What can you accomplish in 72 hours? Three days?
In disaster conditions — an earthquake as we are seeing in Venezuela, an attack as in 9/11, a tsunami, a fire, collapsed buildings — where people are struggling for a little air to breathe to survive.
Where deceased people, bodies or body parts remain and need to be located under concrete, refrigerators, debris metal, water, stone, soil, or mud.
How to begin such an important and stress-filled task in dangerous conditions?
There are human handlers and trained dogs who willingly take on the dangerous task of going into traumatizing conditions to save and find life. Life that seems doomed.
Because dogs have an acute sense of smell, they can work up to 10 to 14 days to try to find life in rubble, although after 72 hours the chances for survival decrease significantly.
According to research, a dog can smell from 10,000 to 100,000 times better than we do. We see; the dog sniffs. Their brains are created to analyze smell — the area 40% larger than in humans brains. Their noses separate air for “smelling” and “breathing.” They are also made to smell things that humans cannot, such as pheromones.
Differing views exist about how stressful it is for dogs to do rescue or cadaver work, where they search for the dead. Physically, the job is tough and demanding and the dogs are often worked in shifts with handlers to give them rest time in between the scrambling, climbing, swimming, running and concentrating on smells. However, one dog worked 56 hours straight sniffing through rubble and helped save 40 lives.
Dedication, strength, training, focus and sacrifice — to save as many lives as possible.
What would you do to save a life? How long would you continue the work?
When would you be tempted to give up?
The Bible and the Gospel of Jesus tell us that Jesus is the only way of salvation and eternal life in God. In the whole world, research says about 2.3 billion people say they are Christians. That leaves about 3.4 billion people, or about 43% of people around the globe, who do not know Jesus.
Some live in areas where there are only a few Christians to share the Gospel, and are considered “unreached.” In a region in North Africa, to the Middle East, to Asia is a vast area of those who haven’t heard the Gospel of Jesus.
Twenty-five percent of the world has never heard the Gospel in their own language and culture.
In America, about 62% to 69% of people “identify” as Christian. About 77% of adults in Mississippi “identify” as Christians.
What are we doing to reach, find in the disasters culture has created, save from the floods of sin that overwhelm, dig out from the mirey clay of sin, and rescue these people from sin, death and hell? The Holy Spirit gives the ability to fulfill Jesus’ commands. We carry the saving message.
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
We have to do our job!
