WELS' sister synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS), is assessing the impact of this weekend's 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile upon its two missions in that country.

Rev. Steven Petersen, world outreach field coordinator, reports he's received word that Missionary Tim Erickson and his wife, Ellen, based in Santiago—about 300 miles north of the epicenter—are safe and that their home was spared any damage. There's no word yet on how their 300 members or their church building fared.

Missionary Oto Rodriguez was in the United States when the earthquake hit, but he has not yet been able to make contact with his wife and daughter at their home in Linares, about 100 miles east of the epicenter, nor with any of the 40 or so members there.

Meantime, WELS Committee on Relief (COR) is finalizing plans to bring in two groups of medical volunteers into Dominican Republic to treat victims of January's earthquake in Haiti who have left the country.

Mark Vance, COR director of operations, was part of a four-member team that completed a logistics trip last week. As a result of that trip, Vance says plans have changed. The volunteers now will be concentrating their efforts not just on patients at a border hospital as originally intended, but also on treating Haitians who remain holed up in border neighborhoods and have no access to medical care.

One set of volunteers will be in place from March 9-17, the other from March 15-23.