CBF aids flood victims in Serbia, Zambia

Posted: 5/26/06

CBF aids flood victims in Serbia, Zambia

By Carla Wynn

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

ATLANTA (ABP)—The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has given $10,000 in flood-relief assistance to disaster areas in Serbia and Zambia.

As part of that gift, CBF gave $5,000 to the Union of Baptist Churches in Serbia to provide personal hygiene items and drinking water to flood victims.

“Serbian Baptists have churches directly impacted by the flooding, and several Baptist families have been flooded out,” said Jim Smith, CBF Global Missions associate coordinator for mission teams serving in Germany.

Those congregations “were interested in not only helping their Baptist members but non-Christians in the neighborhoods stricken by the flooding,” Smith said.

The Fellowship gave an additional $5,000 for flood relief in Zambia, where the Zambezi River had overflowed, displacing thousands of people. Fran and Lonnie Turner, CBF missionaries serving in sub-Saharan Africa, visited one camp housing more than 1,600 displaced people. CBF’s relief funds provided food and blankets for people in the camp.

As in Serbia, the economic impact of flooding in Zambia is more longlasting and destructive than the short-term physical danger, said David Harding, the Fellowship’s international coordinator for emergency response and transformational development.

“It is not so much a matter of (physical) danger as a matter of your life being turned upside down and the recovery it requires,” Harding said.

Flooding in Europe, which started in March and worsened as the Danube River and its tributaries swelled, has created a state of emergency in eight Serbian municipalities, with estimated damage totaling $45 million, Reuters reported.

In Africa, heavy rains also caused overflowing rivers that flooded Zambian villages and destroyed agriculture, homes and lives.

The heavy period of rain followed last season’s severe drought, according to the Zambia Red Cross Society.