India: May Update

As we look back on over a year of living with COVID, we celebrate God’s amazing provision that has allowed us to come together and provide over 1.24 million meals in 3 slums in India, where the lockdown left families destitute and unable to feed their children.

“You're angels,” declares Rima, age 34. “We didn't know whether they really existed until we experienced God's love and compassion through you.”

Your support has not only kept these people alive, but has given a new vision for future years to sixteen-year-old Anita, who says, “Thank you for going out of your way to love us well and for giving us hope, which we would have never received in this world, as we are despised untouchable people. Because of you, we're well fed. I want to remove starvation and hunger from the world when I grow up.”

Now, a new challenge faces our brothers and sisters. A second wave of COVID, stronger than the first, has hit India with deadly force. The Guardian calls it “the world’s worst outbreak” of COVID. Even the wealthy and well-connected of Delhi are not able to get a hospital bed or oxygen because of extreme shortages. An oxygen cylinder, normally $50, is now going for $750 – if it can be found at all. Much of the foreign aid arriving in India is getting sucked into the black market in medical supplies that has sprung up overnight.

For over a year, not a single case of COVID entered the slums we support. But now community members are falling prey to the disease. Sima rushed her 50-year-old father to a government hospital near the slum, only to be turned away because there were no beds available. She begged on her knees for help, weeping bitterly, but to no avail. She tried to resuscitate her father mouth-to-mouth before he finally expired in front of the hospital.

We’re seeing the country turn into a heap of corpses. Clouds of smoke hang over the city’s crematoriums. Even the supplies of wood for cremations have been exhausted. After Amit’s uncle, from another slum in North India, died of COVID, his body was kept in the cue for cremation for hours. Amit heard with horror that a dog had torn into the covering on the body and started eating the face. There is no dignity in death.

With your loving support, we have been providing over 4000 meals a day to the destitute for over one year. Now, with COVID spreading in the slums and government hospitals over-packed, our brothers and sisters also need medical help to keep them alive. Our desire is to supply the following:

Oxygen concentrators (10 liter), 50: $1570 each

Oxymeters, 200: $57 each

Nebulizers, 200: $84 each

Thermometers, 200: $29 each

Ventilator, 1: $8000 (to be given to a Christian mission hospital in Himachal Pradesh)

The supplies, which can be operated with minimal training, will be distributed by church elders in the slums. A Christian friend is helping us procure the equipment from Hong Kong/China, cutting out the middlemen.

We urge you to pray and partner with us financially or in whatever capacity you can to save these lives in their time of need.