Earthquake Appeal: Peru

This from Garrick and Simone:

Hi all,

I am sure that by now many of you have heard about the terrible earthquakes that hit just south of Lima, Peru last Wednesday. Here in Lima, I felt the rolling impact of the initial 8.0 magnitude. We are fine in Lima, there is not much damage done, just a lot of frayed nerves and panicky people. However, in Pisco, Ica and other small towns south of Lima (about 260kms) there have been devastating results. Aftershocks of more than 5 in magnitude keep occurring daily and while we get shaky here, the effects are terrible in these other towns. Just and hour and half ago we had another magnitude 5.8 while sitting in our living room. If you have a look at bbc.com and other world news websites, you can see the results for yourself.

Our church is doing all it can to help and was on site the day after it happened. So far they have sent hundreds of blankets, tarps, water, cooking equipment, rice and beans but so much more is needed. We need prayer here, that as people lose all their earthly hope and many lose family members (over 500 dead and 1500 injured) that they would find hope in Jesus - pray for Christians to show themselves authentically. Please pray against the air of desperation, which causes riots and looting to begin. Pray for the president, Alan Garcia, as he faces a people in crisis.

I don’t want this to leave us unaffected, indeed, it’s so close to us here in Lima but can feel so far away. So I am going to simply ask you to help if you can. We need prayer and also we need to keep helping in a ‘hands and feet’ type way here in Peru. If you would like to help with money, it would really be appreciated, we can give you our account details in Australia and you can deposit it there and we will make sure it gets to our church crisis fund for this event.

Thanks,
Simone & Garrick.