ERCIS, Turkey – Operation Blessing disaster relief teams are on the ground in Turkey working in partnership with Humedica, a German medical team, to bring relief to earthquake survivors. (more…)

JAPAN – The severed bow of a fiberglass fishing boat jutted out from under a huge pile of mangled ropes and rotting fishing nets. Under mounds of smashed plastic crates and pieces of foam were fragments of countless other boats. These vessels, once afloat and filled with fishermen’s catch, were now in a boat graveyard filled with the wreckage of the local fishing industry. In a separate pile, mangled metal had been separated for recycling. (more…)

KENYA – The famine that is gripping the Horn of Africa has been gaining attention in the world media with much of the focus being on the Somali refugees pouring over the border to Kenya in search of food.

But Kenya is facing a massive crisis of its own—recent reports of severe food shortages and famine have started emerging from the northern Kenyan state of Turkana. (more…)

MEDAN BELIZE, Haiti – The rainy season has officially started in Haiti, and while the rains are needed for crop production, for many people the season spells trouble. Last year flooding from heavy rain spread cholera, resulting in the tragic death of thousands of Haitians. (more…)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – It’s Mother’s Day in Haiti, and for the kids at the Zanmi Beni Children’s Home it’s a time to celebrate and say thank you to all the staff “moms.” All of the children at Zanmi Beni are either orphans or were abandoned at birth, so it is the female staff members here that have developed special bonds with the children and shown them motherly love all year long. (more…)

Many in the city of Shiogama, Japan are still living in shelters after the earthquake and tsunami. Along with much needed relief supplies like food and kerosene, Operation Blessing brought toys for the children of the shelter to enjoy.

SHIOGAMA, Japan – Today we were back in the city of Shiogama, the city we first visited after the tsunami. Last week we came with a van load of supplies. Today, we had a van and two trucks loaded with rice, thermal underwear, hygiene supplies and kerosene. We saw some familiar faces—city workers we had met last week. They were happy to see that OB had returned with the supplies they had requested. (more…)

ISHINOMAKI, Japan – The word tsunami is made up of two Japanese words: “tsu” meaning harbor and “nami” meaning wave. Today I stood at the harbor in the city of Ishinomaki and saw where the giant “nami” hauled a ship up onto dry land and smashed buildings and homes in its path. As the Operation Blessing team continues to deliver vital relief supplies in the hardest hit areas, the extent of the destruction is still being uncovered. (more…)

The Operation Blessing team continues to move north up the eastern coast of Japan distributing relief supplies to shelters that are now home to displaced tsunami survivors.

OTSUCHI, Japan – Today we did a relief distribution in a shelter in the town of Otsuchi where 1,000 displaced families are living. Half of the town’s 17,000 residents are “still missing.” (more…)

SHIOGAMA, Japan – The lack of sleep, the stress of the nuclear threat, the bitter cold, the lack of fuel and supplies, and the scale of the destruction are all adding up to make this one of the toughest disaster responses I have worked on. (more…)

SHIOGAMA, Japan – We arrived to Sendai and began a distribution of relief supplies at a school serving as a shelter for displaced families. Families are living in classrooms; many have lost everything, including their homes. (more…)