To everyone supporting "Give a Damn?"

     As some of you may know there was a drastic accident that took place yesterday involving Dan Parris and Rob Lehr.  They were taking aerial photographs of Kibera, one of the worlds largest slums, when the plane stalled.  The pilot manages to glide the craft just outside of the slum's perimeter most likely saving at the least hundreds of lives.  The only casualty other than inside of the plane was a 11 year old girl who saw the whole thing and is struggling through post traumatic stress.
     First the wing of the plane struck a telephone pole redirecting it from the street they were trying to land on.  This caused it to smash into the side of a three story apartment building.  Then throughout the 30 meter fall to the ground the plane flipped upside down and instantly caught on fire.  The doors happen to be off since they were both filming and if they had been on Rob says they would not have made it out alive.  Rob was able to escape the plane and though bleeding servery from the head, gained his composure.  When he realized Dan was unconscious and still in the plane he went back for him.  Dan regained conciseness, saw flames right beside his head and with all that he had left, crawled out of the plane.  When Rob made sure he was safely out he did what only a hero would do, went back for one of the two pilots.  The closer of the two was still strapped in and hanging upside down.  He was also unconscious and at that moment Rob saw and image that will be with him for the rest of his life.  There was blood streaming down his head and one side of his face had caught fire.  Reaching across the man's body, Rob managed to undo his seat belt just as his arm and pant leg caught fire.  At that moment the 1st local man on the seen grabbed both him and Dan and helped them into a car headed for the hospital.  As it sped on the wrong side of the road with it's horn blaring the duration of the ride for Dan and Rob the ride to the hospital was nearly as thrilling as the crash. 

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Plane Crash in Kenya Narrowly Survived by Local Filmmakers

Give A Damn? poverty documentary filmmakers survive plan crash  in Nairobi, Kenya, with critical injuries, plane engineer fighting for life pilot died on impact




Plane crash survived by Dan Parris and Rob Lehr of Speak Up Productions International.
Photo: William Oeri

Who:  St. Louis suburbanite filmmakers Dan Parris, 25, Manchester, Missouri, USA; Rob Lehr, 26, Ballwin, Missouri, USA; David Peterka, 25, Manchester, Missouri, USA;  cameraman Tim Peterka 30, Kirkwood, Missouri, USA;  of Speak Up International and flight engineer Ryan and pilot Frank Nairobi, Kenya.

What and When: At approximately 3 p.m. August 1, 2009 Nairobi, Kenya time (7 a.m. St. Louis) a single engine plane carrying Give A Damn? poverty documentary filmmakers Dan Parris and Rob Lehr struck an electrical transmission pole spinning the plane around to crash into a building before falling an estimated three-stories to a crash landing in Nyayo Highrise Estate, Nairobi, Kenya.  Lehr narrowly escaped, freeing Parris, and flight engineer Ryan before the plane burst into flames.  The pilot was killed on impact. Parris and Lehr were rushed to Nairobi hospital with critical injuries and are currently recovering in hospital.  The flight engineer was also rushed to the hospital with potentially fatal injuries. The filmmakers contracted the plane to gain aerial footage of Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, for the Give A Damn? documentary film they are in the process of making.  Fellow film crew members David and Tim Peterka stayed behind when they learned the plane only had room for two passengers.

mobile phone footage of the crash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWtZhfau6fs
Lehr sustained cuts and brushes from the crash. Lehr also sustained serve burns while pulling an unconscious Parris from the wreckage and freeing the flight engineer from his seat belt. A by-stander pulled Lehr and the flight engineer from the wreckage only minutes before the plane exploded. Parris is under going tests with a presumed broken collar bone and potentially broken hip.

All of the Give A Damn? film equipment, save one small handheld camera and footage previously sent back to the U.S., was destroyed in the plane explosion.  Regardless the crew is planning to press on with their mission in the ways they can. Lehr plans to stay at the Nairobi Hospital with Parris for the next few days until the two can return home to St. Louis, Missouri, once Parris is stable enough to travel.The Peterka bothers are tending to their friends first and contemplating staying on in Africa to continue the filming  work.  Throughout this harrowing experience each continued to talk about the goal of the film to expose extreme poverty, its causes and why we should all give a damn.

Live interviews with Lehr, Parris and Tim Peterka after the crash were recorded and will be available to listen to on their blog site later today (August 1, 2009). http://www.conversantlife.com/blogs/give+a+damn We are working to secure the additional footage of the crash and additional pictures – this and additional information will be posted here as it is available.

Why:  The Give A Damn? documentary team began their journey under the Arch in St. Louis, Missouri on July 4th, 2009. After spending the night with St. Louis homeless the crew began hitchhiking to Africa, voluntarily, to film and experience poverty living on a $1.25 a day. They successfully hitchhiked across America to New York City, flew to London, England taking a ferry to mainland Europe. The crew hitchhiked across Europe jumped a ferry to Cairo, Egypt, and flew to Kenya. Once in Kenya the team planned to hitchhike through East Africa with stops in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The mission is to live in extreme poverty in the U.S., Europe and Africa connecting the experience of poverty worlds apart through travel.  The trip was expected to take four months.

