Food aid sent to help feed Christians in North Korea during the hard winter months

Due to rampant inflation a few months ago, North Korea’s regime devalued the national currency by 100 to 1, effectively vaporizing the savings of its citizens. The citizens of North Korea were required to trade old currency for new, turning in old 1,000 won notes for new 10 won notes. Because of an exchange cap of 100,000 won per family, worth a little more than about $700, anyone holding old notes have lost virtually everything. Our contacts inside North Korea have indicated that the whole nation is grieving to an extent not seen in many years and is in dire need of food aid.

Many struggling Christians in North Korea—already set back by dwindling government food rations—had been saving as much extra cash as possible over the summer months in order to subsidize their family’s food needs through the lean winter. In light of the catastrophic currency devaluation, they wondered how they would survive the winter, unless they received food aid smuggled in from the “outside.”

The government of North Korea has also cracked down on the once-tolerated underground markets, through which most citizens of North Korea once purchased their emergency food rations and also received aid.

Ironically, the harsh winter season created a unique opportunity for us to provide food aid and meet the pressing needs of our brothers and sisters in Christ who are struggling for survival in North Korea. Extreme cold froze the border rivers, which became a firm pathway for food aid couriers.

North Korea Food Aid and Grateful Hearts

Your gifts have been saving Christians in North Korea from starvation this winter. Every week secret food aid delivery missions are being carried out. The families who are being served “send their jubilant thanks with grateful hearts filled with new hope.” Thanks so much. Your gifts / aid are literally saving lives!

Sincerely in Christ,

Elisabeth
Director, North Korean Christians Fund

Natasha, alive and thankful

Dear Friends,

I’m happy to report that your gifts to the Disaster Relief Fund are still at work in Haiti. Heaven’s Family continues to provide food, safe water, shelter, and other critical needs to the Arcahaie resettlement camp. Heaven’s Family staff members visited that camp just two weeks ago, and they heard a number of encouraging stories of survival that I’d like to pass on to you.

Natasha (pictured above) was studying in her third-floor apartment when the earthquake struck in the late afternoon of January 12. Two walls of her apartment collapsed inward on both sides, pinning her by her shoulders between them, while the floor below her collapsed, leaving her suspended. Many people saw her from the street but no one was able or willing to help her. She ultimately fainted from the severe pain, but she awoke at dusk to receive help from a man who was able to push one of the walls just enough to free her from her tortuous predicament. Natasha still does not know how he moved such a heavy wall, but gives the Lord glory for her deliverance.

She thought her shoulders were broken, but God protected her and now all signs of her injury are gone. Five others were in her apartment at the time, and four of them died.

Nataha’s pastor brought her to the Arcahaie resettlement camp. Although she cannot return to her school, she is thankful to be alive. Heaven’s Family is now meeting her daily needs.

Irmanise is expecting her child any day

Irmanise was almost seven months pregnant and sitting in her church when the quake struck. She heard a loud noise just before something struck her, knocking her unconscious. When she regained consciousness, she was alone—lying face down, bleeding, and trapped under concrete blocks.

Two fellow church members were able to uncover and rescue her, and they carried her to a stadium where the rest of the church members and many others were gathering. Once there, she found her husband who was separated from her in the confusion after the earthquake.

Three days later, Irmanise was taken to a hospital north of Port-au-Prince to treat her wounds…and to receive an ultrasound exam. Praise God that her unborn child was alive and well. Irmanise is expecting any day now, and thankful that she has a safe place to live with her husband and their new baby.

Suzette and her son Tedmaens

The last story I want to share with you is about Suzette, who teaches Kindergarten. She had just exited a bus after work and was crossing a street as the earthquake struck. When she arrived home she saw that the apartment building where she and her family lived had collapsed. She asked some neighbors where her family was and was told they were in church. So she ran to the church and found her husband, who told her that her two children were at home being watched by a relative. Suzette feared the worst.

She and her husband ran back and searched what was left of their apartment until 3:00 AM. They found their four-year-old son, Tedmaens, alive, after digging him out with their hands and some crude tools. He had injuries to his head and hand. Their three-year-old daughter Somara, however, didn’t survive, along with seven other people in the apartment building.

