Samaritan’s Purse

The last two weeks have been quite an adventure! My entire squad and the men from the other squads at World Race had the opportunity to serve with Samaritan‘s Purse for two weeks. Today we are driving home.

We were serving with SP (Samaritans Purse) in Breathitt County, Kentucky. In July they had a huge flood, and the water from the river rose 47 ft. Over 2,000 homes were flooded, most had water over 4ft in there homes. And sadly 49 people were found dead. 

We worked 11 full days. On a typical day here, we would wake up at 5:30 get ready, do devotions, and pack a lunch in order to be at breakfast by 6:30am. After breakfast we would do group devotions, chores (like helping with dishes and cleanup), and then we would head off to our trucks by 7:45 to find out where we were going that day. We were split into teams of about 10 people and had a leader from SP teaching us what to do. 

Next we would head out by 8 to drive to our worksite. Most jobs included taking all the home owners belongings out of the house. (Most people hadn’t touched their house since the flood, so the mold was immense.) after removing the wet and muddy contents we would rip out the walls, installation, flooring, and cabinets. the drywall was so saturated in water it usually ripped off like paper. Next we would have to take out all the nails and staples that were in the wood studs. And lastly we would cleanup and sweep so that the place looked some what nice. All these things would prepare the home owner to begin rebuilding their home.

A job like this typically would take about 2-3 days. Most were mobile homes, and that meant that there was installation under the house. This installation was sopping wet and was keeping the floors in the house moist. This meant a few people would have to crawl under the home in a tyvec suit and pull out the installation. You had a high chance of finding many different types of critters down there as well has the fact that is was dark to low for you to sit up and very muddy. It was a nasty job but had to be done.

I got to do this one time, and I would say God taught me so much through that. He taught me to rely on Him, let Him be my strength. I started out panicking, but then after praying and comfort from my buddy the peace of God flooded over me. We got the job done and were able to praise God through it. 

Work days would end anywhere from 4-4:30 and then we would drive back to where we were staying, wait in line to get a shower and head to dinner at 6pm. After dinner we had share time ( people would share testimonies from the day) and then we had  cleanup and then bed at around 9! 

Even though all the work we did was important, our main goal and priority was to spread the gospel and love on these people. My team was able to see two people come to Christ. One of the men even got baptized in the river! It was amazing to witness the transformation in this mans life. PRAISE GOD!! 

I myself experienced a lot of personal growth. The first week I learned a lot about stretching myself even when things were gross it scary. The second week was growth in a different way. I was already tired from the week before, but I ended up being put on a new team with mostly people I didn’t know. the first few days of the week was a struggle for all of us to learn to work with each other, but we ended up really loving our team. Even though a lot were disappointed when we heard we were in a new team, we all felt so blessed by the end of the week that we got know each other and also got to grow learning to work together as a unit.

We were not only blessing the people, but the people we served were blessing us. I was blessed seeing the way so many of them had such great joy through the trials they were going through. We had one time where the home owners bought us KFC, and so blessed us with lunch that day. And another home owner prepared a whole Thanksgiving meal for our team to have for lunch one day. The people here were so friendly and inviting. I was beyond blessed to be here the last two weeks. 

We now are going back to Georgia for a week and then on Saturday leave for Nicaragua. I am so overwhelmed by the way God has been working and moving. To sum up the two weeks I would say it was a time of stretching, growing, joy, new friendships, wonderful community, and most importantly the love of Jesus was spread to many. When we got to SP they said they had seen 52 salvations happen through this deployment, after leaving today that number had rose to 64! Praise God from whom all blessings flow!! God is doing a move and I cannot wait to continue to watch Him move in so many more ways! 

Thank you everyone for your prayers for me and my squad. We are learning and growing a lot and are so pumped to keep spreading gospel and love of Jesus to others! May God bless you all!!