by Terry Barone

LOS ANGELES - A seven-member team of medical professionals fielded by Mosaic in Los Angeles represented California Disaster Relief by serving victims of the Haiti earthquake Feb. 12-20.

Adrian Koehler, director of Mosaic's "Serve L.A.," said, "As soon as Haiti began there was an outpouring of compassion from our church community and we knew we wanted to be involved, we just didn't know when and how."

He added that since Mosaic is "pretty fluid and activistic," the church began looking for ways to be involved and found Southern Baptist Disaster Relief one of the most well-organized, with systems in place to accommodate a team from the congregation.

Mosaic has a "history of responding to global crises" such as the Indonesian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, Koehler noted.

Don Hargis, Disaster Relief coordinator for California Southern Baptist Convention, said the Haiti government still is trying to put infrastructure into place to accommodate long-term disaster relief efforts, but an immediate need, more than a month after the earthquake, is medical care for the injured.

"The medical team from Mosaic was a great fit for us," he said.

Koehler noted Disaster Relief "really made it mindless for us. With Don's organizational prowess all we had to do was get on board and go. They have made it easy for us to do some great work."

The aim of the seven-member team of three doctors, three nurses and a chaplain who also is an emergency medical technician, is to provide "excellent medical care," according to Koehler. "We don't know what we will be walking into, but we will provide excellent care while we are there."

He added Mosaic wanted to be able to witness through their acts of service. "My prayer is that our team members will be courageous enough to share their faith.

"Our hope is that this team can create bridges for teams to be involved in the future when systems are in place," Koehler said. "We hope this sets the stage for engagement in the future. We are capitalizing on using the crisis in Haiti to organize our people to help with long-term solutions."

He added the involvement with Southern Baptist Disaster Relief has been positive, and a second team is scheduled to serve March 2-10.