Texas Baptist Men Travel to Turkey to Build Homes

A heart breaks as naturally as it loves. And traversing Antakya, Turkey, it crumbles like the buildings along the road.

This once bustling city of 400,000 people is now post-apocalyptic. What structures weren’t reduced to rubble by a February earthquake are leaning, cracked or both. More than 300,000 people became homeless in less than two minutes, many leaving the city.

Six volunteers from Dallas-based Texas Baptist Men came to this devastated landscape to put together simple homes for families who had lost theirs to the earthquake. The metal structures gave Turks safe places to live for the next several years, empowering them to move out of cracked structures or flimsy tents.

These semi-cylindrical shelters are being built in a place that feels like a scene out of a movie. Electricity is hard to come by; water is even harder. Don’t even ask about sewage.

People — often children — scavenge through the rubble for scrap metal they can sell or reuse. Small emergency tents dot the city, giving families a small source of protection. Long lines of people form daily for food and water distributions, as well as government support checks.

Where do you even start with relief efforts in a situation like this? A TBM team started with the basics. (Excerpt from The Christian Post.)