Tsunami Opens Doors for an AIMS Partner Church to Provide Aid in Aceh Province

AIMS News: Posted 4/1/2005

On December 26, millions of lives were changed forever. The Asian Tsunami took the lives of thousands of people without warning and left in its wake a path of destruction that will take years to rebuild. As of February 12, the Asian News International reported that the death toll had climbed to approximately 285,000 people. An estimated 235,000 of those reported dead were in Indonesia. One of the most devastated areas was the Aceh Province in the northern part of the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Eight different people groups live in the Aceh Province. These people groups have very few or no known Christians among them. Before the tsunami, the area was closed to outside influence, including Christians. At least for a short time, that has changed.

Equipping for the Harvest Conference Prepares the Way

In August 2004, "Andrew" (AIMS Southeast Asia Coordinator) and an AIMS team facilitated an Equipping for the Harvest conference with a large church network in Medan, the capital city of Sumatra. During the conference, the participants decided to adopt the several unreached people groups, including the Acehnese people, the largest people group of Aceh Province (numbering about 3.5 million).

According to Operation World, "Sumatra is the largest unevangelized island on earth"(1). Throughout the fall, the church network began to develop strategies on how to best reach the Acehnese. Because of civil strife, the Aceh region of Sumatra was closed to outsiders. Because the Indonesia government fears that foreigners (including Indonesians) who enter the region will be attacked, they had closed the region to anyone without special permission to enter.On December 26, that changed. The tsunami devastated Aceh Province. It wiped out miles of their coastline, left buildings in rubble, and flooded large areas of the city. Thousands were killed instantly. As a result, the Acehnese began to accept the presence of foreigners in their region to help them with recovery.

Andrew and his wife "Lydia" flew to Sumatra in January to determine how AIMS could best use the money raised through the AIMS Tsunami Relief Fund to help the church network provide emergency and development relief to the area. "The devastation in the capital city of Banda Aceh is unbelievable. It looks like an atomic bomb was dropped on it. The buildings and many of the trees in half of the city are gone. All that remains are the foundations of houses, standing in water and debris, and people picking through the debris, trying to find personal memorabilia or anything they might salvage to sell."

Relief Efforts throughout Banda Aceh

Since the tsunami, the church network has been able to send short-term teams weekly to the Banda Aceh region to provide emergency relief aid. They cooked meals, cleaned up homes, and delivered supplies to the thousands of victims who survived. In one village, they discovered that the people had been given clothes but no underwear. When the next team returned, they brought the underwear the people needed. In another village, the people had been given uncooked rice but had no way to cook it, so the church team brought back small camp stoves and utensils for the villagers to use.

"These people really need help," said "Pastor Micah," pastor of the church network in Medan. "They have endured a very traumatic experience and need people who will love them sincerely. Please continue to pray for us and for them."

As Andrew and Lydia visited the many villages in the Banda Aceh region, they met dozens of people whose lives had been changed by the tsunami. Many fishermen lost their jobs. People refuse to eat fish for fear that the fish may have digested the corpses of their relatives in the ocean. One village reported that they had no food or water for a week after the tsunami hit. They only had young, green coconuts from the surrounding trees to survive on during that time. Two teachers in another village lost their school building. They shared that only seven out of their 360 students returned after the disaster. They don't know if they have been killed or simply displaced with thousands of others.

Current efforts are being developed to aid the Aceh Province in the long-term reconstruction period that lies ahead. The plans include rebuilding homes and school buildings, providing trauma counselors to help them deal with the disaster, training residents in new job skills, and repairing and rebuilding clean water systems. Because the region may only be open for a brief period, pray that we at AIMS will utilize our resources in the best way possible to reach the most people.

(1) Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, Operation World: When We Pray, God Works, 21st Century Edition (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster USA) 2001, p.80).

Related Stories: