Fitness, Fellowship, Faith
Fitness, Fellowship, Faith
Mad Dog did a great job of coordinating an effort to put volunteers together to head out to the Asheville area last Saturday. We all met at Lowe’s around 5am to clown car to Arden NC where we would meet up with Clickbait’s relief organization called Crisis Response International. CRI has been leading a great response effort, helping feed families with their mobile kitchen and getting numerous supplies out to the community. They have also had chainsaw crews going out to Asheville area homes to clear trees that fell during the hurricane. It’s really amazing to see the response from various organizations, churches, local community and volunteers from all over the country to help with this relief effort.
We arrived ready to assist however was needed of us. We unloaded some supplies that we brought and some other supplies that showed up that morning. There were a lot of volunteers that day on site at the supply lines so Clickbait put us to work on the chainsaw crew. Endo and Rag stayed on location, put on their cooking aprons and got to work in the mobile kitchen. This kitchen has been serving up to 1500 meals a day so I am sure those two pax were going to be busy all day. Cars have been going thru the supply lines non stop for 7-8hrs. They get food, water, canned goods, paper products, cleaning supplies, diapers etc.
We were given addresses throughout the day and went to about 8 homes to clear trees. You’ve seen the pictures- in some areas it seems like 75% or more of the houses have a tree down on the property or on the house! We all had fun doing some manly work. We all learned a good bit about handling a chainsaw, or trying to repair them :joy:. But most importantly, we got to do God’s work for those most in need of it. The gratitude from the homeowners is hard to measure. Some are moved to tears. You can see the stress and burden lifted from their shoulders. For people that don’t know how they will make it through each day, they get to smile and laugh for a few moments. It’s going to be a long journey for the western Carolina community, and I hope we can continue to do our part to restore some normalcy to their lives. Continue to pray, donate and volunteer.
Get out there and volunteer with Paper Jam and the rest of his crew. Or with whoever plans the next trip out there. Maybe take the lead and organize one yourself. It’s well worth it. As Mad Dog said, you’ll get more out of it than you will put in. There are 15 pax in this backblast that can attest to that.