A local congregation is focusing its efforts this holiday season on providing aid to the overseas fight against Ebola.

“This is an enormous catastrophe that won’t get better for months, if not years,” said Dan Houston, pastor of the Vashon Presbyterian Church. “We are caring about and loving our neighbors in Liberia.”

Vashon Presbyterian Church has been collecting donations as well as medical gloves to be sent to Liberia, the epicenter of the Ebola crisis. Tonight, the church’s candlelight service will include the typical Christmas Eve hymns, prayers and message, as well as a time to pray over cardboard boxes of rubber gloves and even write messages on them for the gloves’ recipients — Liberians who badly need them in order to safely care for those infected with Ebola.

“We want to help people make a connection that someone is going to be touched by,” Houston said, noting that Liberians should be able to read their English messages. “For someone to enter into risk in order to extend mercy, that’s a profound embodiment of what we’re celebrating this Christmas.”

Earlier this year, as the Ebola epidemic grew in West Africa, Houston said he felt moved to help. He eventually connected with George Everett, a Liberian American who is the pastor of a mostly Liberian church in Kent.

Everett moved to the Seattle area in 2003, when he and his family fled war-torn Liberia during its second civil war and were sponsored by the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church. Everett had already lost several family members to the war, and when Ebola hit the country this year, he lost two nieces. His wife’s uncle, aunt and their five children all died from the disease as well.

As of last week, there were nearly 7,000 reported deaths from Ebola, with Liberia the hardest hit, according to the World Health Organization. Many in Everett’s congregation at Transcontinental Christian Ministries have lost family as well.

“All of us have been affected seriously,” Everett said in an interview with The Beachcomber.

Liberian Americans in the Seattle area  — there are estimated to be about 1,000 — have tried to respond to the crisis. According to an article in the Seattle Times that features Everett, Liberians have raised money for aid, held carwashes, circulated information on Ebola amongst themselves and tried to educate relatives overseas on how to protect themselves against the disease.

“By ourselves, we can’t do anything much,” Everett said, explaining that his church eventually reached out to the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church to help with fundraising. He also got in touch a friend who is a top-ranking official with Liberia’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. The pastor decided that the best way Seattleites could help was to donate medical supplies, which are badly needed in Liberia but for the most part are not available to purchase.

When the Ebola crisis hit, Everett explained, Libera was still recovering from the war.

“Things were kind of getting better until coming to the beginning of this year the Ebola crisis erupted in the country,” he said.

Liberia has a poor infrastructure, weak economy and little to offer in the way of medical care. Now just getting food is a challenge for many, Everett said.

“The challenges are so much. When the crisis started, the entire place had no ambulances,” he said, adding that there were also only 40 doctors in Liberia when the disease hit.

Using his connections, Everett secured a donation of 10 ambulances from a company in California and has shipped six of them to Liberia’s capital city, Monrovia. He’s now working to fill two shipping containers with medical supplies — particularly rubber gloves, bleach and hospital beds — to be delivered at the end of next month with the help of CHUMA International, a Catholic organization that collects excess medical supplies and helped Everett get a heavily discounted shipping rate. Mercer Island Presbyterian committed to covering any shipping costs.

Everett explained that many Liberians are caring for Ebola patients, either in their home or in a clinic, with little protection from the disease themselves. Some people are also afraid to take in or even touch children who have been orphaned by the disease for fear of catching Ebola. Providing rubber gloves will make it easier for Liberians to care for the sick and will also help prevent the spread of the disease.

“They have to use their bare hands to care for their loved ones. They could contract the same disease,” Everett said. “The gloves are very essential.”

In February, Everett plans to fly to Liberia, where the United Nations has said they will provide him with a truck to hand-deliver the supplies sent from Seattle. He’ll target rural areas where medical care and supplies are virtually nonexistent.

Everett said he is taking a risk by delivering the supplies himself, but felt that if Americans and aid workers from other countries are willing to volunteer in West Africa, he should as well.

“It’s just the same feeling as those who are not from there, but are going in to help,” he said. “If they’re doing it for my people, I’m willing to go in.”

As of last week, Vashon’s Presbyterian church had collected about 800 pairs of medical gloves for Everett’s effort, and Houston expected they would have many more by the Christmas Eve service, as people pick them up while Christmas shopping or buy them in bulk off-island. The church expects more than 100 people to attend the candlelight service, and a special offering that evening will also go to Doctors Without Borders to help the organization fight Ebola in West Africa.

While Christmas may seem an unusual time to focus on Ebola, Houston said he actually compares the story of those fighting the epidemic to the story of Jesus, who Christians believe was also born into “a highly unideal situation,” he said, and took enormous risk to help others.

“There is no justice in the world or hope unless someone suffers to stand with those who are broken,” he said.

As for Everett, he said he’s simply grateful to those in the Seattle area who are helping, including Vashon Islanders. He plans to leave for Liberia in early February.

“I do it for God’s sake,” he said, “and to help the people of Liberia.”

Vashon Presbyterian Church’s candlelight Christmas Eve service will be at 10 p.m. tonight, Dec. 24. The church will accept donations of medical-grade rubber gloves for the next few weeks. For information on donating, contact the church office at 463-2010.