While an EF2 tornado swept over their neighborhood in Selma, Lee Tate and his wife huddled in a closet.
“[The tornado] was pulling air out over our feet,” Tate recalled, just over a year later. After the storm, he walked outside to survey the damage.
“There wasn’t a stick in our yard, but you didn’t have to walk very far before there were trees in everybody else’s,” said Tate, who is the associational mission strategist for West Central Baptist Association and a disaster relief chaplain.
‘Mercy of God’
Although the January 2023 twister allegedly never touched the ground, Tate estimated it came as close as 800 feet from their house. Even though he’d lived in Selma almost all his life, some locations were unrecognizable due to destroyed landmarks.
“We saw the mercy of God even in this horrible storm,” he said. “It made a horrible mess, but it didn’t kill anybody.”
More than a year after the twister, Selma is recovering and rebuilding.
“There are still a lot of places that are probably never going to be rebuilt. We don’t print money here. It’s not a wealthy area, and so the rebuild is kind of a slow-go,” Tate continued. “It’s a real transition time in our city. We’re searching for a new normal.”
In the days and months since the storm, Tate has helped his community recover.
“Disaster relief is a means to an end, and we want everyone we minister to to be in heaven with us,” said Tate, who worked with volunteer teams from across the state. “Our hope is that the gospel seeds we planted and watered in the storm will bring fruit one day.”
Multiplying the work
Around two years ago, West Central Association started a disaster relief fund with the dream of buying a new Bobcat.
“The one we had was a 1980-something model,” Tate explained. “It took a lot of maintenance to just get it to run.”
Then, the tornado ripped through the heart of their city.
“A lot of people, churches, associations and private citizens started sending our association money for the disaster relief effort. We kept putting it all in that account,” Tate said. “Before we knew it, we had enough money to write a check for a brand-new Bobcat and the tilt trailer that it rides.”
Thanks to the generosity of others, the association has been able to multiply their disaster relief work by using that new equipment.
“This beast will work,” Tate said, referring to the Bobcat. “It turns a long day into a short day. And it has been a tremendous help already. It’s a gift that rose out of tragedy.”
‘Grateful stewards’
Since receiving the Bobcat, workers have been able to more quickly remove fallen trees off people’s homes and clear debris. Instead of volunteers having to tediously chop trees into small enough pieces for others to carry to the roadside, the Bobcat easily removes and carries large sections of timber.
The process enables volunteers to spend three hours at one house instead of all day.
“It’s changed everything,” Tate said, encouraged by how the equipment has aided the volunteers’ work.
“We’ve asked the Lord to bless [those who gave] many times over for what they have allowed us to do in His name,” Tate said. “We are grateful stewards of what God has done through many others who obeyed Him when He led them to write some fairly large checks. And it wasn’t just the big ones with a lot of zeros that we appreciate. It was the $10 and the $15 and the $50 contributions.”
A hopeful future
Since the storm, Tate has noticed needed change happening within his community.
“It was evident within minutes of the storm … that all the walls fell down,” Tate said about Selma’s long history of racial tension. “We realized what the bigger picture was and that is, we’re all human beings. We all need Christ. We’re not going to live on this earth forever.”
Tate is praying that God continues to work through his city in the coming days.
“In 2024, we’re trying to keep as much gas on that fire as we possibly can, spreading the good news of Christ, reminding people of His goodness and His faithfulness, His mercy, a year ago. And just loving people, getting out in each other’s worlds, getting out of our comfort zones — where God never stays very long — and moving into other people’s lives like never before.
“Every place we’ve put our feet as an association has been one victory after another for the Lord Jesus,” Tate concluded. “We’re just glad to be a part of it, and we have no intentions of slowing down.”
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