Rescue Task Force

And Also.... (Please see the newsletter on the RTF website for proper picture placement: rescuetaskforce.org) April, 2021...Continue reading

Rescue Task Force - Burma He had a plan and we have RTF... Please see the newsletter on our website for letter with proper picture placement: www.rescuetaskforce.org March, 2021...Continue reading

Dear Donors, Friends and Supporters in so many ways, The Rescue Task Force Burma team is on the ground, inside Burma, about to wrap-up another RTF relief mission. We will have their mission report and pictures for you in a couple days - and other updates... In the meantime... A dear friend, Oscar Seijkens, of The Netherlands, was in Cambodia with our project partner World Emergency Relief. Oscar is a professional photographer and during his visit shot a video for RTF of some of your projects. Take a look and enjoy seeing some of what you do!!! Yours In Service, Gary and the RTF Teams Gary Becks Cambodia Local Tel: 0-8787-5968 From USA (011) (855) 8787-5968 Message: USA (951) 595-1525 www.rescuetaskforce.org PS: Note to recent donors... We just yesterday received the February and March mail packages and Andrea is working on the Thank You letters and receipts now. Seems like about 5 weeks mail service is the new normal....

Special Report Bad News Burma, Good News Cambodia For the newsletter with proper picture placement see RTF website home page; www.rescuetaskforce.org...Continue reading

How are your other investments doing??? December, 2020 For the newsletter with proper picture placement see the RTF website home page: www.rescuetaskfoce.org... Dear Donors, Friends and Supporters in so many ways, In this ‘you are there’ report of what your dollars are doing: The following disaster relief report from your team in Honduras Another shipping container to Honduras: $2,000 = $280,000!!! Channy Srey Direct aid distributions - preview From Ricardo and Jesica in Honduras: Tegucigalpa, Honduras, C.A. December, 2020 HURRICANE ETA & IOTA PROJECT Hola from Honduras, Hurricane ETA began affecting Northern Honduras as a Category 4 hurricane on 3rd November and brought torrential rains, drenching much of Honduras and causing rising river levels, flooding and landslides across the country. We Hondurans were not expecting to have mass destruction like we had with hurricane Fifi in 1974 and hurricane Mitch in 1998. Vulnerable communities in Cortes (La Lima), Atlántida, Santa Barbara and Yoro were the worst affected areas. Tegucigalpa (our capital city) was affected in less although at least 42,000 people were moved to 425 shelters. In November we started visiting some shelters giving out blankets, diapers, wet wipes and canned food from RTF and some clothes and groceries donated by neighbors, friends and family who trusted in us to deliver their donations. The children asked for toys; they told us how they lost theirs in a landslide. Now they play soccer to not to get bored. Our neighbor Maricela and Walda (my sister, who you met through the RTF Christmas newsletter last year) prepared rice with chicken to delivery for the people of the shelters, on behalf RTF. When we came back at night, delivering the food, we found these guys, who made this little house with the purple blankets that we left in the afternoon, they were so happy playing with them, they said they felt saved in side. Giving diapers, blankets and wet wipes in November. We visited visit 5 shelters over 4 days delivering 75 blankets, diapers and wet wipes specially to children, elderly people and mothers with babies, around Tegucigalpa. We also moved some donations to a collection center in Tegucigalpa. Then in December we moved the RTF relief work to La Lima Cortes; one of the places more effected with hurricanes Eta and Iota. He is Carlos Gamez, when we decided to go to La Lima, we asked my airport ex-worker partners if they know people who being affected, and for our surprise Carlos was one. He became our guide there. His family is in a shelter at the moment, while he is working to clean their home. He was blessed with one of the stoves from RTF. 16 Stoves were given by RTF in Colonia Buen Samaritano in La Lima Cortes Santiago, in black t- shirt, and his brothers were so thankful and happy with your donations. They lost everything when their house, behind us, was flooded. They still smile. People in Colonia Buen Samaritano are building this kind of hut close to their house because they are afraid to lose their right to live there too. We asked them if they will stay there after all this tragedy, and they answered that they don’t have any other place to go, even when this happened again and again. Dr. Ivan Betancour, RTF new Volunteer, helped people affected in La Ceiba, Atlantida with groceries on behalf RTF. This is a map of Honduras showing the departments in where RTF helped Hondurans affected by hurricanes, Eta and Iota. We feel honored to be part of RTF and this beautiful proj ect. Thanks for thinking in Honduras, thanks to the sponsors and donors. God bless all of you. Ricardo and Jesica Volunteers RTF Honduras And also in Honduras; Rescue Task Force and World Emergency Relief have collaborated on another 40-foot overseas shipping container of Eco Lab hand sanitizer that, as you read this, is on the water headed for Honduras. From many health care workers and Hondurans Gracias y Dios te bendega (Thank you and God Bless you.) $2,000 RTF dollars ships 25 tons of donated sanitizers worth $280,000 $280,000 return on $2,000 investment!!! How are your other investments doing???? RTF File Photo At the container port in Honduras Cambodia Very sad days here in Cambodia Many of you know Channy Srey our country coordinator, chief guide and translator, Gary’s ‘wing-man’ on the many missions into war torn Burma, and dear friend of many years. Channy passed away last week after several weeks of health complications and then kidney failure. Sorely missed by many Miss you and love you brother. To the great amusement of the audiences, Channy and I had a little English / Khmer (language of Cambodia) routine we did when doing presentations of the water filters and various RTF community-wide projects and distributions in both cities and jungle villages We introduced ourselves as being identical twins, separated at birth I have been ‘broke’ but cannot imagine being this poor In many places where RTF serves, and very much so here in Cambodia, Every Day Is A Disaster In memory of Channy, Na, my wife, has set up distributions of Merry Christmas family food packs to some of the poorest of the poor. We have distributed twenty of them so far, each pack is about $60 and will feed an average family for about a month, plus mosquito net(s) and personal hygiene supplies. Details, pictures and Thank You from many in the next letter Also in the next update Around the World, Around the Clock: COVID USA, Thailand relief team More Cambodia Relief Teams Afghanistan Schools and Disaster Relief Cambodian Teachers Giving Back God Bless you richly for caring and for sharing your hard-earned dollars that make the work of RTF Possible over these many years. Every Donation is Important And, PLEASE, If we have not heard from you lately, please consider helping now. As you pray for our America during these horrid times, also please be lifting up all of the RTF volunteers and volunteer country coordinators in prayer as they serve on the front lines making the RTF projects happen!!! Yours In Service, Gary, Steven, Larry, Andrea and the RTF Team(s) Gary cell (951) 595-1525 Messages Direct Dial - Cambodia: 011 855 8787-5968 Rescue Task Force 27636 Ynez Road L-7 #357 Temecula, CA 92591 Phone (messages): (951) 595-1525 www.rescuetaskforce.org [email protected] PS Your spirit of giving can continue for many years by simply remembering RTF when you write or next update your will. (Tax ID# / EIN 27-3504467) And, when you do so, please let us know how you would like RTF to recognize you and your gift

