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Online Magazine: Edition 3

February/March 2005

Welcome to the Third Edition of the Online Magazine of the Thornleigh Seventh-day Adventist Church

Articles

Editorial

by Norman Tew

It is now over a month since the deadly Tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean and wrought such havoc in so many countries. From week to week, at the Thornleigh Seventh-day Adventist church, we have been reading in our church bulletin various reports of the efforts being made by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA).

ADRA works through country units which co-operate together in situations like this. Thus our members have made their contributions to ADRA-Australia who have passed their donations on to ADRA-Indonesia and have sent workers from Australia to assist. ADRA-UK, ADRA-Demark etc, have sent their help via ADRA-India and ADRA-Ceylon. (On a personal note I was interested to read that a son of one of my former school students, who has worked in several countries supervising ADRA development work, went immediately from England to Ceylon to assist in the organising of the relief effort there). ADRA has had the advantage of having organisations already on the ground in each country and have thus been able to spring into action quickly. ADRA has also been able to call on teams from Adventist hospitals located in or near the disaster areas in both Indonesia and Thailand.

We were also fortunate at Thornleigh in that one of the members of our congregation was sent from Westmead Hospital as part of a government medical team, and he was able to report on his return his personal experiences. He has been able to explain to us what he saw with his own eyes.

While there is little that most of us can do apart from donating, we need to remember that it is still early stages in dealing with this disaster. While the first effort was to treat those who were injured in the Tsunami, it is also an urgent need for clean water, safe food and temporary accommodation. But these are only the "first aid". Homes will need to be re-built; tools of trade (including fishing boats) supplied so that people can get back to work; all the other aspects of infrastructure such as communication, transport, school, etc etc still need to be provided. We in Australia will need to keep on giving until the task is properly finished.

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