America’s personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage is endangering those who are at a high risk of contracting the coronavirus, like prisoners. It's nearly impossible to follow social distancing guidelines in correctional facilities.

Corrections agencies in the U.S. have reported 48,743 positive COVID-19 cases and 512 deaths among men and women in prison.

As the PPE shortage crisis has been mounting in the U.S., Christians in China have been praying for God to show them how to help.

MEETING PPE NEEDS IN CHINA

In January, Pastor Charlotte Chen-Tsai traveled from the U.S. back to her residence in Shanghai, China, where the coronavirus pandemic had already started. Pastor Charlotte began praying for her community and looking for ways to help. "I have connections with many churches, including local churches and house churches, and some coworkers in those churches," she says. "so I started to share about my heart's burden toward the people who are living in the pandemic."

Together, Pastor Charlotte and other Christians began purchasing and receiving donations of PPE. They then delivered them with a greater Christian donation network to people in Wuhan city and Hubei province. They distributed face masks, face shields, and protective clothing to hospitals, testing labs, orphanages, and various churches. Eventually these churches started handing out supplies across the country in what they call a "Gospel package"—a parcel containing face masks, a Gospel tract,  sometimes vitamin-C supplements, and sanitizing wipes.

These efforts continued through March and into the beginning of April. That's when Pastor Charlotte heard COVID-19 was spreading rapidly in the U.S.

'CAN WE DO THAT FOR THE U.S.?'

She read an article in mid-April about the dire situation faced by nursing home residents and caregivers in the U.S. "My heart was really saddened and afraid that a whole generation might be wiped out by the pandemic," she recalls. She got on WeChat, a popular messaging app in China, and spoke with some of her friends in the U.S., where Pastor Charlotte spent more than 20 years living in various cities and helping plant churches.

From the WeChat messages, she realized "that a lot of nursing homes, especially in the poor neighborhoods, were very much lacking of care, lacking of protection against this COVID-19. So I started to pray. I said, 'What we did in the past two, three months in China, can we do that for the U.S.?'"

At the same time she was praying about this, Pastor Charlotte and her husband helped establish a virtual Bible study group for two nearby neighborhoods. "And that day one of the women in the group invited me and my husband to have lunch with her family and several other sisters. I had an opportunity to share about my concern over the U.S. needs in nursing homes. And one of them said, 'Oh, my husband owns a company producing PPE that has been sold in the U.S. for more than 10 years.'"

The family's company regularly manufactures and ships face masks to the U.S. from China. "And so the lady went back, talked to her husband, and her husband said, 'Oh, let's donate 100,000 masks to this activity.' ... So they made the donation, and we can get the masks directly from their warehouse in Los Angeles without going through the difficulties of shipping them from China to the U.S.," says Pastor Charlotte. "So I say, 'Wow! Lord, you were so kind, and you listen to our prayers.'"

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Pastor Charlotte had secured the face masks. Now she had to figure out where to send them. Through WeChat and Line (another digital communication app), she made contacts with classmates from elementary school, high school, and university, as well as brothers and sisters she knows in Chinese churches across the U.S.

Also through WeChat, she was introduced to the North America Mainland Chinese Mission (NAMCM), an organization that provides regional and national fellowship and training to Chinese Christians in the U.S. and China. People affiliated with the NAMCM, along with Pastor Charlotte and her personal connections from schools and churches, together made a list of over 250 facilities, and NAMCM coworkers helped call each of the locations to confirm their needs.

Pastor Charlotte says, "They ask the questions: 'Do they have the confirmed the cases of COVID-19? How many of them? How many residents? How many caregivers are there in that location? Are they in a financially stable area or a poorer area?' Because we wanted to put the masks in use in the most-needed places."

Then one of her friends told her about Prison Fellowship^®. She was familiar with Prison Fellowship from her time in the U.S. After Googling the organization, she decided it was a good fit to receive some of the donations. "We decided to make a donation of 10,000 masks," she says.