The team from Grace Community Church, a Grace Brethren congregation in Goshen, Ind. (Jim Brown, pastor), who went to Iraq earlier this month is featured in yesterday’s Goshen (Ind.) News. A portion of the story appears below. Click here to read the complete article.
Local church sends group to provide aid in Iraq
GOSHEN — Imagine that tornadoes tore through Warsaw, displacing its 14,000-some residents.
Imagine all of those people — no money, no extra clothing, no belongings — arriving in Goshen looking for help.
Families — mothers, fathers, children, grandparents — living under the Ind. 15 overpass, setting up tents in the city’s parks.
Doctors and nurses, who have no homes themselves, try to help at hospitals and clinics that are overwhelmed with dehydrated children, who haven’t been able to get to clean water.
Imagine lines of people along Main Street waiting for hours to get food for their families from The Window or from emergency aid trucks.
That’s exactly what’s happening in the city of Erbil, Iraq, only on a larger scale. But it wasn’t tornadoes that tore through the homes of an estimated 1.2 million refugees and internally displaced people. It was the Islamic State.
It was scenes of this continued crisis that brought a Goshen pastor to tears and began a new mission that included a nine day-long journey for him and seven other men to Iraq. The men delivered locally-donated medical supplies and took $65,000 with them to purchase food, bedding and shelter for their brothers and sisters.
How it began
Grace Community Church Lead Pastor Jim Brown keeps up with the news and is an avid reader. He believes it’s important to know what’s going on in his local community, as well as the world.
Click here to read the complete article.