Pastor Ivanildo Trindade, Associate Pastor of Outreach Ministries from the Wooster, Ohio, Grace Brethren Church (Robert Fetterhoff, pastor), sent this report with the accompanying photos:
A CUP OF WATER — IN JESUS’ NAME
If you are a newspaper manager and you see five semi trucks pulling out of a church parking lot, what do you do? Well, you turn around and ask what is going on!
That’s exactly what happened at Wooster GBC this past Sunday night, as our church had just finished a water and food drive for Katrina victims.
The newspaperman asked me: “Was our reporter here?” I said, “No.” He mumbled, “How could we have missed this story? This is a big deal for a small town like ours.” I said, “We think it is a big deal too, that’s why we sent the press release to your newspaper and you wrote two stories about it in the two weeks leading up to this event!”
This story just illustrates why people will generally not hear about the outstanding job that evangelical churches are doing in response to the needs created by Hurricane Katrina. But we don’t need the media to make us feel good about what we are doing. In fact, we do it out of an obligation to follow Christ’s example to help those who are in need. It’s as simple as that.
Our nineteen-man (one woman) chain saw unit is returning from Biloxi, Mississippi, on Tuesday, September 20. They have been there for 10 days and were able to uncover and clean up 170 properties. We are getting ready to send a new team as soon as this one returns.
Our leader, Jeff Wilke, speaks of total devastation, but also a sense of great relief knowing what one team has been able to accomplish in just a short period of time. He states: “I am surrounded by believers from all across the country, who have responded in an amazing way to this need.”
History will probably record this as the time when the Church of Jesus Christ responded more united, more focused, and in greater numbers than any other disaster until now. We praise God for that!
On the home front, we had a food and water drive on our campus this past weekend. Over 350 volunteers participated and an entire assembly line of traffic controllers, unloaders, sorters, boxers, palletizers, shrink wrappers, loggers, bobcat operator, etc., made it possible for us to fill five semis with food and water, which are now being transported to Louisiana.
And to think that we managed to “hide” five semis from our local newspaper reporters. Maybe we should lend our services to Hollywood types trying to elude the paparazzi!
It is indeed great to know WHY we do what we do. God loves people and so should we. What a delight to serve Him in this way, media attention or not!
