Sometimes a life is changed by a moment. It’s not changed in the days, weeks, or months, but the minutes. Or, even the seconds. The moment often comes without invitation, when least expected, and with no warning— as it did February 7 for residents in New Orleans East. The strongest tornado to ever hit the city damaged or destroyed nearly 700 homes. … [Read more...]
Samaritan’s Purse Photo Blogs
A Twist of Faith
Samaritan’s Purse volunteers serve New Orleans tornado survivors.
Healing Hands
A Samaritan’s Purse medical team brings new smiles to Liberia.
God used the skilled hands, compassionate hugs, and professional expertise of our cleft lip and palate medical team to bring new smiles to nearly 40 adults and children in Liberia recently. … [Read more...]
A Few of Their Favorite Things
Shoebox gifts spark joy for children in Paraguay
It’s the time of year for “brown paper packages tied up with strings.” For people who pack and send Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts, that means brown cardboard shipping boxes filled to the brim with boxes of toys, hygiene items, school supplies, and other necessities, which stay on our list of favorite things all year long. … [Read more...]
Healing Body and Soul
World Medical Mission doctors minister to the sick and suffering in Zambia
In Zambia, only 650 doctors were working between 2000-2010. That's less than one doctor for every 10,000 people in the country. To help meet this critical shortage, World Medical Mission partners with Christian hospitals in Zambia to place volunteer doctors for short-term stints, as well as those serving through our Post-Residency Program. … [Read more...]
Raising Haiti
Where Hurricane Matthew brought destruction God's people bring hope.
Haiti’s southern peninsula likely burns more than any place you’ve been—especially now. The smoke mingles with wafts of decay and ocean air, wreaking a pungent breeze through open windows. You can smell the burning in your sleep, and it wakes you. You can hear and see it night and day—the stripped-bare trees and fields piled high and set ablaze to make way for a new life, again. … [Read more...]
Like Water to a Dry Land
Operation Christmas Child is quenching spiritual thirst in Namibia.
Located just north and west of South Africa, Namibia is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. It is named after the Namib Desert which means “vast place” in the Damara/Nama tribal language. This more than 30,000 square miles of sand strikingly borders the Atlantic coast. … [Read more...]
Healing Quiet
Samaritan's Purse recently completed construction on a new church in Togiak, Alaska
Even in summer, Togiak, Alaska, is effortlessly quiet, mostly empty of human voices. The stillness is punctuated occasionally by the rattle of all-terrain vehicles, gulls overhead, and that beautifully haunting, hollow call the ravens make from roof crests and lamp posts. A few dogs may bark aimlessly and sometimes a plane lands with a buzz on the airstrip. … [Read more...]
Louisiana Covered by a Flood of Compassion
Liberty University students reach out to disaster victims
An army of 48 Liberty University students recently volunteered with Samaritan’s Purse in Louisiana and worked on homes throughout East Baton Rouge Parish. These students worked long, grueling days tearing out moldy drywall and insulation, cleaning floors, removing damaged furniture, and helping homeowners sort through their belongings. … [Read more...]
Standing with South Sudan
Relief continues to be delivered across this troubled and desperate nation
As gunfire shattered the afternoon quiet on May 11, 2015, Elizabeth quickly picked up her young daughter and started running. The fierce internal conflict that first erupted in 2013—just two years after South Sudan became the world’s newest country—had now spread to where Elizabeth lived in southern Unity State. She was working as a nutrition assistant with Samaritan’s Purse when the fighting broke out. … [Read more...]
Courage Undeterred
A look into the lives of refugees fleeing from Boko Haram
Since their emergence in northeastern Nigeria in 2002, militants in the terrorist organization Boko Haram have set about the task of remaking West Africa into their own image. Seeking to eliminate differing ideologies, they have killed thousands of people of various backgrounds. Often overlooked are the faces of those that survive. Throughout Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, millions of people have fled their homes seeking safety and freedom wherever it can be found. Many of these people … [Read more...]