Florida Baptist Disaster Relief Update

Here's a copy of an e-mail I received over the weekend

Good Morning from Texas City

Yesterday was a good day. We moved out of survive mode and into performing mode. Our kitchen prepared over 23,000 meals yesterday, most of that went out on Salvation Army canteens but about 2,400 meals were served by our people in the drive through line. Our volunteers got up @ 3:30 AM to do the following:

• Start cooking @ 4 AM so they can have lunch (12,000 meals) ready and shipped by 9 AM.
• Unloaded, sorted, and organized over 9 semi-trailers of food, drinks and paper products.
• Washed over 700 cambros – That is the containers that we put the food in .
• Cleaned up the site.
• Went to bed @ 9:30 so they can do it again the next day.

Thanks to all of the volunteers who worked very hard.

Power is coming back on in TX City but is spotty in a lot of other cities in Galveston County. We are sending food to all of the other cities including Galveston. Two of our assessors went to Galveston yesterday. They talked to many first responders who live on the island. They are in great need. We are working with the state conventions of TX to try to find a way to help them.

HOUMA, LA

The cleanup and recovery guys and gals continue to work in Houma. Florida Baptist DR is providing the coordination of the cleanup and recovery efforts in Houma. We are also sending many teams to do chainsaw, roof repair and mudout.

OTHER NOTES

Yesterday I went to visit Lee and Dianne Newton at the hospital. Lee is the gentleman who fell and broke his leg on Tuesday. The doctors had to put plates and screws in his leg to set the bone. Lee is going to be ok but has a long recovery process. Lee was in great spirits and was continually apologizing for letting everyone down by getting hurt.

Two nights ago in our devotions, one of our people told a story about one of the truck drivers who brought in supplies. He was not a DR volunteer. He had been on the road for several days so he asked if he could use our showers. As he was starting to leave, he told one of our guys that he had been on a lot of disasters but had never seen a site quite like ours. He went on to say that our site was very different than the others because all of our people were smiling. I guess working for the Lord lets the smile in our heart come out on our face. Hopefully it does in yours today as well.

Prayer Request

Pray for the first responders of Galveston who have damage to their personal homes but cannot find the time to take care of them.

Pray that Southern Baptists will respond to the need of these responders and minister to them.

Pray for the local government officials that they make the right decisions and that we as the Body of Christ will find an open door to help.

Pray for Lee and Dianne Newton as they prepare to travel home and as Lee recovers.

Pray for the pastors and congregations of the Galveston County area. Many of them are experiencing the same thing that many pastors experienced in 2004 with the damage to their facilities and the impact on their congregations.

Fritz Wilson, Director
Disaster Relief & Recovery Dept.
Florida Baptist Convention
1-800-226-8584 ext. 3121

Thoughts from Dinner

Dinner was great last night--marinated chicken breast.  The worship time was led by Cliff Duren, who is the Associate Minister of Music/Arranger at First Baptist Woodstock, and one of their praise teams.  They did some classic hymns, some gospel (Brooklyn Tab), but my favorite song overall was Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.  

On another note I was able to meet Stephen Drake from Lifeway.  We had a great discussion about the new leadership at Lifeway under the direction of Thom Rainer.  I expressed to him how excited I was about the new Worship Project and how it was great to see Lifeway leading out in something as opposed to lagging behind and copying the latest greatest fad.    

Timothy-Barnabas Pastor's Conference

Amy and I are in Duluth, Georgia (north side of Atlanta), this week at the Timothy-Barnabas Pastor's Conference hosted by Dr. Johnny Hunt, President of the Southern Baptist Convention and Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Georgia.  

We met up with my parents and they took Eden home with them for the rest of this week.  They were planning on making a quick pit stop in Greenville, South Carolina, so Amy's family could see her.  Pray for Amy--she's having a little mother-daughter separation anxiety.

We're here with our pastor, John Watkins, and his wife Michelle.  We have heard that this is a great time of encouragement and edification.  Tonight we will be having dinner and a movie in the banquet hall.  I'm pretty sure that we will be seeing our second pre-screening of Fireproof.  We saw it several weeks ago down in Gainesville, Florida.  My review "you will laugh, you will cry, you will be reminded of a Billy Graham film you saw once at church, and you will marvel at how Kirk Cameron now looks younger than you."