Latest earthquake news from Peru

Hello again,

A good number of you have been to Ica with us and will probably remember the trip to the Ballesta Islands and the beautiful Hotel Paracas from which we departed on the boats. That hotel is no longer. It crumbled during the two minute long earthquake and only minutes later was covered by the 20 ft. tidal wave. Perhaps from bits and pieces left, they can rebuild. Who knows?

You will be happy to know that our Ica well is working to capacity and with monies received the water truck continues giving away this precious commodity which people have little of at best of times. Some of you will remember having been, or having heard of Cachiche, the home to renowned witchdoctors and centre of demon worship. There is no evangelical church there. The priest closed down the Catholic Church. You will recall the palm tree with seven heads, the unscheduled porno play 10 year old kids put on in their school for a work team we took there and where we started an S.U. meeting. The earthquake tore the place apart. I asked Marco whether he and his team felt brave and confident enough to open an emergency feeding centre there if asked to. It took him, not two seconds to say 'claro que sí' ('of course'). So I consulted with Willie McPherson, Executive Director of our partners, the Vine Trust of Scotland, to see whether they would allow us to stretch the $50,000 they had sent for the 4 soup kitchens in order to add a 5th. His immediate response was met by great enthusiasm by Marco Cordova, our Ica-Pisco staff worker in charge of our Relief Efforts.. 100 more kids from no less than Cachiche! Praise God!I need to make a few clarifications. In Scripture Union we are all encouraged to be very careful about the facts we give out. That is why you often get a polite, I'm sorry, I don't really know when you ask for statistics. I quoted our local newspaper in giving 253,000 as the number of homeless. Last night I heard the BBC broadcast report over 200,000 so I now question the accuracy of my first report. Actually, I never know how people come up with any of these numbers. Guestimates, I should imagine. Second correction. My first report gave 8.0 as the magnitude of the earthquake. We now know that on the Richter scale it was 7.9. It is good to see some of our older and now trusted abandoned boys assisting in the Rescue-Relief efforts. They have the inside track on suffering, so are well suited for the part they play. I will be going to Ica this week and hopefully will be able to send you more up-to-date photos afterwards. Thanks again for your support during this time!

Paul & Marty