Stories tagged with: venezuela

• IMB missionaries use trauma care resources to help refugees, start churches

  by Tobin Perry/Southern Baptist TEXAN, posted Tuesday, July 07, 2020 (4 years ago)

  

  Submitted photo

  BOGOTÁ, Colombia (BP) -- It's tough to overstate the trauma the Venezuelan people have experienced over the last decade. The price of oil, the country's chief export, cratered. Hyperinflation at one point hit 10 million percent. The country's power grid failed, leading to massive power shortages. An unpopular dictator defied an election. More than 4.6 million people fled the country from 2016 to 2019. Read More

• 'Hope-givers' reaching refugees on brink of despair

  by Paul Chitwood, posted Friday, May 17, 2019 (5 years ago)

  

  Photo by Chris Carter/IMB

  VENEZUELA (BP) -- With tears streaming down her face, an elderly woman stood before me half way across the Simon Bolivar International Bridge between Colombia and Venezuela. She was one of thousands to cross the bridge on foot that day. Most carried food, medicine, and other essential items. They came to Colombia to secure whatever they could carry in their hands or on their backs before making the long journey back home.

  Others had no plans to return. Instead, they were already miles deep in the Colombian mountains with hopes of making their way to other South American countries. They had heard there were places where refugees are welcome, jobs are available, and a better life awaits. Read More

• Chitwood on border thanks Baptists for Venezuela aid

  by Diana Chandler, posted Monday, May 13, 2019 (5 years ago)

  

  Screen capture from IMB video

  VENEZUELA (BP) -- International Mission Board President Paul Chitwood ends today (May 13) a weeklong trip that included the Venezuelan border where he encouraged Baptists and area convention leaders ministering to refugees amid the nation's collapsed economy and political strife.

  "We're thankful that Southern Baptists are here ministering to the needs of people who really are in a desperate situation," Chitwood said in a video during his visit to Colombia. Chitwood witnessed scores of Venezuelans crossing into Colombia for food and medical care not available in Venezuela, where inflation is more than 1 million percent. Read More

• Venezuela uprising: 'crucial day,' 'divided nation'

  by WORLD and Baptist Press, posted Tuesday, April 30, 2019 (5 years ago)

  

  Screen capture from CNN.

  CARACAS, Venezuela (BP) -- Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó on Tuesday (April 30) led a military uprising in the capital city of Caracas against embattled President Nicolás Maduro's government.

  Guaidó reportedly took to the streets with heavily armed soldiers and opposition activist Leopoldo López, whom the military freed from house arrest. In a three-minute video posted early Tuesday on Twitter, Guaidó called on Venezuelans to back the uprising. Read More

• Venezuela: The lights go out, Christ's light shines on

  by Monica Starr, posted Monday, April 01, 2019 (5 years ago)

  

  Screen capture from CNN.

  VENEZUELA (BP) -- Beatriz paused in her struggle to lug a bucket of water up seven flights without sloshing any out. She rubbed her aching arms, then grabbed the bucket and continued up the fire escape to her sister's apartment -- one step at a time.

  If her husband Leo, a Venezuelan pastor, could find parts to repair their ailing car, if he could secure gasoline, if he didn't find too many roadblocks, he would join Beatriz there in the capital, bringing two large containers of water from his mother's home in the country. Read More

• Venezuela pastor: church 'opportunities increasing'

  by Monica Starr, posted Friday, February 22, 2019 (5 years ago)

  

  IMB photo

  VENEZUELA (BP) -- Thousands of Venezuelans of all ages, across the entire nation, have marched on the streets in protest of the Nicolás Maduro regime. Scores were shot dead, more were beaten, hundreds rounded up and detained, according to media reports.

  As 2019 unfolds, the infrastructure continues a downward spiral, hyper-inflation has exceeded 1.5 million percent, food and medicine are increasingly difficult to acquire. And 3 million or more out of 31 million Venezuelans reportedly have fled the country in the past few years. Read More

• Venezuelans find mercy in arduous exodus from tumult

  by Monica Starr , posted Monday, January 07, 2019 (5 years ago)

  

  COLOMBIA (BP) -- Night descends rapidly on the small plaza where a penetrating drizzle falls onto the cold stone floor. About 35 men, most in short sleeves or sleeveless shirts, huddle under the only two trees.

  Meanwhile, two young women scurry to pull together an improvised "tent" of black plastic trash bags while trying to keep a small girl dry in her fuzzy footsie pajamas. They select the top step of the plaza, against the wall of a closed building. Rain runs off the roof onto their shelter, collapsing it.

  Nearby, under the narrow archway of the building, a young couple sit in physical exhaustion, ... Read More

• An exodus from Venezuela & new ministry in Chile

  by IMB Staff, posted Wednesday, October 31, 2018 (5 years ago)

  

  IMB photo

  VENEZUELA (BP) -- Insecure and unstable describe life in Venezuela. The country is running out of food. It has recorded more murders -- 28,000 in 2017 -- than countries at war. Venezuela's population of 30 million people is decreasing, with more than 4 million emigrations in the past 10 years.

  This is one family -- parents and two daughters -- who never intended to leave, yet theirs is a story of a God-ordained exodus from their home country.

  Maria* and her older sister Elisabeth* were both in medical school in Venezuela. Maria and a friend were robbed while waiting for the bus to take them to classes. Later, she witnessed a mobbing. Then, a friend was killed during a peaceful march.

  All of this happened within a week. Maria knew she needed to leave. So, she moved to Chile. Read More

• Venezuelans, fleeing tumult, to find aid on a mountain

  by Grace Thornton, posted Wednesday, October 31, 2018 (5 years ago)

  

  Submitted photo

  CÚCUTA, Colombia (BP) -- When Nelson Martínez' father died this summer, Martínez inherited a piece of property half a day up the mountain from his hometown of Cúcuta, Colombia. The property sits at 10,000 feet at the top of a cold, often rainy mountain pass. Every day several hundred ill-prepared Venezuelans walk over it on their way to try to find food, work and medicine in a new land.

  Some have died of hypothermia. All are desperate.

  Martínez, who has been serving as a pastor in Houston, Texas, feels like he inherited the property at just the right time to aid the masses fleeing Venezuela's economic collapse. Read More

• ANALYSIS: Venezuela planters see opportunity amid crisis

  by Karen Pearce, posted Friday, September 21, 2018 (6 years ago)

  

  IMB photo

  BOGOTA, Colombia (BP) -- As I meandered through a craft market in Bogota, Colombia, I struck up a conversation with a vendor who asked why I was visiting his country. I had just returned from four days in Cúcuta, the Colombian-Venezuelan border town where I witnessed the sad pilgrimage of thousands of people leaving Venezuela out of desperation and hunger.

  When I shared that with him, his face contorted into a mask of grief.

  "It is so horrible what is happening," he said, "They are our brothers." Read More