May 2025 Disaster Relief Trip: A Recap
I had the opportunity to serve with several others from RGBC and Leonardtown Baptist Church on the Hurricane Helene disaster relief trip to Hendersonville, North Carolina in early May. For this trip, we did interior construction work. While I had served on both of the previous disaster relief trips that RGBC had done in the fall of 2024, this trip gave me a new perspective on serving God in a way unlike the previous trips.
For both the fall trips and this spring trip, we partnered with Baptists on Mission (BOM), a larger organization involved in coordinating disaster relief response. There were certain things that I knew to expect going into this trip from having been on the previous trips. However, there were some logistical changes.
For the fall trips, there were churches in the affected areas that housed our group. Going into this trip, however, we knew that we would not be in a church building. When we arrived, the overall surrounding for the building did not look to me like a place that I was expecting to stay at for 5 nights. I soon learned that the men in our group would be sleeping in a trailer outside the main building. The actual building was small and only had a limited number of bathrooms. After we checked in and had dinner, I started to get settled into the trailer. I was not very excited about this setup, being quite the change from what I had been used to from the previous trips. However, it was an opportunity for me to quickly reorient my thinking. We came there to serve, not to have nice accommodations. With keeping that in mind, I found it a joy to serve God in the various construction work that we did in the days that followed.
The work we did for homeowners included painting, putting up insulation, and installing vinyl flooring. On the first day of work, a few us were tasked with various types of other work at the building we stayed at. This included three of us men lifting a 500 pound oven and then walking several feet with it! I was a little uncertain about whether we could safely get that done, but thankfully God watched over us and kept us safe.
A key memory for me from that trip was from that Sunday. Our team attended First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, as we knew several of the BOM staff were part of that church. The church happened to be having a church picnic after the service that day, with food and games. As a few of us from our team were throwing a football around, a little boy who was playing games with other kids saw my BOM volunteer shirt and came running up to me. He asked, “Are you with Baptists on Mission?”. I responded, “Yes, I am.” He then said, “I am too!”, and then ran back off to where he was playing. While the entire interaction only lasted a few seconds, it was a special moment for both of us.
Later that Sunday, our team went on a hike in the area, and also crossed the border into South Carolina to see some mountain overlooks. We enjoyed a spectacular waterfall, getting to know each other more as we hiked, and jamming out karaoke style on the car ride.
Overall, it was awesome to see our group come together on this trip to serve God and the community that had been impacted by the hurricane.
Please enjoy this picture gallery from the trip, taken by Jeff Cook.