We cannot undo what has happened, but we thank God that we can be there for our brothers and sisters in their time of need. Thanks for caring and giving them hope in a time of individual and national grief. We’re also working to help our spiritual family make a way out of the rubble and into a brighter future. We’ll continue to keep you posted.

Because of Him,

Jeff Trotter

P.S. Over 60 additional tents were just delivered to the camp yesterday.

Learn how the Disaster Relief Fund helps believers affected by earthquakes, floods, cyclones, tsunamis, and other natural disasters.

Ana Maria Herrara with three of her four children: Paulina, Maria and Nicolas. Chile’s earthquake toppled the fifteen-story apartment building where they were living in the city of Concepción. Their apartment was on the twelfth floor. They escaped unharmed.

The better part of our Saturday consisted of driving further south in Chile, a nation with a ribbon-like shape that is 2,700 miles long and averages about 100 miles in width. Our destination was the city of Valdivia, where James and Pablo know some pastors. We arrived in the afternoon to gratefully learn that our hotel had warm water, something we did without during our two-day stay at Concepción. (Incidentally, I learned that the earthquake moved the entire city of Concepción ten feet to the west.)

We enjoyed a lovely dinner that evening with the pastors of our host church, Grace and Peace Fellowship. Enrique Rofas and Maritza Balas have planted sixteen churches in Chile over the last nine years and they are big fans of The Disciple-Making Minister (my kind of people). We joined their congregation of 1,300 on Sunday morning. James Jones preached the primary sermon, and I must say that his anointing increased exponentially with a suit and tie—judging from the applause, amens and standing ovations garnered during his message. It was probably the best sermon I never heard (as it was in Spanish).

Preacher James Jones

Earlier in the service, a single mother shared an amazing testimony relative to the earthquake and tsunami. I’m saving her story for our May magazine, so I can’t share the details here. But her children were swept out to sea by the tsunami, and then swept back inland, to be found eight days later, alive. Heaven’s Family is now helping to rebuild their damaged house.

After church, I had the blessing of meeting the Herrara family, pictured above, whose fifteen-story apartment building toppled and snapped in half during the early morning hours of the February 27 earthquake. (I had taken photos of their building just a few day earlier, of which one is below.) The Herraras lived on the twelfth floor. They were awakened by the violent shaking and started praying and crying out to God. Although most of their furniture slid across the floor and crashed into the walls as the building fell over, none of the Herraras were touched or hurt. As the building lay on its side, they crawled out a window and started helping others.

The fifteen-story apartment building where the Herrara family was living. As the building was newly completed, only nineteen of the apartments were occupied. About twenty tenants died.

Sunday evening we attended an earthquake benefit concert organized by Grace and Peace Church. The highlight for me was some traditional flamenco dancers who were one of several groups who volunteered their talents to raise funds for earthquake survivors. Below is a photo I snapped that reflects the intensity of the dancers.

Tomorrow we start our long journey back north to Santiago, a ten-hour drive. Then on Tuesday I start my longer journey back to the U.S., a twenty-four hour trip. I’m ready for home.

All together we’ve assisted about thirty Christian families or individuals who lost just about everything because of Chile’s earthquake, sharing close to $10,000, so it has been a fruitful week of service. Thanks for joining me via our blog. — David

Dear Friends,

We awoke this morning to learn that one of our team members, Pablo Juliberto, had been tapped by Chile’s new president to serve as a governor of one of Chile’s forty provinces. Pablo had previously served as the Minister of Finance for that same province. He’s a bright young man who also sits on the board of Chile’s third-largest university. So we’ve had a fun time today joking about how people from whom Pablo asks driving directions don’t know they’re talking to a distinguished governor!

Pastor Pedro, whom we met last evening, and his wife, took us around Concepcion and a nearby town named Dichato all day today visiting believers who have suffered great losses because of the tsunami that followed the earthquake. We were told that the tsunami was not a giant wave, but that the ocean simply lifted 30 to 50 feet and surged inland, then rushed back, pulling everything with it back into the ocean. That happened three times within the space of about fifteen minutes. Huge boats were planted far inland, and homes were washed out to sea. The wake of destruction left behind is hard to describe, and the photos below can only provide a tiny glimpse.

