Johnson City UMs raise cash for tsunami relief

Even before a Magnitude 8.7 earthquake rocked Indonesia March 28 for the second time in three months, Johnson City United Methodists were collecting money to help the region.
“The first essentials—food, water and shelter—are on the ground or in the pipeline (to South Asia),” Pastor Glenna Kelley of First UMC told the community shortly after the initial Dec. 26 earthquake in the Indian Ocean.
That 9.0-magniture temblor caused tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. Those waves cause massive destruction and death in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and 10 other countries.
“Now the job is heading off epidemics of cholera, malaria and dysentery that could kill hundreds of thousands more,” Kelley said.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief had already dispatched health kits to the region from its depot in Baldwin, La., she noted. But now cash was needed to buy supplies closer to the disaster sites.
“With cash donations, we can buy materials and supplies already on the ground, where they’re needed,” said the Rev. F. Thomas Hazelwood, a disaster-response executive for the relief committee.
Johnson City groups found innovative ways to raise cash to help tsunami survivors. Students at LBJ Middle School, for instance, gave some of the money they raised through parties and dances.
Johnson City Housing Authority residents baked pies, cakes, muffins and cookies to sell.
“We’ve all been proud—and even a little surprised—at the remarkable support we and our neighbors have shown for the millions of people whose lives were upended by this disaster,” Kelley said. “It says some very good things about the people who live in the Texas Hill Country.”
Across Southwest Texas, United Methodists have contributed more than $570,000 for tsunami relief. Those funds have gone to the relief committee.