When disaster strikes, we look to our church for help. Churches receive both volunteers and evacuees themselves, and provide space for social services to survivors. But they are also where we go to mend the damage to our spirits and emotions—a safe space to gather to try to make sense of our loss and find support and hope. This spiritual care is an increasingly important dimension of the ministry of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA).

This ministry is especially difficult—and necessary—when the church itself is affected by the disaster. Last May, just as a group of its members was preparing to leave on a work trip to the Gulf Coast, the Presbyterian Church in Moscow, Idaho, and the immediate area became the scene of multiple murders. Seeing their sacred space cordoned off as a crime scene, the Rev. Norman Fowler shared his congregation’s feeling of violation and organized a prayer vigil on the church lawn. A few days later, the congregation had a blessing service in the church to rededicate the sanctuary.

Two members of PDA’s national response team quickly arrived in Moscow. “Their presence let me step back and process things with them,” recalls Fowler, “helping me avoid the sense of isolation that comes in situations like that.” The PDA staff kept in touch to offer resources as needed, including a workshop on “compassion fatigue” for the staff last October.

Those of the Moscow congregation who went to the Gulf Coast had their own lessons to learn. “Though many of us felt that leaving our community at this time was going in the wrong direction,” recalls Mary Read, “we knew we needed to be where we could make a difference. There was something very precious about being in relationship with others during their time of healing when we so strongly felt the need for healing ourselves. And knowing that PDA was back home helping the people we loved allowed us to go without feeling guilty. I know it made me feel proud to be Presbyterian.”

Spiritual care is not a separate ministry, but a set of values and skills based in Jesus’ call to love one another that inform PDA’s whole ministry. But at times, it can become the most important part of that ministry. When members of PDA’s national disaster response team bring a compassionate presence to members of a community reeling from a disaster, it is our prayers their presence embodies. Today, let us commission them with our gifts to continue responding whenever they learn of such needs.

In 2007, gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing also enabled PDA to:

• Train community counselors in Peru and develop a trauma and emotional recovery curriculum in Sudan;
• Send Gulf Coast pastors and their spouses to the National Pastors’ Sabbath;
• Offer a spiritual and emotional care program for 50 church leaders in Lebanon.

For decades, deforestation has stripped away many of the plants on Haiti’s mountains. With nothing to hold it in place, the soil washes away during normal rainy seasons, and especially during hurricanes. Hillsides can quickly turn into virtual deserts.

That pattern describes Moccene Joachim’s land before he began working with Mouvman Peyizan Papaye (MPP), a group of farmers on Haiti’s Central Plateau. Moccene has worked with the MPP for most of the four years it has been working with the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP). He has learned basic veterinary skills and through the MPP’s Road to Life yard project is helping his family’s land heal itself.

A variety of food vines, tree species, and forage grasses now create barriers that block rushing waters from carrying away the soil; the water that filters through it is saved for deeper rooted crops even during the dry season. Aside from creating forage for his goats, whose manure enriches the soil, these barriers also protect his main cultivation area by the river, where he grows fruits and vegetables. Moccene grows other vegetables in his yard—in old tires on tables with his goats and chickens nearby.

Taking seriously MPP’s focus on organizing in small groups, Moccene has formed twelve family and neighbors into “Tèt Ansanm” (Putting Our Heads Together). The group’s regular meetings and workdays help members learn how to produce more food with less work in their own yards.

Even working together, people cannot heal the earth. Only God can do that—and God’s creation can heal itself if we give it a chance. We can all play a part in giving it that chance. That may mean planting vines and trees to help change water from a destructive to a healing force or it may mean finding and teaching new techniques. Many of us can help by supporting the Presbyterian Hunger Program with our gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing. Today, let’s put our heads together with the people of Papaye and other places where a damaged environment makes survival difficult. Let’s join with them in helping that groaning creation to heal itself.

