Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief (DR) continues to provide support in response to Hurricane Helene in both North Carolina and Georgia. According to DR Director Jason Yarbrough, DR has received a total of 165 work requests with more arriving each day. There are currently 45 volunteers serving through Swannanoa, N.C., First. For volunteers, teams have provided 1,750 meals, 450 showers and done 175 loads of laundry.
In Georgia, chainsaw teams are still being sent to help with clean-up efforts. As of this week, there are 15 volunteers in the field in Ga. Over the upcoming 2 weeks, six additional teams consisting of about 75 volunteers will go and serve the needs in Ga.
Since arriving on site in both states on Oct. 7, Oklahoma DR volunteers have been hard at work alongside other volunteers from the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) network responding to the damage caused by recent hurricanes. As of Oct. 24, the network continues to operate 40 sites across North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virgina, Georgia and Florida in response to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.
In total, volunteers from the SBDR network have prepared 943,453 meals, given 203,322 volunteer hours, completed 2,493 jobs and have seen 192 professions of faith since Oct. 7. In that same time span, Oklahoma volunteers have made over 400 ministry and chaplain contacts, had 13 gospel conversations and have been a part of two people making professions of faith.
Yarbough emphasized the vast number of needs produced by the hurricanes and the importance of the SBDR network’s cooperation to meet those needs.
“Serving with our sister conventions and their DR ministries to bring help, hope and healing to those impacted by disasters is a great picture of the power or working together,” he said. “There is no way that one state DR ministry could address the vast need that these hurricanes produced, but together we are getting the physical work done and advancing the Gospel one job at a time.”
Work for Oklahoma DR began in mid-September after Hurricane Francine caused massive damage in Louisiana. DR set up site at Morgan City, La., First and immediately began serving storm victims. Mud-out teams cleared debris and mud, meals were prepared for victims and volunteers, showers were offered, laundry services were provided and more.
Through their efforts in La., Oklahoma DR teams completed nearly 410 workorders. Teams included assessor/chaplain teams, feeding teams, chainsaw teams and first response teams. For volunteers, approximately 25,000 meals were made, 300 loads of laundry were done and 750 showers were provided.
Alongside the physical needs being met, teams worked hard to meet the spiritual needs of storm victims. There were 65 Gospel conversations, eight professions of faith, 800 contacts made and 30 Bible distributed in La.
Yarbrough is thankful to those who have been supporting DR through prayer and requests for those prayers to continue as DR continues to serve those effected by recent hurricanes.
“The prayers that we receive give us strength to know that we can handle this,” he said. “Oklahomans have been busy this year. Pray that they’re rested, ready and able to go meet the needs because it’s vast.”
For more information, or to make a tax-deductible donation to Oklahoma Baptist DR, visit www.okdisasterhelp.org.