Dichato Tsunami Relief

In any case, about twenty-five Christian families who lost everything in the Dichato tsunami are sending up thanks because Heaven’s Family came to their aid today. Although we are not able to restore all they lost, we were able to help each family with some immediate needs by means of gifts of $200 to $300 each, which is a larger sum in the minds of most Chileans than it is to most North Americans. Below are photos of a few who benefitted. Some of the recipients cried, and they expressed their amazement that we came all the way from the U.S. to help them.

Chile is in a much better position than Haiti to help its citizens, and recovery efforts are well underway on public projects. It remains to be seen what might be done for individuals whose homes are heaps of rubble or have been literally washed away down to the foundations, leaving nothing. — David

Governor Pablo jumped out of our pickup truck to take some boxed milk and water to this woman who was living in a tent with her two small children, as her apartment is unsafe now after the earthquake

Single mother Veronica del Carmen Lara amidst the mud and debris of her children’s bedroom. The water surged into her home to a depth of about three feet.

Veronica del Carmen Lara and her married daughter Karen Andrea Perieda Lara

A boat that was deposited by the tsunami in Concepcion

Susana Oviedo Aedo in front of what remains of her home

We could hardly believe how far inland this boat was deposited by the tsunami

A typical view of what it looks like in Dichato

Another typical view in Dichato

James Jones speaks with pastor Juan Wall in Dichato who has twenty-three families in his church who lost everything. He told us how his church was warned shortly before the earthquake and tsunami that something terrible was going to happen and that they should pray. Not one life was lost among his congregation.

One of the few houses still somewhat intact near the shoreline in Dichato, probably due to a very hefty foundation and fortified walls

What is left of the beach-front road in Dichato

Although it is not so easy to tell from this photo, on top of the orange building is a house that was lifted up and deposited by the tsunami

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Chile, where I arrived on Wednesday after twenty hours of travel. Although there is very little jet lag here (just two hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time), I am experiencing a little Seasonal Lag, as the southern hemisphere is coming to the end of the summer. The tomatoes are ripe and the leaves are beginning to change in some places.

James Jones and I flew into Chile’s capital, Santiago, because the airport that is closer to the earthquake’s epicenter (at Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city) is shut down due to earthquake damage. Santiago is largely intact, but there are pockets of earthquake damage. We spent Thursday evening with a old pastor friend of James’ and learned that five families/people in his church could not return to their rented apartments because of structural damage. James personally met with each family/person prior to my arrival into Santiago, and we were blessed to partner with their church to help them get started in new apartments. Rents have naturally increased in Santiago due to supply and demand.

We spent much of the day on Friday driving to Concepcion (on a highway that was damaged in many places).

Our team includes two other members, Chilean Pablo Jiliberto, who took it upon himself to print 1,500 copies of the Spanish translation of The Disciple-Making Minister and personally distribute them to Christian leaders all over Chile, and Miqueas Vientos, a Spanish-speaking pastor from New Jersey. As we drove towards Concepcion, we stopped at a big grocery store in order to fill the back of our pickup truck with necessities such as bottled water and Clorox for the saints in the earthquake areas. It was in that grocery store that I experienced my first and second aftershocks, one of which we later learned was 7.2 on the Richter scale. It was an erie sensation to which I’ve since grown quite accustom (having now experienced many). Bottles were falling off of shelves and store lights were swinging. People hurried for the exits (including us).

Upon our arrival in Concepcion, we drove to a city park to meet with a church congregation whose building was made unusable by the tsunami that followed the earthquake. They were having church outside, and were praising God in a big circle when we arrived. As stray dogs weaved in and out of the group, James shared a thirty-minute sermon that I could not understand, but that was obviously a great encouragement to everyone. Tomorrow we’ll be visiting some of those among them who lost just about everything, and who are now living with other church members or relatives.

James Jones, park preacher

So far I love Chile. When you greet someone, you shake hands, then you hug and put your cheeks together and make a kissing sound, then shake hands again. Lots of love flowing at the Grace and Peace Church here in Concepcion!

Below are a couple of photos of our team members and some of the earthquake damage in Concepcion. Thanks for your prayers. — David

This apartment building just fell over on its side

Pastor Pedro Martinez Hernandez

Pastor Pedro’s wife, Anna Maria Fagundez Cluzet

Pablo Zuniga Jiliberto

Miqueas Vientos

James Jones (what a boring name!)