Jerry McHan said he knew his team was exactly where God wanted them to be. As they helped homeowners in Huffman, Texas, with cleanup after Hurricane Beryl, they felt that affirmed over and over.
“It’s a lot of hurting people out there, a lot of folks who really needed help,” said McHan, the blue hat leader for the Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief team from Friendship Baptist Association. “As always, they needed spiritual help as well as mental and physical help, so I really feel like God had us in the right spot at the right time.”
One of the people they helped was a man living in a mobile home that had been rendered mostly unusable by a tree that fell on it.
“Water had poured into that part of the mobile home ever since the storm, so he wasn’t able to use that part of the mobile home,” McHan said. “We were able to get the tree off his house.”
‘God things’
But even more than that, through what McHan called a God-ordained set of circumstances, disaster relief chaplain Steve Sellers was able to help the man reconcile with a brother he hadn’t spoken to in 12 years.
Sellers said one of the brothers told him that because of the way he had seen the love of God through the disaster relief team, he would be going back to church.
“We watched God do God things,” Sellers said of that circumstance and the rest of their time in Texas.
He said while they were there, they completed 11 chainsaw and cleanup jobs and were able to sit and listen to people share about their heartache.
“Many of them said how grateful they were that somebody was praying over them,” Sellers said.
‘Thankful for amazing volunteers’
He and his team are back in Alabama now, as well as the rest of the volunteers with Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief, which shut down operations Aug. 5. Since they started work there July 11, about 200 volunteers from Alabama — joined by 18 volunteers from South Carolina and two from Texas — completed 173 jobs and saw 16 people make professions of faith in Christ.
Mark Wakefield, state disaster relief strategist, said it was “extremely hot and rained a lot” in Huffman, but “the volunteers worked really hard and got as much work done as they could.”
He said ABDR was also able to divert two teams to help both of the Baptist conventions in Texas, and the last of those teams are wrapping up today (Aug. 7).
“I’m so thankful for the amazing volunteers and the way they responded,” he said. “They worked hard and had a great spirit and attitude.”
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