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Holy Week resources and reflections

Earthquake injuries fatal to United Methodist leaders

Sam Dixon, head of the New York-based United Methodist Committee on Relief, and Clint Rabb, a 1974 graduate of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (APTS) and head of volunteer mission efforts for United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, died of injuries sustained in a collapsed hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the January 12 earthquake.

Dixon died in the hotel rubble at some point in a 55-hour ordeal for three missions specialists trapped together. Rabb was extricated and flown to Florida for treatment, but died January 17. The third colleague, the Rev. James Gulley, was less seriously injured and able to return to his home in Denver, Colo., after he was rescued.

A funeral service for Sam Dixon was held January 22 in Raleigh, N.C. A memorial service for Clint Rabb was held in Austin, Texas, on January 23.

Rabb had already been named to receive a Distinguished Service Award from APTS. It was presented posthumously on February 3. Last fall the seminary’s alumni association selected him as one of its two 2010 recipients of the honor.

“We now prepare, as does his family, to give witness to the resurrection, and to give thanks to God for the marvelous ways in which he lived for good, and through his ministry was a force for the redemptive ways of God,” said APTS President Theodore J. Wardlaw, after hearing the news of Rabb’s death.

Suzanne Field-Rabb (MDiv’95), Clint’s wife, is also an APTS graduate; also surviving are eight children and three grandchildren.

United Methodist News Service reported that Thomas Kemper, a United Methodist from Germany, who leads the Board of Global Ministries expressed his sorrow Jan. 21 on the board’s “tribute blog:” “ … leave the image of entrapment for one in which we see Sam and Clint in a good and secure place — in God’s hands, and covered by his love.”

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