Of Course, Samaritan’s Purse was There

“I’m old and fat and a little scared I won’t be able to do the work. Can you still use me?” my wife asked.

Samaritan’s Purse said they could use her. They said they could use me as well (my being old and fat was self-evident).

Over the weekend of June 14th and 15th of this year, extremely heavy rains caused severe flash flooding in West Virginia’s Panhandle just east of Wheeling. There were nine deaths in Triadelphia, a city of 900. Two dozen houses were destroyed, and over one hundred were seriously damaged. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of Ohio County, West Virginia.

Over a month later, on July 22 (following at least two more storms that caused flash floods in the same region), the federal government declared the area a disaster and approved FEMA funding.

Not surprisingly, the locals had responded immediately. Neighbors were helping neighbors with search and rescue, providing food and water. Churches were providing shelter. The local McDonald's was providing free meals to rescue workers. Donated supplies of various kinds were being collected at area businesses.

A couple of days into the week following the disaster, I heard a local radio report that two Christian organizations had arrived, and that volunteers were hosted by local churches. Eight Days of Hope and Samaritan’s Purse were in the area to provide a combination of practical service and spiritual support. (At the same time, Samaritan's Purse was working in the even more deadly flood zones in Texas.)

Mindy and I were more familiar with Samaritan’s Purse because of their Operation Christmas Child Program. For years, our family filled shoe boxes with toys and crayons and socks that have been sent to needy children throughout the world. Mindy even got to meet some of the children receiving those gifts when she visited a Romanian orphanage in the summer of 2000.

And we had a tiny bit of previous experience with Samaritan’s Purse in California. In October of 2015, while we were writing a blog about visiting a different church every week, we visited Middletown Bible Church in Northern California. Middletown had just suffered a devastating wildfire, and this church structure was on a main road but hadn’t been harmed by the massive fires. Upon arrival, we discovered it was providing a shelter and staging area for recovery workers.

In church that morning, I was surprised to see Marty, a friend from my hometown church. We shook hands, and he introduced us to his wife, Brenda. My second surprise of the morning was that Marty and his wife were long-time volunteers with Samaritan’s Purse. With Samaritan’s Purse, he’d traveled the country to help with disasters, and now, a disaster had come to his own backyard. We learned a lot from him and Brenda as we ate lunch together after church.

This year, a disaster came to our backyard. We moved to Martins Ferry, Ohio, in January, and the floods were right across the Ohio River, a short drive away.

My workplace allows me to take a day off work to volunteer with an approved organization. Samaritan’s Purse wasn’t such an organization, but because of the cause, my request was quickly approved.

In their online application materials, Samaritan’s Purse makes it clear that they are a Christian organization. Prospective volunteers must agree to comply with their Statement of Faith. That doesn’t mean you have to believe yourself that salvation is through Jesus Christ alone, but while working with them, you agree not to contradict their beliefs.

The primary concern of Samaritan’s Purse is to share the good news of salvation through Christ, but they also work to meet physical needs. Each team of volunteer workers includes a trained chaplain whose role is to provide spiritual counsel to the helpers and the helped.

When my wife questioned her ability to do the work, physically, the volunteer coordinator at the sign-in desk assured her that volunteering meant she should do whatever work she could, rest when she needed to, and that just talking to the homeowner and supporting other volunteers however she could was an important part of the work.

We were assigned to a group and given directions to a house where much of the work was already done. Our job was sweeping and cleaning up debris so that the repair work could get started in the following days. For a couple of hours, we swept and picked up debris.

Our team of twelve included a couple of interns with Samaritan’s Purse, one on summer break from West Point, the other recently graduated from college and anticipating a career as a missionary. Most of the rest of us were well over 40 and from a variety of places: New York to Texas, as well as locals. Several had previously volunteered with Samaritan’s Purse in other states after a variety of disasters.

All of them seemed fully capable of accomplishing the tasks at hand. These were tasks where their gifts could shine.

We finished what was needed at the first house rather quickly because most of the work had been done on previous days. The next house, about a fifteen-minute drive away, was more of a challenge.

The manufactured home was still standing on its cement supports, but the flooring and walls had been torn out. In order to walk from one spot to another, it was necessary to balance across the support beams. Tightrope skills – or even just dependable knees and ankles with excellent balance – would be beneficial to accomplish several of our tasks. (This is where I noticed my physical limitations.)

But we found jobs to work on, tearing out baseboards in a room with a cement floor and hauling out soggy insulation from various parts of the interior. Mindy and I definitely took more than our share of breaks and remembered to drink plenty of water. We greatly enjoyed our conversations with other team members as we worked, as well as during those breaks.

Shortly after lunch, we realized that we’d reached the end of our skills as well as the end of our energy. We carried another load or two of insulation to the giant pile awaiting removal from the property and let our leader know how much we’d appreciated the opportunity to be part of the team. The day’s activities were a helpful reminder of why we hadn’t pursued careers in construction (or any other form of manual labor), but we were fairly confident we’d been able to help some. Not bad for a couple of old, fat people, all things considered.