Worldwide Family Activity Report - February 1996
FAR022 - GP
February 1996 by The Family, Zurich, Switzerland

The Family
Making a Difference!

Every day, in over 60 countries on six continents, full-time Family volunteers work to bring hope, happiness and God's Love to others. Following are some highlights of their recent activities and experiences, as reported by Family missionaries.

         Flood Victims Receive Comfort and Aid! -- Thailand
         In Thailand, severe flooding is an annual occurrence. As the runoff from heavy summer rains in the mountainous northern regions makes its way to the central lowlands, many towns and villages are deluged. Situated barely above sea level, metropolitan Bangkok and its nearly 10 million inhabitants are often hardest hit.
         A series of recent floods combined to create one of the worst disasters that Thailand has experienced in recent years. Most of Bangkok was spared, but some outlying areas were under water for six weeks or longer, ruining homes and crops and posing a serious health hazard.
         During the most crucial period, members of The Family's communities in and around Bangkok devoted much of their time and energy to relief efforts. Some visited flooded areas to distribute food, drinking water, clothing, medicine and other relief items, and to comfort and cheer the flood victims. Other Family members solicited and gathered donations of relief supplies from concerned members of the business community.
         The following account of their activities was compiled from reports by some of the Family members who took part.

For thousands: perils and loss
         After a flash flood struck a residential area of Pathum Thani, a province neighboring Bangkok, displacing 2,000 people, four of us took food and clothing to a makeshift shelter that was being set up in a hangar belonging to a nearby factory. Conditions were primitive at best. The high, sheet metal roof was supported by pillars--not walls--and hundreds of people left homeless by the flood camped out on straw mats or on the bare concrete floor. Among them were many elderly people and children, including a three-week-old baby.
         We met the shelter's overseer and offered to help in any way we could, cooking, cleaning, distributing aid, and comforting the people made homeless by the flood. He told us they needed help in all those areas, but suggested that we first meet the people we had come to help. We spent the rest of the morning working our way through the shelter, meeting and encouraging the victims. Many of them told of harrowing and heartbreaking experiences.
         The flash flood had struck during the night, and in less than ten minutes only the rooftops of the mostly one-story houses were visible above the flood waters. Elderly people had swum to safety through polluted water in near-total darkness. Parents had struggled to keep their heads above water while holding their babies or small children aloft and crying out for help. One young girl and her three sisters were home alone when the flood struck. The water had rushed into their house with such force that it caused the roof to collapse, trapping her and her sisters in black water. They were all rescued, but this girl was in shock for two days.

Peace in the storm
         You can have peace in the midst of a storm,
         Hope when you just can't go on any more,
         There is love to be found,
         When your whole world is tumbling down.
         You can have peace in the midst of a storm!
         The first woman we sang those words to in Thai broke down weeping. Others we talked with also wept as we prayed for them and their loved ones. The elderly seemed especially needy, and many of them reached out for a reassuring touch or hug.
         We returned to that shelter four times, taking more food and relief supplies. Each time, we comforted and counseled the flood victims, organized activities for the many children, and assisted the shelter staff wherever they needed our help.

Despairing faces smile again
         On our second visit, three of us teamed up with relief workers from the Chinese Association and went into the flooded area by boat, taking supplies to people who were stranded on the second floors of their houses. Again, the conditions were almost unbelievable! The streets resembled klongs (the network of canals which once earned Bangkok the nickname "Venice of the East," most of which have since been filled in to make roads). Cars were still completely submerged in the murky flood waters. Only the peaks of some one-story houses were visible.
         We loaded our boat with as much rice, other food and drinking water as we could carry, and went up and down each "street" making deliveries. Some people held onto inner tubes as they walked out in filthy water up to their necks to get supplies. Others paddled out to our boat on makeshift rafts. Still others climbed out of their second-story windows, then perched on the tops of their high garden walls, only a few inches of which protruded above the flood waters. Our Chinese coworkers that day were both dedicated and affable. Sometimes they called out over their megaphone, "Food, water, farangs [foreigners]!" That drew lots of smiles from people who hadn't smiled in days.
         At this factory shelter and at the flood sites in other towns where we volunteered our services during the weeks that followed, everyone was tremendously appreciative of our contributions from the flood victims themselves to local officials and members of the other relief organizations with whom we worked.

