Henry Lowery’s clothes will never be the same. Neither will he.
After lying on hillsides 4 inches deep with ash and soot for two weeks, his pants and his perspective are both a little different.
Lowery and four other Alabama Baptists were the first Southern Baptist disaster relief team to respond after wildfires in August wiped out massive amounts of Greece’s olive crop. What they found there was soot and despair.
“[It] really broke my heart — they seemed so hopeless,” said Lowery, a member of Jubilee Baptist Church, Daphne, in Baldwin Baptist Association. “They really pride themselves in the beauty of their country, and she has been horribly scarred.”
They were still literally crying over the loss when the team arrived in late September, he said. “When we tried to point out the young plants already starting to grow from the ashes, they could only see the burned trees. … I can’t imagine a Christian having such a dismal outlook. We should never forget that God has already secured our victory through these hard times. I pray the Greeks will eventually realize this.”
He prayed — and he cut.
During the two weeks the team was in the Ancient Olympia area of Greece, it cut hundreds of burned trees, coercing them to fall sideways across the hillsides with ropes and positioning them to stop erosion when the rainy season comes.
“The area produces 30 percent of the world’s olives and olive oil, and it was 71 percent destroyed,” said Ronnie Warren, a member of Chandler Mountain Baptist Church, Steele, in St. Clair Baptist Association, who led the team. “We wanted to get as much work done on the hills (as we could) before the rains come to prevent there from being even more damage from mudslides.”
The team cut trees on hillsides from 8 to 5 each day — a tedious job, as some of the team members would anchor the ropes of others who were working further down in the soft soot. After awhile, the men’s hard labor started to make an impact on the villagers, who were skeptical at first.
“They kept asking us, ‘Why are you here? Why would you pay to come do this?’ Then they found out we were for real,” Warren said.
Evangelistic opportunity
It’s an evangelistic opportunity Greg West is hoping to continue Nov. 14 when his team — the second from Alabama — heads over to Greece.
“When lives are heavily damaged and are in bad shape emotionally, physically and every other way and you come in and provide them with some help without expecting anything in return, it has a huge impact on people,” said West, a member of First Baptist Church, Fayette, in Fayette Baptist Association.
West, his son Jay and three other Alabama Baptists will be linking up with a five-person team from Virginia for the two-week effort, which will build on Warren’s team’s work.
“It will be interesting to see what God has done between our first team and when our next team returns a month later,” said Tommy Puckett, Alabama Baptist disaster relief director.
While Warren’s team was there, team members “saw God open doors for the gospel” through their hard work, listening ear and instructions on how to prepare for the coming rains, Puckett said.
“Our men were willing to listen to them about how they did things, therefore opening the door for them to listen to us,” he said. “As our men would open in prayer at the job site before work began, after about the second day, the locals who were there with our men would join in prayer with them.”
It was a challenging experience, Lowery said, “but as usual, immensely filled with blessings.”
For more information about disaster relief efforts, call Puckett at 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 229.
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