"God is in charge and He will provide.”
Alabama’s Jim Wood confidently passed along these facts to families that were among the 15,280 Katrina-displaced Mississipians who stopped for help at the sprawling First Baptist Church, Pascagoula.
“One young lady was almost in tears. She said, ‘I need help for my baby, but I hate to ask for anything.’ I said, ‘This is God’s work. You need never hesitate to ask God for anything,’” Wood recalled.
Her children were ages 1, 2 and 8. As volunteers quickly filled her order, Wood remembered a box of stuffed animals that had arrived. He reached into the box and got “two teddy bears and a silly goose with a crocheted jacket,” he said. Those plush tokens made the youngsters smile.
A retired engineer and member of Millry Baptist Church, Millry, in Washington Baptist Association, Wood once used his God-given ability to manage all materials for a multimillion dollar company.
After Hurricane Katrina washed over Pascagoula, he was asked to use those talents Sept. 3–28 to coordinate and manage what resembled a drive-through super center on a blazing hot, two-acre parking lot in front of First, Pascagoula.
Wood oversaw a massive operation that served an average of 1,100 cars with one-to-two hurricane-displaced families who drove through each day to pick up necessities.
Slathered with sunscreen, shaded only by a straw hat and armed with bottled water, Wood worked for 12 to 14 hours a day. He worked the lot, checking supplies, encouraging volunteers and greeting harried-looking driver after driver.
He controlled the traffic by keeping everyone in their cars and closing off one lane of the street and three of five parking lot entrances. He held ice trucks in line. Eighteen-wheelers and other delivery vehicles entered and off-loaded at one side of the lot. He directed volunteers manning Federal Emergency Management Agency-loaned forklifts that moved tons of goods for pickup.
The rest, he cheerfully admitted, was providentially out of his control. Some goods they ordered but most came unexpectedly from across the United States. Either way, everything came right on time. “I see miracles every day out here,” Wood said with a wide grin. And a day spent with him would prove what he said.
Inevitably a volunteer would sidle up and say, “Hey, Jim, we’re running low — on food.”
Wood did not sweat it. Shortly an 18-wheeler would roll up, and another volunteer would announce, “Jim, here’s a truck — with food!” This happened like clockwork.
“I don’t know where most of this comes from,” Wood said. “God is in charge of that department. We are on His schedule.”
In fact, God was overseeing an awesome number of details in the midst of the Katrina disaster relief.
Here most volunteers just showed up — or dialed up. Wood was constantly on his cell phone. “Hey, Jim, I’d like to work with you,” said a caller. “What do you need?”
His cell phone rings again. “Do you need more Bibles?” inquires the caller, en route. “Oh yeah,” replied Wood. “They’re going like hotcakes.” Soon the man is unloading 300 Bibles.
Chaplains from Alabama greeted the drivers, providing Bibles, cold water, counsel and prayer. In one day, nine “customers” prayed to receive Christ out of a total 27 over the three-plus weeks.
“These guys are heaven sent,” remarked one Pascagoula recipient.
Another day, a retired physician in green scrubs is in need of mops and a bucket to clean up his non-profit ministry. Someone tells him: “We don’t have mops. We ran out.”
Regardless, he lingers. In about 10 minutes, a Wal-Mart tractor trailer pulls up with new mops, brooms, buckets and 1,000 bottles of Clorox. No one here acts surprised. “Every time we stick our hands in the ‘basket’ and think it’s empty, God is there to fill it up,” one volunteer said.
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