Songs of hope soothe and cheer hearts
         At one point, a representative from the Public Health Department who had heard of our other community service programs contacted us to ask if we could assist in a relief project that was being planned for another badly flooded upcountry town. The organizers hoped to include some music to lift people's spirits, but they had no budget to hire a band. We volunteered to perform for free, and left for the flooded town that same evening.
         The people in that town had absolutely nothing left! Everything--their houses, their vehicles, their crops--was under water. We began our show with a few light songs to cheer everyone up, followed by some deeper songs to inspire the hope and courage they will need to rebuild their lives. By the time we finished, everyone was smiling through their tears.

Dispensing medical aid
         Working alongside Red Cross doctors and staff, six members of our community helped to package and deliver medical supplies to a number of towns which had suffered the worst flooding. Sickness was spreading quickly through areas which were engulfed in contaminated water, so this was indeed an emergency situation. It is impossible to tell how far our efforts went in staving off further suffering, but on a single day we helped an estimated 690 families.

Caring for forgotten ones
         We made several trips northwest of Bangkok to the small city of Ayutthaya, which for 400 years was the capital of Thailand (then called Siam).
         On our first trip, we took our relief shipment to a flooded slum area and managed to find a dry patch of road large enough to set up a distribution point. When we were done passing out the relief goods, our singers performed a short impromptu show for the crowd that had gathered. Music, laughter and hope mixed to bring some people to the point of tears.
         Then we split into two-man teams and took canoes and paddle-boats from house to house, offering moral support and posters with a message of comfort to everyone we met. Within a few hours, the gloom that hung over the neighborhood when we first arrived had lifted. People were smiling again and seemed much more hopeful.
         On another visit to that city, we were referred to another needy community of about 300 people. We divided our truckload of food and other items into 300 individual packages, which were gratefully received.
         We had just finished handing out the last of those supplies when an elderly lady told us of 50 other families who desperately needed our help. We followed her until we came to an isolated cluster of mostly squatter dwellings, neck-deep in polluted flood water. We were the first relief workers that those people had seen in the one month since the area flooded. Because the squatters did not have proper identification papers, they had not been able to qualify for help from the official relief programs.
         "Just the fact that you came gives me hope!" one woman told us when we explained that we had already distributed all of the food and supplies we had brought with us that day.
         At that point our stocks in Bangkok were also running low, as was the fund into which our friends and sponsors had made cash donations in support of our relief work. The next morning, however, we packed up all the food we had on hand, and then bought in bulk more rice, canned sardines and drinking water. We divided the food into 50 packages--one for each family--and returned that afternoon to the squatter area.
         "Thank you for caring!" one woman exclaimed when she saw us again. "Thank you for finding us yesterday, and thank you for caring enough to return with this help!"

Love brings hope for tomorrow!
         All told, we gathered and delivered tons of food and truckload after truckload of drinking water, clothing and other aid. Still, in the face of a disaster of these proportions, we could only meet a fraction of people's physical needs--and that material help was only temporary, of course.
         However, as with nearly all of the disaster relief projects that we and other Family members around the world have been involved in, we found that we had other things to give the people that are of far greater value than the limited material help we could offer--things that buoyed their spirits above a flood of despair, things that outweighed their losses, things that will last a lifetime and beyond, things of a spiritual nature--faith, hope and love! We saw God touch and transform many lives during those difficult weeks, and we are thankful to have been a part!

For more information:

         Visit The Family at our Internet Web site: http://www.thefamily.org/family
         E-mail: family@thefamily.org.


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