When Bob Cooper sat down beside Mr. D, the man gave him one directive — he wasn’t allowed to talk about religion or politics.
“When Hurricane Ian came through Arcadia, Florida, he and his wife only had minor damage, but she called and asked for a chaplain to come because her husband had liver cancer and knew he was dying,” said Cooper, an Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief chaplain.
Mr. D was an atheist and “defiant about the Word,” Cooper said.
Another ABDR chaplain, Thelma Goolsby, had also been there that night visiting with Mr. D’s wife, who is a believer.
“I was glad I got to see her; she was such a special, special woman, and the Lord just stamped her on my heart,” Goolsby said. “Her husband was dying of cancer and didn’t want to hear about the Lord.”
But before they left, the man let Cooper pray with him.
Finding Jesus
“That was a seed planted,” Goolsby said.
And after she returned to Alabama, she couldn’t forget the couple.
“I was not supposed to go back,” she said. “But then I got a message that day that they were wanting more chaplains, and that night I went to the associational meeting, and a friend of mine said, ‘If you want to go, I’ll go with you.’”
Gospel conversations
So Goolsby went back to Florida and continued some of the gospel conversations she’d started — including a visit to Mr. D and his wife.
And as she talked with Mr. D, something happened — he softened. Then he softened some more. And when Goolsby asked him if he wanted a relationship with Jesus, he said yes, and he prayed for that.
“He had a smile on his face and no hardness in his voice. I was absolutely overwhelmed,” she said. “I talked to his wife in the weeks following that, and she said he was different — he was kind.”
A few months later, he passed away. Goolsby said only God can change a heart, but she’s grateful ABDR chaplains were able to plant the seeds.
Mark Wakefield, state disaster relief strategist, said Mr. D’s situation is an unusual one for chaplains to encounter, but “it’s always a possibility, because even in the midst of disasters, life and death are still going on.”
A crisis that was there before the disaster is only compounded by the disaster, Wakefield said. “Those people need someone to walk with them through the things they’re having to deal with. Chaplains offer help and hope.”
And thanks to help from the Myers-Mallory State Missions Offering, those chaplains have support and training, he said. “In the training, we talk about how they will be going places to be with people who are going through things that are so difficult that other folks are uncomfortable talking to or listening to or being with them. We tell them, ‘If you’re going to do that, you need to do that well.’”
So Wakefield and other disaster relief leaders train chaplains to go out with teams that are helping with practical needs like cutting up trees, cleaning up damaged houses and preparing meals for those in need.
“We train them with recognized crisis intervention strategies so that they will have a skill set to not only be with people, which is crucial, but also to listen well with their eyes, their ears, their body language — all those things,” he said. “They’re able to bring a spiritual component to the table also — to share about hope, forgiveness and the truth that they are not alone, God is always with them.”
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