OM nationals assisting, medical team gearing up to go

India (MNN) — India is just one of 11 countries hard-hit by the tsunami, but it’s an area where the national church is taking a proactive approach to ministry. Operation Mobilization’s Lane Powell says, “In India, which is one of our largest works with about 1,200 staff members there, almost all of whom are Indian, this week they were sending in 10 teams to just join in the local efforts there — working with the hands-on distribution of the day-to-day survival basics for them.”

Tomorrow, OM is also planning to send a team of medical professionals to the coastal areas of India to run clinics and provide badly needed health care for the victims. Powell says this is just the first of many like trips. “We now actually have someone whose whole focus is to coordinate these sort of teams and have people identified. We all know that this situation in South Asia there is going to be on-going for quite some time so I would think that there may be opportunities for further medical assistance.”

While the primary focus of national and American Christians going into this part of the world is to help physically, Powell says their actions will provide opportunities to talk about spiritual things. “We serve them in the name of Christ and this can lead to conversations. We certainly would not take advantage of the situation, but we also recognize that people have questions in these times and want to know where they can turn for hope.”

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