Deep Water and High Mountains... For the RTF newsletter with proper picture placement see the rtf website home page: rescuetaskforce.org November, 2020... Update #1 following below Update #2 following soon: COVID USA, Hurricane Eta Honduras Thailand relief team Cambodia Relief Teams Afghanistan Schools and Disaster Relief Dear Donors and supporters in so many ways, You are busy Flood Relief Cambodia: We were finally able to get into this area after the flood waters started receding - hours of travel in trucks and cargo vans on washed out roads It felt like a long day in a washing machine! Working with a local church, RTF brought immediate relief to seventy-five hurting families! Relief in the form of about six weeks of basic food and hygiene supplies to each household. (The Love Packs that RTF distributes cost about $45 each) This is a very poor, and very rural farming community in northern Cambodia, close to the Thailand border, that has been devastated by monsoon flooding. We bring you these ‘Love Packs’ from your many friends in the United States of America, in the name of the Lord There are great needs everywhere and we truly appreciate the help of our colleagues from the local church with identifying the families most in need mostly elderly. RTF (you) put a tourniquet on the problem but we are very concerned about the near future. Crops that were near to being harvested are gone!!! From many in Cambodia Ah Khun (Thank You) Thailand Thai Volunteer Medical Team: Many of you know and will remember ‘Puu’ (Benyapa). Puu is in Thailand now for an extended visit and is coordinating RTF’s ongoing assistance to a team of great local Thai doctors, nurses and volunteers. You helped send the team into the jungles of Northern Thailand’s isolated mountain Hill Tribe people. When we say: RTF, Around the World, Around the Clock’ it means just that The work does not stop just because the sun goes down AndHappy Medicine - Candy for the kids!!!! From many in Thailand the villagers and the volunteers Kob Khun Ka (Thank You) Water Filters Cambodia And more routine RTF work although the only thing routine, or normal, about RTF projects is that there is no such thing as routine or normal You put the dirty water in the top and clean water comes out the bottom. Thanks to you, forty more families today have clean, safe, water!!!! In the name of the Lord, from your friends in America Girl Books When we come to the villages to do the water filter and other projects we always bring along bundles of our ‘Girl Books’. My wife, Na, takes the girls aside and does a little class about Growth and Changes In most of these rural, and even some urban, family cultures it is taboo to discuss menstruation and what happens in puberty. Taboo! But it is not taboo for someone else to talk about it! (I do not try to understand everything) Na explains about the natural changes to come and the girls are riveted to the illustrated books explaining about menstruation and ‘becoming a woman’. Natural changes that are not as so many of these girls are left to imagine when their periods first come: Am I being punished? Spirits are attacking me?, Am I sick? one cannot imagine the imaginations, in the dark of the night, of a young girl sitting in a little village hut wondering what is happening to her!!! We would love to email you a pdf copy of the book if you would like to see it. Your Rescue Task Force donations touch many lives, in many ways!!! God Bless you richly for caring and for sharing your hard-earned dollars that make the work of RTF Possible over these many years. Every Donation is Important And, PLEASE, If we have not heard from you lately, please consider helping now. As you pray for our America during these horrid times, also please keep all of the RTF volunteer country coordinators in your prayers as they serve on the front lines making the RTF projects happen!!! * * * Lord, from all of us volunteers and donors Thank You for using Rescue Task Force one more time Yours In Service, Gary, Steven, Larry, Andrea and the RTF Team(s) Gary cell (951) 595-1525 Messages Direct Dial - Cambodia: 011 855 8787-5968 Rescue Task Force 27636 Ynez Road L-7 #357 Temecula, CA 92591 Phone (messages): (951) 595-1525 www.rescuetaskforce.org [email protected] RTF, literally, Around the World, Around the Clock PS Your spirit of giving can continue for many years by simply remembering RTF when you write or next update your will. (Tax ID# / EIN 27-3504467) And, when you do so, please let us know how you would like RTF to recognize you and your gift

