Communities in British Columbia joined Nazarenes to send medical supplies, clothes and other items to Haiti through Compassionate Resource Warehouse.
Volunteer Gerry Boy helps to move boxes in the Compassionate Resource Warehouse.
Volunteer Elaine Seibel sorts donated clothing. Ministries that operate orphanages and a hospital in Haiti contacted the warehouse for help.
Susan Harkness drops off a load of donated shoes to Compassionate Resource Warehouse, to be included in a shipment of donated goods bound for Haiti.
The first container left for Haiti on February 7. This one departs today, February 17. Four more will be sent in the coming weeks.
Victoria, British Columbia -- The Compassionate Resource Warehouse, on Vancouver Island, is in the process of filling six shipping containers with clothes, food, medical supplies, hygiene products and other needed items for Haitians who have lost homes, loved ones and livelihoods in the January 12 earthquake that devastated their capital city.
An affiliate of Nazarene Compassionate Ministries Canada (NCMC), the warehouse is mobilizing not only Nazarenes but Canadians in general in support of Haiti.
The first container was shipped February 5 and the next one goes out February 17. The cause has drawn people from all over British Columbia to work side by side with Nazarenes in gathering required items, sorting donations at the warehouse and packing up the containers to ship, said Dell Marie Wergeland, who directs the warehouse ministry.
The work may seem tedious, but the volunteers are energized. While they whistle, sing or tease one another, others in the community show up unsolicited with snacks, soup or meals to keep the volunteers going.
“It occurred to me this is a miracle unfolding in front of my eyes,” Wergeland said during a phone interview from the warehouse, which was humming like a beehive with volunteers. “They’re coming from the community like you wouldn’t believe. All of Vancouver Island has drives going for us and parts of the mainland. It’s not just a Nazarene response.”
The need for more warehouse volunteers to process the enormous amount of donations for Haiti has brought a number of unchurched people into these Nazarenes’ midst. As everyone works shoulder to shoulder sorting clothes and other goods, “we also have an opportunity to share Jesus – the care and compassion that drives us.”
One town whose economy is largely based on logging has recently seen a downturn in the industry, resulting in rising unemployment. However, the town filled a five-ton truck that included boxes of toothbrushes and toothpaste, as well as new blankets, and drove it to the warehouse.
“This is from a community itself in need,” Wergeland said.
A group called Runners of Compassion also raised $2,500 for the warehouse, along with a truck load of goods, according to a Times Colonist Web site article.
An elementary school challenged other schools in town to a contest in raising donations for the warehouse, said Gail Reddicopp, Nazarene Missions International (NMI) secretary for the Canada Pacific District.
Reddicopp is part of an informal network of Nazarenes and friends in Surrey, on the British Columbia mainland, who regularly offer up their garages and basements to gather and prepare donations that they send by ferry to the warehouse.
“One church, Penticton Church of the Nazarene, brought a very large truck load – medical supplies, clothes and shoes,” Reddicopp said. “These people work like you wouldn’t believe to get stuff in Victoria.”
The Compassionate Resource Warehouse was founded 10 years ago, but until the Haiti earthquake maintained a relatively low profile in Canada as it gathered requested items and sent them to ministry organizations in places such as the Philippines and Bolivia.
With just 5,000 square feet of warehouse space and a handful of volunteers, the compassionate ministry gets a lot done. It sent 22 shipments overseas in 2009, and has sent more than 260 containers since its inception. It takes 1,000 hours of volunteer labor to prepare one container.
The first container sent to Haiti after the earthquake on February 5 was requested by Light and Peace Mission, a Baptist ministry that operates schools, orphanages and a medical clinic in and around Port-au-Prince. Several of its schools must be rebuilt, and the organization’s hospital sustained damage, Wergeland said.
Following the earthquake, Light and Peace requested linens, towels, children’s clothes, kitchen and school supplies. The warehouse also sent materials to refurbish their medical clinic.
For that purpose, a donation to the warehouse of 100 new stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs will immediately be put to use.
“This is a miracle – we usually get things we have to go through and have to say we can’t send,” Wergeland said. “I have ladies who said to me, ‘We are going to pray that the stuff that comes in will be exactly what you need and that you will not waste your time going through things you don’t need. I am watching their prayers be answered.”