Good morning everybody. As the USA closes down and braces for what could be the toughest week yet in the COVID-19 pandemic, we too are entering the 22nd day of lockdown in the Middle East.

Yesterday, we began to compile some of the proven resources we’ve been using to serve during this pandemic and wanted to share that page with you all: COVID-19 Response & Resources Center

That page is also a central place to catch up on pandemic response related posts from us too. The latest ones will show up near the bottom of that page. We don’t have too many just yet but that will likely change in coming days!

During these 22 days of lockdown, we’ve encountered a host of resources – some helpful, some not as much – that we’ve had to sift through to find what works. Everything on this page – which we will update regularly with new resources – is something we found to actually work. Whether it is a pattern for a cloth face mask, isolation gowns, 3D printed files or health advice, we are only putting things up here that are reliable and/or directly proven by us in the field to be effective and useful.

If you have recommendations for us to include things you found useful too, please let us know via our contact form and we will take a look!

You Can Help Your Community Too

We’ve tried to use the time to help the refugee and local community in our host country to cope with this unexpected disaster. That’s included things mentioned in our previous update such as making cloth face masks for the community, experimenting with 3D printed PPE items that can help in the pandemic, providing PPE to under-funded medical facilities, and continuing to help refugees with food/medicine during this difficult period.

Right now half of the world is on some sort of lockdown related to COVID-19. That’s pretty incredible to think of! But what that also means is if half of the world is in some way affected by this pandemic, there is a HUGE amount of need right now to serve those people! We’d encourage you to pray and get creative on solving some of the unique problems now presented by this unusual situation.

A simple place to start, especially for those in the West where cloth face masks are now recommended for everyone, is to make cloth face masks for your community. We have an easy to follow pattern and method we’ve already used to produce dozens of durable, good quality masks for our own community: How To Make Cloth Face Masks

There’s other things those of you in the West can do. In addition to our own PPE drives for the community/healthcare facilities, we’re also helping people with food and essentials like medicine. While the economic needs may be less in the West, it could be a BIG service for you or your church to help the elderly and those at higher risk of a severe reaction to COVID-19 by doing their essential shopping for them (where permitted based on lockdown rules) so they don’t have to expose themselves.

We will post more later this week with further information and resources for you to utilize and share with others. Thanks for praying for us during this time, and we are also praying for those of you affected in the West too!