The ground broke. The Church of Christ did not.

Two powerful earthquakes struck northern Venezuela within seconds of each other. The state of La Guaira — the strip of coast just north of Caracas, known for years as Vargas — was among the hardest hit, with entire blocks down in the seaside towns of Macuto and Caraballeda. Thousands of lives were lost, and hundreds of thousands of people still need water, food, shelter, sanitation, and medical care.

The loss reached our own church family. Congregations we have worked beside for years buried seven of their own, and dozens of members were left without a home.

The photographs in the slideshow at the top of this page were taken in the affected towns in the days that followed — fallen homes, rescue crews searching the rubble, and help beginning to arrive. Each one is published under a free license by the people and agencies who took them; tap any photo to see it full size.

The maps below come from the official impact assessments. In the satellite damage survey, every colored dot is a building — hundreds were marked destroyed or damaged along this one stretch of coast. Tap any map to examine it.

Since 2018, our congregation has worked hand-in-hand with evangelists in Venezuela — men we know by name, whose families we pray for, whose work we have watched bear fruit for years. When the earthquakes struck, we did not have to find a way in. It was already there.

Every gift entrusted to this effort goes directly to those trusted members of the church in Venezuela. They buy food, water, medicine, and materials locally, and put them in the hands of the families who need them — no agencies in between, no warehouses, no waiting.

And because they are shepherds before they are logisticians, they carry something no aid agency can: they sit with the grieving, pray with the frightened, preach hope in shelters and broken buildings. Bread for the body, and comfort for the soul — the reports on this page show both.