wfn.org | UMNS# 036-Methodists provide aid in hard-hit Indonesian province

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Methodists provide aid in hard-hit Indonesian province

Jan. 14, 2005

NOTE: Photographs, audio and related reports - UMNS stories #034-035 and
#037-038 - are available at http://umns.umc.org.

By Linda Bloom

BIREUEN, Indonesia (UMNS) - When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
visited Banda Aceh to survey tsunami damage there, the world's attention
followed.

Other scenes of destruction in the Aceh Province have received less
notice. The town of Bireuen is one of them, according to the Rev. Fajar
Lim of the Gereja Methodist Indonesia (Methodist Church of Indonesia).

"As far as you can see, all of the houses of fishermen in Bireuen are
demolished," Lim tells a delegation of visiting United Methodists.

Fishing boats also were destroyed and crops cannot be replanted for at
least a year. "The salt coming from the ocean water has permeated all
the farmland," he explains.

The Methodist church in Bireuen has become a coordination center for
assistance to the 11 area camps holding some 8,600 internally displaced
people. One service has been to sponsor teams of doctors and nurses from
the Chinese Christian Relief Association in Taiwan.

Dr. Charles Yeh, a gynecologist, has just arrived in Bireuen on Jan. 13
with a new team from Taiwan. They will provide clinics in the camps for
the next week. Of most concern, he says, are infectious diseases such as
pneumonia and diarrhea.

One of his team's stops will be a camp of about 700 in a resort area
known as Bateilik. Families there live under large tents and congregate
under trees and along the riverbank. Large metal tanks provide clean
drinking water.

Although children, who are in joyful abundance at the camp, and the
elderly are most vulnerable to disease after such a disaster, Yeh
believes the water setup there and at other camps will help contain any
major outbreaks. "I think the situation is quite stable," he says.

The Methodist assistance is provided to people of all religions,
according to Bishop Rusman Pungka Mual, but their work is sometimes
challenged by the fact that they are a minority in an overwhelmingly
Muslim country.

"In our Christian ministry, we have encountered numerous difficulties,
especially in Banda Aceh and Aceh Province as a whole," he explains.

The response by Indonesian Methodists to the tsunami disaster will
continue to receive support from United Methodists through the United
Methodist Committee on Relief, according to the Rev. Paul Dirdak,
UMCOR's chief executive.

A delegation from the denomination presented a supply of medicines to
Yeh and Indonesian Methodists as a symbolic gesture of the desire to
assist. "Any amount of pharmaceutical distribution that they want to
undertake we will support," Dirdak adds.

Other avenues of support to be investigated, he says, include developing
theological tools to use in relationship to the tragedy and assisting
with proven methods of water safety and building construction.

For example, if Indonesian Methodists encounter a community where clean
water is a problem, he says, "We can provide equipment that will stay in
that community and purify water for years to come."

Machines that make blocks for building construction have been successful
in Mozambique and several other countries, according to Dirdak.

In the future, it is possible that UMCOR will serve as an implementing
agency for Action by Churches Together, a coalition of religious-based
relief organization.

In that case, Dirdak says, they would work with the Office Coordination
Humanitarian Assistance agency of the United Nations to help determine
which communities in the countries affected by the tsunami disaster "are
being underserved" by relief groups.

"Our expertise is community-based construction and income-generation,"
he explains. UMCOR does "accompanied returns," working on a case-by-case
basis with families in camps for the internally displaced to rebuild
homes or provide for relocation.

Donations to UMCOR's "South Asia Emergency" relief efforts can be placed
in local church offering plates or sent directly to UMCOR, 475 Riverside
Drive, Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Designate checks for UMCOR Advance
#274305 and "South Asia Emergency." Online donations can be made at
www.methodistrelief.org. Those making credit-card donations can call
(800) 554-8583. One hundred percent of the money donated to "South Asia
Emergency" goes to that relief effort.

Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

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United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org