• Since 2004, OGHS has supported MPP’s work, directly benefiting more than 5,000 people like Moccene through the PHP.
• In 2007, the PHP funded 63 international grants totaling $1,285,383 from OGHS and other contributions.
• The PHP also made 147 domestic grants totaling $1,006,138 and 34 congregation-based community organizing grants totaling $239,000.

No way was Tammy going back to a nursing home! At the one she’d been in before, she was treated like a problem, not a person. If you complained, there were about a thousand quiet ways to make you miserable. But when she moved to Salt Lake City, she didn’t see many choices: Yes, there were personal attendants, but with twenty-three people ahead of her waiting for one, it could take months. . . .

After five years, Marjorie had convinced the state she was capable of living outside a nursing home. But her fiancé, Kevin, was told he was not. . . .

Getting his badly needed dentures approved took Charlie nine months. Suddenly his social worker left, and his replacement decided to start the process over. . . .

Through the Disabled Rights Action Committee (DRAC), a group of disabled individuals working together and funded by Self-Development of People, these folks found that they could make bureaucracies listen by holding demonstrations. Suddenly both Marjorie and Kevin seemed capable of independent living. In no time Charlie was sitting in a dentist’s chair!

After a protest at the governor’s office, an official came out to say it would be unfair to put Tammy in line ahead of the others who needed personal attendants. Agreeing, the protestors suggested the state find funding to support attendants for them all. Miraculously, they found the funds. Since then, Tammy’s life has steadily improved. She worked with DRAC on a grant to help others move out of nursing homes, then went to work with a poverty group. She married a man without a disability, and they now have two children. For someone deemed incapable of living outside a nursing home, she is doing pretty well.

Most disabled individuals have wrestled with the fact that all children of God depend on each other. Many of the rest of us carry an invisible disability with us every day: the destructive illusion that we must be self-sufficient. As we open our hearts to share our resources with others through this Offering, may their experience help us melt away that isolating illusion.

• Self-Development of People (SDOP) funds community development projects started by economically poor groups of people who control and benefit from the projects.
• Fifty-six certified SDOP committees in presbyteries and synods funded 69 projects across the country in 2006.
• SDOP partners with communities of need throughout the United States and community development projects in about 30 countries around the world.

Remember your earliest lessons about sharing? At the time, sharing may have seemed like a burden, a needless sacrifice—giving up part of what you believed was rightfully yours.

Over time, however, we come to realize that all of our gifts come from God, and that sharing actually enriches us. In blessing others with our gifts, goodness and love flow from our hearts. And blessing returns to us, subtly but surely changing us, building that desire to respond even more generously to God’s call ‘to do good and to share what we have.’

One Great Hour of Sharing offers an opportunity for each of us to share with people in need around the world—giving them much more than a handout. When we share our resources, we help to ensure that children suffering from disease not only receive treatment, but enjoy the benefits of a community made safer with proper sanitation and clean sources of water. We partner with a family living in hunger, offering them not just food, but the tools and training to build a sustainable source of income for themselves—improving their world and ours.

When we share our resources through One Great Hour of Sharing, we make a difference in the lives of others. We reach around the world, giving shape to the heart of Christ.

And when we understand how the blessing of sharing changes lives, our own lives are never again the same.

“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have.”
Hebrews 13:16a

Sharing Resources. Changing lives.

When we give our gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing, we want to be confident that they will help our sisters and brothers around the world in every kind of need—the African girl looking for a source of clean water close to home so she doesn’t have to spend hours each day carrying it from miles away, the father whose home and fields were destroyed by flood who doesn’t know how to feed his children until the next season’s crops are in, the mother who has no means to earn money for her children’s books.

Working with our Presbyterian programs and their trusted partners around the world, we can indeed be confident that the resources we share will change lives—and not just the lives of those we think of as being in need. For we ourselves become more open to the transforming power of God’s love when we open our hearts to share that love with others through our gifts. As we contemplate the gifts we will share with those in need around the world, let us thank God for the power of sharing to transform lives—our own and those of all God’s children around the world.