Evangelical Social Concern Expressed Overseas

by Lillian H. Graffam

Give us a chance to live! We want to learn! We need food and shelter to survive! The agony is personal. The needs are individual.

Give us a chance to live! We want to learn! We need food and shelter to survive! The agony is personal. The needs are individual.

It was to make the gospel personal in a way that suffering humanity could understand, that the World Relief Commission was formed in 1944 as the overseas relief arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.

In 1945 the flexible program of the commission started with shipment to Europe of clothing with a value of half a million dollars. Through the years the commission has continued to heal earth’s wounds in many other troubled spots and in many other ways.

In 1970, five million people benefited from 26 million pounds of food, clothing, medicine, and educational and hospital equipment worth in excess of $2,500,000. This was done on a budget of about a half-million dollars. The large ratio of service to income was partially possible because most of the food was Public Law-480 food-for-peace supplied by the U.S. Government.

WRC’s outreach is loosely divided into two categories: (1) direct relief to disaster victims, refugees, orphans, leprosy victims, hospital patients, and (2) long-range self-help assistance with food-for-work programs adapted to the need and situation. Always the help is given without racial or religious discrimination and only long enough to enable people to become self-sufficient. When the need has been met, the programs are phased out and the nationals take over.

EVANGELICAL COOPERATION
This is an evangelical operation all the way. All personnel in the commission, from the executives in the States to nationals in foreign countries who distribute commodities, are from theologically conservative denominations.

It is a cooperative, reciprocal arrangement. The denominations supply personnel, and WRC provides leadership, funds, food, clothing, medicine, blankets, equipment, and does the processing. In foreign countries, evangelical missionaries act as directors and coordinators of Christian nationals.

When the association is long-term, a national counterpart agency is organized in the host country. It may be a denomination, such as the Korean Holiness Church (Oriental Missionary Society) through whom WRC has been assisting Koreans for fifteen years. Or it may be through a branch of a national church as in Vietnam where Christian Youth Social Service of the Tin Lanh Church (Christian and Missionary Alliance) is counterpart agency.

It could be a council of churches as in Chile where WRC has served for five years. There the Junta de Accion Evangelica Nacional is comprised of a wide spectrum of evangelical churches.

WRC may function in a limited way also, through missionaries, when the commission can help with a special project. In Hong Kong, drugs are supplied to clinics conducted by The Evangelical Free Church and Conservative Baptist Association. Overseas Missionary Fellowship in Thailand and Presbyterians in West Pakistan receive funds to help in a limited way. WRC also cooperates with Wycliffe in Vietnam, and provides funds for Scriptures printed by Pocket Testament League and American Bible Society.

In countries suffering big natural disaster, but where WRC does not have permanent personnel, relief funds are channeled into missionary or denominational organizations functioning in that country. These missionaries become the temporary counterpart of WRC, and WRC goes on to raise additional funds to cover the demands as long as the emergency exists.

This has been found the best and quickest way to aid disaster victims and still avoid political and shipping delays. The missionaries understand the restrictions of the host government, know the people, speak the language, see the need, and know the nearest source of supply. And along with physical relief they can speak of the love of Christ because the people already know they are Christians.

Within a day of the devastating earthquake in Peru, WRC cabled funds to a representative of the South American Mission who was also the executive director of the National Council of Evangelical Churches. He was directing relief efforts of the council. The commission is still assisting the council and the Swiss Indian Mission in building quakeproof houses and an orphanage in Cajacay.

During the Nigeria/Biafra war, WRC was represented by Assemblies of God missionaries in a child-feeding program, and Sudan Interior Mission in clothing and medical projects. The SIM projects are still active.

Food, clothing, blankets and roofing material are being provided to 10,000 victims of the recent earthquake in northern Chile. James Linhart, co-ordinator for Chile, reported that evangelical churches in the unaffected areas helped by collecting food and clothing for the survivors. WRC has also sent funds for the purchase of twenty-five stoves for clinics and other buildings serving the people.

AMERICAN PERSONNEL
American overseas personnel are drawn from many denominations. Some are missionaries on loan to WRC and others are young men giving alternate service.

Codirectors in Korea represent the Oriental Missionary Society and Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends. The young couple in Chile is from NYM also. In Vietnam, C&MA missionaries are on loan to WRC. Also in Vietnam, there are or have recently been young men and women from the Mennonites, Brethren in Christ, Evangelical Covenant, Wesleyan, Christian Reformed, Christian Church, and independent.

These workers, mostly young, are productive, constructive Christians who take delight in meeting physical and spiritual needs.