9-1-1 November 9, 2020 Dear Donors and Supporters in so many ways, Full report and RTF newsletter to follow in a few days when I can get to my desk. This is a quick note to let you know that your donated dollars are hard at work today at several RTF emergency disaster responses.... Honduras: At 2:00 AM Tegucigalpa (the capital) RTF teams loading relief supplies that you purchased for delivery to victims of Hurricane Eta Cambodia: Flood waters in the northern provinces have finally receded enough to where our RTF team can get in with emergency relief supplies. Thailand: RTF is working with local volunteer medical teams responding to rural (very rural) mountain villages God Bless you richly for caring and for sharing your hard-earned dollars that make the work of RTF Possible Every Donation is Important and Direly Needed As you pray for our America during these hard times, also please keep your RTF field volunteers in your prayers as they serve on the front lines making the RTF projects happen!!! Yours In Service and with Great Appreciation, Gary, Steven, Larry, Andrea and the RTF Team(s) Gary cell (951) 595-1525 Messages Direct Dial - Cambodia: 011 855 8787-5968 Rescue Task Force 27636 Ynez Road L-7 #357 Temecula, CA 92591 Phone (messages): (951) 595-1525 www.rescuetaskforce.org [email protected]

TF Volunteers ‘Wash Their Feet (plus) and, they Feed My Sheep (Please see the newsletter on RTF website at rescuetaskforce.org for proper picture placement)...Continue reading

And Now For Some Good News.... Corona Relief RTF - Around the World, Around the Clock Please see the newsletter on our website: rescuetaskforce.org for proper picture placement...Continue reading

Coronavirus Relief USA and Asia plus more clean, safe water (For newsletter with proper picture placement please see our web site home page www.rescuetaskforce.org April, 2020...Continue reading

Join RTF For an An Old Fashion Prayer Circle... Dear Donors and Supporters in so many ways, During this unprecedented time, we realize more than ever that we are all connected that we’re all in this together. We are seeing COVID at home in America and in each of the countries where we work so hard to improve the lives of those less fortunate. We pray for you each to come through this safely. With that in mind ...... I humbly invite you to join with me for an old fashioned prayer meeting. Sunday, April 5 6:00 PM Pacific 9:00 PM Eastern 8:00 AM Monday morning Cambodia When we meet Monday evening please consider extending your hands out sideways so as to ‘in spirit’ join hands with other RTF members forming an RTF prayer circle. Let us pray for our United Sates of America and for all the suffering in the world during this trying time; realizing the possibility of tougher times ahead in the midst of all this turmoil. And give thanks for the many blessings that we have. Also, please give thanks for our RTF Donors, Supporters and the Volunteer IN Country Coordinators and Field Volunteers in America, Cambodia, Burma, Afghanistan, El Salvador and Honduras. We look forward to being with you and to holding hands with you Monday evening. Yours In Service, Gary, Steven, Larry, Andrea and the RTF Team(s) Gary cell (951) 595-1525 Messages Direct Dial - Cambodia: 011 855 8787-5968 Newsletter coming early next week with RTF current activity report: Corona response USA and Asia and team responses and non-responsesUgh!!! RTF Mailing address Rescue Task Force 27636 Ynez Road L-7 #357 Temecula, CA 92591 Phone (messages): (951) 595-1525 www.rescuetaskforce.org [email protected]

