News Articles by Maria Elena Baseler

SANTIAGO, Chile (BP)--A year ago, one of the most powerful earthquakes on record rocked Chile. Since then, working in Baptist quake relief efforts has led missionary Alfredo Valencia to many suffering families.       But he'll never forget one family in particular. Valencia found them living in a partially collapsed home on a hillside in Cartagena, Chile, a coastal town hit hard by the 8.8-magnitude quake that shattered central Chile early Feb. 27, 2010.       The family with eight children -- ranging from ages two months to 17 years -- "were living in really, really bad conditions," recalls Valencia, an International Mission Board missionary in Santiago, Chile.       It was months after the disaster had struck, and Baptist quake relief efforts were drawing to a close. By then local officials had deemed the family's house uninhabitable and had asked them to move out. But the family had nowhere else to go.

SAO PAULO (BP)--Scriptures, prayers and random thoughts -- scrawled in white ink -- cover the prayer room's black walls.       "For nothing is impossible with God."       "Whatever it takes."       "Intentional."       "Spontaneous."       "Show us your glory."       "Give us the nations."

JIMANI, Dominican Republic (BP)–As Southern Baptist disaster relief officials were heading to Haiti Jan. 19 to assess needs, International Mission Board (IMB) missionaries in neighboring Dominican Republic were providing immediate relief supplies, medical aid and spiritual counseling to survivors of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that rocked Haiti the week before. “We have asked almost all of […]

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--The devastating earthquake that shook Haiti Jan. 12 has claimed the life of a leading Haitian Baptist pastor in Port-au-Prince, according to reports received from the vice president of the Baptist Convention of Haiti, located in the northern Haiti city of Cap-Haitien.       Bienne Lamerique, 56-year-old pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Port-au-Prince, died of injuries sustained when his house collapsed. Several Haitian Baptist pastors buried him without a coffin -- because none was available -- Jan. 14, according to e-mails received by Mark Rutledge, International Mission Board (IMB) missionary on stateside assignment in Richmond, Va. He and his wife, Peggy, work among the Haitian people and served within Haiti for 26 years.       He was "one of our best pastors," Pastor Gedeon Eugene, vice president of the Baptist Convention of Haiti, wrote in an e-mail to Rutledge, who is from Murfreesboro, Tenn.       "Haiti lost a godly man," Peggy, from Glendale, Calif., said in a Jan. 15 interview from the IMB's International Learning Center in Rockville, Va. "Pastor Bienne did everything with his whole heart.... He had a heart for people and for reaching people. He planted more churches than any other pastor I know in the convention. We loved him dearly."       When the Rutledges became career missionaries in Haiti in 1987, they were part of Lamerique's first church-start in a small house in a Port-au-Prince slum.       "To me personally ... he was a real encouragement," added Mark, who traveled to Port-au-Prince Jan. 17 to translate for a Southern Baptist team. "He was one who raised up and grew leaders and started new churches. He also was one to take churches that had stagnated and begin to work with them to renew them and get them on course again. He had a tremendous impact on multiplication of churches like no other pastor I've experienced since we've been in Haiti."