago.

Luley married when she had just turned 17 and is now the mother of two children. After living peacefully with her husband in Sakow division, Bu’alle district in the middle Juba region of Somalia, she decided to start the longest journey of her life, fleeing from the insecurity that had become unbearable.

“I needed to look for peace for my children and myself, not caring to know where I was going,” he says poignantly. Her husband was forced to flee from their home due to fears of being killed by the militia, after he refused to enlist himself as a fighter. “I don’t know if my husband is alive or dead, and when my children ask when their dad is coming, I always lie to them that he went for a long journey and has delayed there because of lack of money,” she narrates as her watery-eyes stare with desperation.

At home in Somalia they kept cattle and she started her journey to Kenya bringing the family livestock with her. But all the cattle died before she found her way to the refugee camp. On their way from Sokow, between Dhooble and Loboi, they encountered bandits who robbed all the people in her ‘convoy’ and left them with no valuables.

Luleys says that she is slowly beginning to accept her situation, and is trying to adapt to her new status in Hagadera camp, as a refugee assisted by relatives and agencies. Her greatest challenge is how to bring up her two children in the camps, without her husband.

When she arrived in Hagadera, relatives in the camp first hosted her in a small dilapidated Tukul. She stayed in this structure for four days weathering the biting cold of the night that did not have mercy for her children. “I had never stayed in a Tukul as my house, and my children developed a cold. Life was so miserable and I felt I had lost it all” says Luley.

She was visited by the block leader who took her details and gave her the ration card number for food distribution. The same afternoon she was visited by a team of staff in the camp. “We found her in an unbearable state and based on the criteria we use, she was given priority. We have done follow-up visit and provided her with a tent to sleep in” explains Keinan, a LWF social worker based in Hagadera.

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Gifts to ELCA International Disaster Response allow the church to respond globally in times of need. Donate now.