"GIVE US A CHANCE TO LIVE!"
The largest VVRC project in Vietnam is the Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital. Of the 58,000 children treated since 1965 half would have died without this care. This 120-bed, well-equipped hospital was voluntarily built and staffed by Marines who turned it over to WRC when they phased out.

Dr. Robert G. Long, medical director, is a dedicated evangelical who loves the children and they know it. In spite of their pain and suffering, when he enters the ward the children smile. Ambulatory patients rush to greet him and he gathers them up in his arms.

Dr. Long says that many children are minutes from death because of shock when they are brought in. In one month he does more resuscitative procedures than in two years at a normal pediatric facility.

He tells of 14-year-old Van Nguyen who was entered in a profound state of shock – no pulse, blood pressure, heartbeat, and a temp of over 107. The staff set to work to combat shock and infection which was probably the result of two ugly, improperly treated sores on his leg. After three and a half hours they turned him over to a nurse with careful instructions.

Dr. Long expected to be called during the night, but he wasn’t. Next morning he had the gratification of seeing the boy smile, talk, and take a little nourishment (he also had a bleeding ulcer) and quite happy to be alive.

Some of the little patients are war damaged, but most are suffering typical childhood accidents and illnesses, particularly malnutrition from worm infestation, and respiratory diseases.

The staff feels warm Christian love toward the children and they want the little patients to know that God also loves them. A Bible story hour is conducted weekly by a Vietnamese woman who uses puppets to illustrate. Bible books and games are also available.

"WE WANT TO LEARN!"
There is no doubt that education is the key to self-help and self-respect. This has been proved again and agar by WRC’s support of educational efforts on behalf of the Montagnards in Vietnam, a depressed hill tribes minority. The misfortunes of war have been especially hard as they have been shunted from one place to mother, leaving them almost helpless and hopeless in a new environment.

WRC has helped several tribes. They used to be slow in accepting educational assistance, but now they are responding. The Bru tribe now located in the Cua Valley is sending hundreds of students to WRC’s Christian Vocational Training Center at Cu Chanh. The children, in particular, learn quickly. One director tells of a little girl who was so excited about learning that she did her homework and then went to the missionary’s home to recite so she would have a headstart on the next day’s work.

The most recent WRC effort to give the Montagnards a chance is among the 100,000 of the Koho tribe who surround the city of Dalat. The C&MA missionary noticed the young men who came to the city in the morning to study at the government school would get into trouble in the afternoon. He and WRC have now joined the Koho tribal leaders and the Vietnam Social Welfare Office to provide afternoon classes where basic skills of carpentry, handcrafts, mechanics, sheet-metal work, tailoring, typing and home economics are taught.

The missionary is making it much more than an academic experience, however. The environment is conducive to character and leadership building. Unselfishness is taught by assisting civic action projects such as building a well, a fence, or a community store in the various villages still unreached with the gospel. Sundays are given to a gospel witness.

"SAVE US SURVIVORS!"
The first weeks after a natural disaster can be almost as devastating as the disaster. In East Pakistan following the killer cyclone that smashed into the coastal lowlands, the people were begging for water, food and shelter. A National Observer reporter wrote, "Through parched lips the stunned survivors begged for water from reporters who were there to interview them."

WRC’s disaster-relief policy was put into effect and immediate funds, with more to come, were offered to International Christian Fellowship (former India and Ceylon General Mission) to sink tube wells. A little later ICF distributed 750 woolen blankets.

WRC also funded the building of forty houses under the direction of Assemblies of God missionaries. One of the missionaries said that although the temperature goes only as low as 55 degrees at night, when a person is naked, unsheltered and hungry, that temperature can be pretty uncomfortable.

The World Relief Commission is expanding its present ministry in East Pakistan to include refugees who are settling in India. Famine on an unprecedented scale is threatening survivors of the tidal wave and civil war. WRC has forwarded an initial amount of $2,500.00 to the National Association of Free Will Baptists, Nashville, the third evangelical group with which WRC is cooperating in that part of the world.

WRC’s long-range plans also include replacing boats, farming tools, and livestock as a means to earning a livelihood. Because they serve a compassionate Christ, American evangelicals want to be compassionate and relieve the wretchedness of victims of war, disease, disaster and poverty with material help and spiritual hope. They are doing this through the hands and hearts of other evangelicals located at the place of need, who can personally deliver bread to starving children, wrap a warm blanket around a shivering old lady, tend a sick baby in a hospital, or give self-respect to a refugee.

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