Mark Presswood said Mr. Addison was standing out by his mailbox in Walterboro, South Carolina, when Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers came to assess his neighbor’s property for flood damage.
Mr. Addison didn’t have any damage, so he didn’t need help from their crews. But Presswood thought he might need a friend.
“We went over to talk to him, and he was telling us how old he was,” Presswood said of the 90 year old. “I said, ‘There comes a time when we all die; when you die, do you want to go to Heaven?’ And he said, ‘I hope so.'”
‘It’s about time I did that’
Presswood, an ABDR chaplain and associational missions director for Clarke Baptist Association, told Mr. Addison that the Bible “says you can know that.”
“I walked him through Romans and said, ‘Would you like to know? Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,'” Presswood said.
He said Mr. Addison prayed sincerely, and after he prayed, said, “You know, it’s about time I did that.”
Presswood said he would always remember those words.
“God had us in the right place at the right time,” he said.
In the days since, he’s been back to follow up with Mr. Addison and took him a book about how to take your first steps as a new follower of Christ.
‘Heart wrenching’ needs
David Hendon, the ABDR white hat leader on site in Walterboro, said volunteers are getting a lot of opportunities to plan for future follow up and enlist local churches in helping. They’ve been working to clean out flooded homes and treat them to prevent mold after flooding caused by Hurricane Debby on Aug. 3.
“Our assessors are still out trying to go down roads that were too wet before, and as they do, they’re meeting people with some extraordinary circumstances,” Hendon said. “It’s sad; many of them don’t know what they’re going to do.”
One was a young single woman expecting a baby.
“The world is crashing in on her, and it’s been heart wrenching for assessors to see the situation she’s in,” Hendon said.
But he said they’ve been able to connect her with a local church that has already started mobilizing to help out at her house and walk with her through this.
Building them up
Another homeowner — a man with a terminal illness — told disaster relief volunteers that he felt very alone. In addition to that, his back porch was crumbling from the floods, and that was the place where he liked to spend time outside.
“A church is going to rebuild that for him,” Hendon said.
In both homeowners’ cases, Hendon said he and other ABDR volunteers are “hoping that out of this comes a group of believers who will go in and take them under their wing and help them through this time and build them up and be an encouragement to them.”
Since they arrived in the Walterboro area, teams from Baldwin and Clarke Baptist associations have completed about six mud-out jobs in flooded homes. These jobs are time-consuming, Hendon said — some of them take more than a day.
A team from St. Clair Baptist Association is arriving to help out today (Aug. 20) along with a feeding crew from Birmingham Metro Baptist Association.
“Having more teams come in will be very helpful,” Hendon said, noting that at the moment they still have more than 20 job requests they’re responsible for, and they expect to get more. “Work here is wide open for sure.”
To contribute to Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief efforts, click here.
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