The Evangelical Church of India (ECI), for example, has been an NDI partner for more than two-and-a-half decades. With nearly 2000 churches across the nation, ECI plants an average of three new churches a week, says Williams. “They have a strong social application of the gospel, primarily because they are working among the Dalits (untouchables) and tribals who are the most marginalized people in the country because of the caste system.”
Through the years, NDI has raised funds to build dozens of churches in partnership with ECI. One, on the coast at Chennai, India, has just been designated as a feeding and relief center for victims of the earthquake and tidal waves. “Little did we realize,” says Williams, “when we built that church probably half a dozen years ago that it was going to be, among other things, for such a time as this.”
In an email message to Williams, Bishop Ezra Sargunam (the head of ECI), described the scene in India: “Dead bodies have been piling up in the government hospitals. … The most tragic element of the calamity was that the majority of the victims were children, women, the aged and the infirm who couldn’t escape the ravaging waves. Those who did escape a watery-grave lost their homes and all their belongings and are literally on the streets, homeless and penniless. The fear of an outbreak of an epidemic is also looming large with numerous rotting human and animal carcasses lying everywhere.”
Sargunam continues: “While our heart goes out to the families of the dead and those who lost their possessions, we won’t just sit back and sympathize with them, but will do something concrete to mitigate the misery of the victims. ECI has already swung into action, providing an immediate relief of 2000 food packages, which will be distributed to the victims in the Chennai area this evening. We are planning to follow this up with a five-day relief program of providing one square meal to 10,000 victims everyday for the next five days and then once the floodwaters recede and the inundated areas dry up completely, put up tarpaulin-sheet shelters for 5000 families, besides giving each of these families a set of cooking utensils and rations for a week.”
