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Wesley Campbell
Reporting from Maputo, Mozambique,
March 31st, 2007

Disaster relief – the center of the heart of God. Having just arrived at the world famous Maputo Iris Ministries mission’s base I was not at all prepared for the latest round of disasters. Be A HERO had teamed up with Iris Ministries to raise workers, finances, food containers, and water purifying packets for the disaster flood relief situation that has developed in Mozambique over the last 30 days.

But as if cyclones and floods weren’t enough disaster for a nation, a thirty year old munitions depot suddenly started to combust just days before I landed, launching tens tons of missiles, bombs, war heads, and land mines onto the capital city of Mozambique. The Iris Ministries base there in Maputo was only 2 kilometers from the epi-center of the blow-up. Estimates were that 5000 missiles and rockets rained down on the city for over four hours. Hundreds and hundreds are dead but the government is not giving figures (except for those who died while in the hospital – 103). However, the greater destruction was on the streets.

A 15-year-old boy I talked to said he was just so scared that he ran from the 17-acre mission’s base. He didn’t know where he was going . . . “but I ran!” As they ran a lady with a baby on her back was running with them. Then he described this whirling sound and suddenly the woman’s head was taken over by a flying casing or debris of a bomb. Her headless body run forward into a tree and then fell backwards spearing a baby on sharp branches by the tree. The boys fled in terror into an abandoned house until a man warned them of the danger of being in a house with a cement roof. So Heidi’s orphans ran from the house, leaving the other 9 boys (whom they did not know) in the house. Moments later a missile hit the house and the entire structure caved in on the boys in the house. As they ran another lady abandoned her own baby and they scooped it up and gave it to someone in authority. Finally in desperation they hid behind a tree, only to have a rocket actually hit the tree . . . but they were spared. The Iris base in Maputo considers it miracle that only three bombs landed on their base – one on one of the worker’s houses, another on the Bible school, and the last on the chapel. Amazingly, not one person was hurt.

Heidi Baker and her personal assistant, Shara, arrived in Maputo on the same plane as I did, and we immediately went to the orphanage to assess the damage. After rejoicing with all the children and students, we spent time visiting the community round about. One tragic situation happened right in their neighborhood. Seven children and six mothers were huddled in fear in the porch of a house. A missile directly hit the house and all thirteen were killed. We talked to one of the husbands who was away at work when the bombs started dropping. He returned to find his wife and son burned to death. We visited three children who lost their only parent – their mother – in their house. Heidi invited all three to come and live with Iris Ministries at the Maputo base.

THE NEXT DAY:
It’s 10:00 pm now and we have just rolled into the World Vision headquarters at a place called Morrumbala – Mozambique. A team of nine (3 from Kelowna, British Columbia,  4 from  Kitmat, British Columbia, and 2 from Calgary, Alberta), all of whom were mobilized from the Eyes & Wings conference to come help in this nation’s crisis, are here to distribute aid, preach and minister where we can. In many of these camps Iris is the only distributor of any food they have received in the last month.

I believe it is hard for us in Western developed countries to really grasp what it would be like to be uprooted in just hours from your home and region and suddenly find yourself as a refugee on a piece of ground without even a sheet or a piece of plastic to hide you from the elements. On top of that, imagine being pounded by torrential rains, then two cyclones with winds up to 100 miles an hour for 24 hours solid. In the case of the camp with are endeavoring to get to tomorrow, it is a believed that no aid has reached them at all. There are thousands of people, marooned on a 50-kilometer stretch of land, entirely encircled by water. They have been keeping alive by eating roots and whatever they can scavenge off the land.  Crocodiles troll the banks looking for anyone near the edge. The story in the camp is that the people in canoes who stopped to go to the washroom on land, but never came back again, were eaten by the crocodiles.

Please pray for more money to buy rice and beans as we are presently on the last of the funds. The Mozambiquian government has turned a deaf ear to their own people’s cry for help and have leveled a 7% duty (to be paid by Iris Ministries) on the 12 containers of food that was secured from relief organizations in the West. This duty will cost $80,000.00 USD, which is more cash more than we raised at the last conference. The good news is that since the disasters began last month, Be A Hero has also raised 500,000 packages of Water Pur, and each package (the size of a sugar packet) can purify 10 liters of water. We have heard that it has been air lifted to the food zone now and we are sending a team to try and receive it tomorrow. We are trying to line up a boat (not canoe – crocodiles – yikes!!), to ferry 100 bags of rice across to the suffering people, as well as the Water Pur packets that will provide clean drinking water for everyone. We will be sleeping in tents and out in the bush with the refugees.

So far in the last 30 days, ten thousand people have received Christ due to the love, mercy, and care of Iris Ministries has demonstrated to them in their time of need,  and because of all those of you who have made this possible. Tonight the team came back rejoicing from preaching in the real ‘bush, bush’, where not a single hut was visible but the church and the pastor’s hut. From out of nowhere it seemed, people began to come out of the darkness and soon there were over 600 listening in the darkness. Clearly most of them received Christ or are already believers. Yesterday 200 responded to receive Christ. Heidi says she has never seen the people so open as they are right now.

Please consider helping with a donation for Water Pur - see web-site, www.beahero.org
Or, consider coming for three weeks – again check out the website. God bless you all for all you have done already.

Wesley Campbell for Be A Hero – working with the Bakers and Iris Ministries