Where:The journey to date and all updates are available on the Give A Damn? blog as well as Twitter.
Twitter:http://twitter.com/giveadamndoc
Blog: http://www.conversantlife.com/blogs/give+a+damn 
mobile phone footage of the crash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWtZhfau6fs 

Donations to help the families of the pilot and flight engineer, defray emergency costs for the Give A Damn? crew and continue the filmmaking can be sent to:
Speak Up International 501 c
909 Danton Ct.
Manchester, Missouri, USA 63011

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So what about that last story huu?  Can you believe being committed and loving something so much that you are willing to give your life for it!?!? Man.... 

"Today I spoke to a 14 year old girl who told me that she was willing to die for being a Christian"  I wrote these words two days ago right after I spoke with a young Indian girl who I called "Shorty".  This is her story.

Shorty has one sister, she was 16 and her name was "Smily" :].  Together with there mom they live in a grass hut that is about a 10 min bike ride from the redemption center.  I went for a ride one day exploring and "Shorty" saw me as she was walking home from school.  She ran home to her mother who is a pastor of a church they have in their grass hut.  She is a brilliant girl and is able to speak pretty good English.  So her mom had her track me down and come to their home/church.  As I walked up to their house with her, there was a man there who was waiting for me.  He said that in a vision the day before God showed him that a white man was going to come and so he was there waiting.  Talk about crazy...  Over the next two weeks I preached in their 12 foot by 12 foot church/home.  Every Sunday they have about 50 people packed out the door and standing in the dirt road! 

They also began to tell me the story of how they had gotten there.  They lived in a very nice house in the city of Guntur, but when the mother "Sister Shanthi" became a Christian her Hindu husband began to beat her till she would bleed. Eventually they ran away and are in hiding far on the outskirts of town.  They have only been there for 2 months and the husband has been trying to track them down.  He has hired "brutes" that have come to "Shorty's" school and tried to follow her home. They heard that the “brutes” were hired to have them killed.  As they are telling me all of this all of a sudden the words come out of this innocent girl’s mouth.  "Even now if the brutes found me in this house I am ready to be killed for my love with Jesus."  Smily and Sister Shanthi then repeated. "We are willing to be killed for Jesus also."  I had never seen courage like this before.  I’ve heard stories of people who were on the edge of death and chose their commitment with Christ over their own life, but had never met or talked to anyone let alone a young girl.  It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life and I will never forget it.

Philippians 1:20-22 "Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.  For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."

"Jesus Freaks" is a book of stories of martyrs that Dc Talk and "Voice of the Martyrs" published.  In it there is a quote that says "Many have never contemplated whether they would be willing to die for Christ because they have yet to truly begin living for him."

Ok so..... I am in Kolkata right now!  After a relaxingly long 23 hour train ride and an hour and a half in a lost taxi I have found my destination. It was very difficult having to say good bye to the orphans as you might imagine. :[  Tomorrow I go to a Compassion International Project School for the day.  Please pray that I stay safe.  My biggest concern is that my stuff will be stolen.  Other than that I'm very excited for my journey to begin now that I am "Han Solo" as my brother Tim put it :]

Thank you again so much for you support.  In the top picture I added Shorty is on the far right then Smily and their mother.  The man on the left is the man who saw the vision that I was coming!

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Hello again! I hope everyone is doing well and that the last e-mail wasn't too hard to comprehend and process.  I know for me in the moment it took some time:]

Welcome to my Blog.  My name is David Peterka and I am part of the “Give A Damn?” team with Dan Parris.  I traveled to India for 7 weeks and just recently returned and wanted to share some of what happened with you! There are a total of 7 blogs I wrote in India and will post over the next couple of weeks.  It’s called “Jesus in India” because I have semi long have and a beard and the Indians all thought I looked like Jesus:] Also there were some miraculous and supernatural things that only could have been done by Christ through us. Hope you enjoy!

I've been in India for a little over a week now (3-15-09).  So far things have gone really well.  Ok here is a little background for those who don't know too much about my trip here.  I am here in a southern province of India called Andhra Pradesh in a city called Guntur .  There were 4 of us who came from my church called "church" (www.churchstl.org) : Anne, Ben, Pastor Jason and I.  Almost every night for the first week we drove sometimes up to 6 hours into different villages to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Each night there were anywhere from 500-1000 people who came to hear us preach. (Bottom Picture- before we started preaching as the crowd was gather I climbed on the roof and took this picture)  We got to preach to thousands of the 1.6 Billion people in the would who have never heard the gospel of Chirst and most of them received Christ as there savior!  Then at the end of the night we would offer prayer to anyone who wanted it and they would swarm us:]  We prayed for hundreds of people for hours each night.  Radical, I loved it!

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On April 29th, we are having a benefit dinner for Give A Damn? to help raise the remaining money we need for our trip. We are planning on leaving from St. Louis July 4th, and we still have about $5000 to raise before we can go.

Rachel Sparks, founder of The SOLD Project and a represenative of Falling Whistles are our featured speakers. Please join us if you are interested. RSVP to courtney.j.patton@biola.edu or at giveadamndoc@gmail.com.