Tomorrow, no more boiling water!!! Tomorrow no more stomach upset Tomorrow no more worms...Continue reading

From The Mouths of Babes... For proper picture placement see the newsletter on our website home page: rescuetaskforce.org Honduras...Continue reading

The Hospital Couldn’t, But the RTF Team Could And Did! The magic of the internet From Steven in El Salvador to me (Gary) in Cambodia to you in USA in a matter of just hours. Amazing....Continue reading

Happy Thanksgiving Thankful for YOU!!! Thanksgiving 2019 Dear Friends and Supporters in so many ways,... These are some of your Rescue Task Force volunteers - sending a special Thanksgiving Thank You to you for making their service possible. These are the people that make your RTF projects happen. Around the world and around the clock people want to help! It is your support that enables the volunteer RTF teams to do that!!! To Serve and to Do. From RTF volunteers in our primary project regions of: Burma, Afghanistan, Cambodia, El Salvador and Honduras Thank You, And on this Thanksgiving Day So very thankful for you!!! I did not put captions on the pictures, this is to ‘meet’ the volunteers. You have seen the projects they are working on in previous newsletters. If you are curious, though, about any of the pictures let me know - would love to tell their story. God Bless you richly for caring and for sharing your hard-earned dollars that make the work of RTF Possible. Every Donation is Important Every day we thank the Lord - and you for your help in sending us out in His name to ease the suffering of so many. Yours In Service, Gary, Larry, Andrea, Steven and the RTF Team(s) Gary cell (951) 595-1525 Messages Direct Dial - Cambodia: 011 855 8787-5968 RTF Mailing address Rescue Task Force 27636 Ynez Road L-7 #357 Temecula, CA 92591 Phone (messages): (951) 595-1525 www.rescuetaskforce.org [email protected] P.S. Your spirit of giving can continue for many years by simply remembering RTF when you write or next update your will. (Tax ID# / EIN 27-3504467) And, when you do so, please let us know how you would like RTF to recognize you and your gift

Once more unto the breach again, dear friends, once more Water Filters, Dental Teams in El Salvador and Cambodia and Bahamas Update October, 2019 Dear Donors and Supporters in so many ways,...Continue reading

As You Read This... 36 tons of relief supplies are sailing today (Saturday) for the Bahamas. Dear Donors and Supporters in so many ways,... Our cargo was loaded on barges at Fort Lauderdale and is now on the way to Abacos in the Bahamas. Customs and importation are all pre-cleared and the barges will be received by volunteers from Church of God in the Bahamas. Helicopters for 9-1-1 delivery to outlying areas are all set and ready. Working with WER (World Emergency Relief), our Project Partner of 30 years, with your help, we are delivering five overseas shipping containers filled with bottled water, food, diapers, paper goods, bleach and antiseptic wipes to hurricane survivors on Abacos and Grand Bahama islands. When a mega disaster such as this occurs, WER CEO Kristy Scott and I talk and decide what and how much to do. Usually about three minutes of conversation. No committee meetings, no focus group, no raising awareness... Just Do, with cost and paperwork details to be worked out later. We have stepped out on faith in committing to assist with this relief effort. The goods are all donated but hard dollar costs for hand-to-hand delivery needs to be paid. Can you help? And as Kristy and I do - NOW. September is turning out to be a busy month; RTF has dental teams booked to El Salvador in two weeks, we have village water filter commitments next week here in Cambodia and we are on stand-by for response to Burma where intense fighting has broken out in the areas we serve. Details to follow. God Bless you richly for caring and for sharing your hard-earned dollars that make the work of RTF Possible. Every Donation is Important Every day we thank the Lord - and you for your help in sending us out in His name to ease the suffering of so many. Yours In Service, Gary, Larry, Andrea, Steven and the RTF Team(s) Gary cell (951) 595-1525 Messages Direct Dial - Cambodia: 011 855 8787-5968 RTF Mailing address Rescue Task Force 27636 Ynez Road L-7 #357 Temecula, CA 92591 Phone (messages): (951) 595-1525 www.rescuetaskforce.org [email protected] P.S. Your spirit of giving can continue for many years by simply remembering RTF when you write or next update your will. (Tax ID# / EIN 27-3504467) And, when you do so, please let us know how you would like RTF to recognize you and your gift

