A bigger picture

When I’ve previously written about Samaritan’s Purse it was around Christmastime and in connection with Operation Christmas Child, which was started in 1990. By 1993, it had grown to the point it was adopted by Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian organization run by Franklin Graham, son of 95-year-old Asheville, North Carolina evangelist Billy Graham.  Samaritan’s Purse is based in nearby Boone, North Carolina.

Today, Operation Christmas Child is one of the best-known outreaches of Franklin Graham’s international relief ministry, Samaritan’s Purse, which was founded by Dr. Bob Pierce in 1970. It is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization that provides spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Samaritan’s Purse Canada was established in 1973.

To date, Operation Christmas Child has collected and distributed over 100 million shoebox gifts in more than 130 countries worldwide.  Each shoebox is filled with hygiene items, school supplies, toys, and candy. Operation Christmas Child then works with local churches to put on age-appropriate presentations of the gospel at the events where the shoeboxes are distributed. Here in Thompson, there were about 300 shoeboxes collected last Christmas season for Operation Christmas Child through the Thompson Pentecostal Assembly, which co-ordinated efforts on behalf of a number of local churches, schools, including University College of the North, and individual donors.

Rev. Leslie-Elizabeth King, who pastored the Lutheran-United Church of Thompson, and was in active ministerial service here for 19 years, until she retired in June, touched a nerve in her “Spiritual Thoughts” column in the Nickel Belt News Oct. 26, 2012 when she mentioned using the Canada Revenue Agency website to look at how the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada’s Calgary-based Samaritan’s Purse Canada operates.

In a nutshell, while King had no problem with the charity’s six per cent management and administration budget expense, while 90 per cent went directly to the charity, which, she said, was “very good,” she didn’t much like the concept of sending shoeboxes stuffed with a pillowcase, toothbrush and a few pencils to a poor child on the other side of the world. “Wouldn’t it be better, if we truly want to be of use to others, to send our money to a church, agency or Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in the destination country so local people could decide what is needed and where? That way, it would be more likely that our gift would build the economy in a community that needs it?” she asked.

Frank King, no relation, communications manager for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada’s Samaritan’s Purse Canada, pointed out “our work in developing nations, including distributing Operation Christmas Child shoe box gifts, is always done through local partners. This is a priority for us because we want to build up local churches and we want to rely on local expertise to do (or financially support) the work that best benefits those communities.”

Fair points on both sides. But Samaritan’s Purse is about more than Operation Christmas Child. In the midst of the deadliest Ebola viral hemorrhagic fever outbreak recorded in West Africa since the disease was discovered in 1976, so far infecting more than 3,500 people and killing more than 1,900 in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal. Samaritan Purse’s Ebola care centre on the outskirts of the Liberian capital of Monrovia is right on the front lines.

Dr. Kent Brantly, 33, the medical director of the centre, contracted Ebola and was medically evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where he was treated with ZMapp, an experimental drug treatment produced by U.S.-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, while Nancy Writebol, 59, who is with Serving in Mission, (SIM), which runs the hospital where Samaritan’s Purse has the Ebola care centre, was also medically evacuated to Emory University Hospital and treated with ZMapp. Writebol was released from hospital in Atlanta Aug. 19, followed two days later by the release of Brantly Aug. 21.

Seems Samaritan’s Purse is about more than just Christmas and shoeboxes and well worthy of being named after the “Good Samaritan” travelling the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, who Jesus told the now almost universally-known parable about, transmitted to us by another physician, this one from Antioch in Syria, St. Luke the Evangelist, in his New Testament gospel.

That’s the bigger picture that comes into view looking more closely at the work of Samaritan’s Purse.