Earthquake in Peru Unites the Americas

August 24, 2007, The devastating earthquake that shook the area south of Lima, Peru, less than a week ago has had the surprising aftershock of uniting the Americas. Help from numerous countries quickly made its way to the victims, reports Peruvian Narciso Zamora, an evangelical pastor, church planter and author of the new book, Walking Man: A Modern Missions Experience in Latin America.


Zamora lists the following aid that had arrived in Peru as of Aug. 19: Food, medicine and linens from Bolivia; water, medicine and food from Panama; humanitarian aid from Chile; medicine, tents, rescue workers and paramedics from Argentina; humanitarian aid, rescue workers and firefighters specializing earthquake disaster from Brazil; doctors from the United States; humanitarian aid, doctors and water from Mexico; food, medicine, water and tents from Colombia; and Canada has pledged financial support to rebuild houses of the victims.


Zamora visited most of the affected area earlier this year in anticipation of beginning evangelical churches as part of his new initiative, the Inter-American Missiology Ministerial School (IMMS), opening in Chota, Peru, in 2008. IMMS will train Latin American missionaries to be sent to unreached areas in their own countries, like Ica, Pisco y Chincha, three of the towns hit hardest in the quake.

"The area was already impoverished and now it is destroyed. We need your prayers for the victims," says Zamora who is participating in Chota's local effort to gather nonperishable food and clothing to send to the over 1,000 injured and 150,000 whose houses were destroyed. Zamora says the cities of Pisco and Chincha each lost an estimated 75 percent of their homes and suffered casualties so great that the deceased are being buried in common graves.


"It was a terrible wake up call that God sent to Peru in order for people to repent," reflects Zamora. "Yet never has anyone seen Peruvians come together to help the victims as they are doing now. Even the inmates of a penitentiary in Callao, Peru, donated two days worth of their own food to help the victims. All of Peru and all the countries in the Americas have joined as brothers to help the victims get back on their feet."


Zamora believes his planned outreach to Ica, Pisco and Chincha is now even more needed to bring emotional and spiritual healing through the gospel of Christ.


Visit www.walkingman.ws for more information about Narciso Zamora and Walking Man: A Modern Missions Experience in Latin America with afterword by Michael Cassidy, Founder of African Enterprise (©2008 The Quilldriver).

Contact: Paola Segnini

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www.thequilldriver.com


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