Emmanuel International

The Very First Team| October 3, 2024

1 Chronicles 16:34 "O give thanks to the LORD; for he is good; for his mercy endures for ever."

Excerpt from Dan Maxson, 1977:

At the time of the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, EI had a staff of George and Dan Maxson, Mark Middleton and family, and two Eritrean nurses being sponsored. Hearing of the earthquake, George arranged for a team to go to Guatemala under an American Baptist Mission to (re)build churches that had been destroyed.  This was the very first "team" to go out under ERRI.  Dan was joined on site by John Lorenz and Keith Fellows.  John was a builder/engineer, Keith was the muscle, and Dan, the team leader. 

Dan recalls, “We lived in a tent in the village mountains and built cement block churches with steel beams that were more EQ resistant.  The village fed us and provided the labour of moving blocks to the site. This was the beginning, for me, of an off and on relationship with EI over the next 40 years which included starting a Somalia relief program.  I will always be thankful for those experiences and the learning that I acquired as a result.”

Where it all started

September 12, 2024

The Letters of Patent declaring Emmanuel Relief and Rehabilitation International to be a recognized charitable organization is dated September 11, 1975.  September 12, 2024 begins our 50th year, our Jubilee year!  In the Bible, every 50th year was a reset year, a year of rest. The Jubilee was a year of acknowledging Sovereign God, His grace, His provision, His heart for His people.  

With Samuel of old, on the 12th of September 2024, join us in raising our Ebenezer; for truly, ‘hitherto has the LORD helped us.” 

 I Samuel 7:12:  “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far has the LORD helped us.”