A prayer sent through the breeze of an open window.. PHOTOS: Na and Khoan Your daily routine for sixty-one years has been...Continue reading

More to follow. July, 2019 Dear Donors and Supporters in so many ways,...Continue reading

...with zeal!!! A new letter writer, and an EXCITING CHALLENGE May, 2019... Dear Donors, Friends and Supporters: As my first time writing to you (more on that later), I am most anxious to discuss what makes Rescue Task Force unique among all the NGOs I’ve ever encountered. Our chairman, Gary Becks, has created an organization that delivers invaluable aid at staggering efficiency. Last year, for example, showed delivered projects valued at between 6 and 60 (!!!) times the donations used to secure them. And when you factor in administrative costs (no salaries here) and fundraising, we’ll match our efficiency against anyone’s. Take that BIG NGOs !!! How do we do this? A number of ways, not the least of which is helping locals to develop local infrastructures to help implement your projects and to maintain them long after RTF has stepped away. And as it does so, RTF leaves with a happier, healthier and intensely grateful community, and one that’s far more self-sufficient. That is YOUR Rescue Task Force! Let’s bring you up-to-date with some examples. A few months back, Gary discussed your bridge in Myanmar (Burma), which was an absolute lifeline to hundreds of hill community families in that war-torn part of the Country. The letter explained how, with contributions from you, we would be rescuing those families by providing vital link to continue to earn a living through their own labor, while maintaining their dignity and way of life. Where are we now? See below what your contributions have done. A ramshackle bridge, literally falling apart, and yet the only practical route for these villages to get their goods to market on time, before they’re ruined and worthless. I was on that bridge, and held my breath as I crossed -- and I wasn’t carrying hundreds of pounds of crops! We couldn’t start construction until recently, when the river was at its lowest. In the meantime, we helped place a temporary bamboo bridge. When we and the local villagers start, we all do so with zeal. Your generosity allowed RTF to purchase basic infrastructure materials, such as rods, rebar, and concrete. The local community not only shared in that cost, but provided all of the sweat. And they did toil .... Stripped bare, to start anew ... No more simple rope and wood lattice ... This bridge will last a lifetime and saves lives and culture all along the way. Yours truly (far right), along with Gary and Aung (Myanmar coordinator, to the left of Gary), with a very, very thankful village. ======= My name is Steven Prusky, and I’ve been privileged to have been part of RTF for about 10 years. I started as a donor, then as a volunteer, and now grateful Board Member , CFO (unpaid, as is all RTF staff) and eager project participant. Thanks to you, for a village school built by RTF As Gary enjoys the cool breezes (read none), cooling night air (113 degrees and sticky) of Phnom Penh, he asked that I might help him with this letter. Here’s another example, of your hard-earned dollars, leveraged as only RTF can do, being used efficiently to help some of the neediest in Cambodia. RTF is able to secure (for only shipping costs !!!) medicines, medical equipment and hand-crank wheelchairs. In rough-hewn areas far from any major city and with mostly dirt roads, the disabled are sometimes confined to bed especially whenever their family cannot carry them (yes, that’s often the only choice) from walking disabilities stemming from birth defects to accidents, to old age. There, but for the grace of God go we. But you/we do go there to help. On site, our team and locals assemble these invaluable personal mobility transports - leaving the newly empowered villagers able to visit their churches, pagodas, family and neighbors and lead a much more productive and satisfying life. Free at last! AND NOW: AN EXCITING DEVELOPMENT AND CHALLENGE: An anonymous donor has stepped forward and offered to match every contribution dollar for dollar, up to $10,000 (!!!), received through June 30. We’ve rarely had such an opportunity to make your already Blessed dollars go even further. God Bless you richly for caring and for sharing your hard-earned dollars that make the work of RTF Possible. Every day we thank the Lord - and you for your help in sending us out in His name to ease the suffering of so many. Every Donation is Important Yours In Service, Steven, Gary, Larry, Andrea, and the RTF Team(s) Gary cell (951) 595-1525 Messages Direct Dial - Cambodia: 011 855 8787-5968 RTF Mailing address Rescue Task Force 27636 Ynez Road L-7 #357 Temecula, CA 92591 Phone (messages): (951) 595-1525 www.rescuetaskforce.org [email protected] Your spirit of giving can continue for many years by simply remembering RTF when you write or next update your will. (Tax ID# / EIN 27-3504467) And, when you do so, please let us know how you would like RTF to recognize you and your gift