TERRA HAUTE, Ind. – Our volunteer teams had a great surprise today – they were featured on the front page of the local newspaper, The Tribune Star. Everyone was encouraged when they read about the gratitude of the community.

When I pulled up to the worksite, I called Joe, the lead construction foreman, over and shared with him the front page story. I could see Joe’s countenance lift as he saw the story of the volunteers, who he has tirelessly trained, featured in the local paper. Joe was like a proud parent.

All of our construction foremen are incredible. They stay on the job with the volunteers, teaching them how to do the work and making sure they are safe. Their job is very hard, hot and labor intensive. I am convinced that we have the best disaster relief staff in the entire nation.

Yesterday, we lead a group of 22 out-of-town volunteers. To date, we have coordinated 978 volunteer service hours valued at more than $19,000. A second team from The Southern Baptist Disaster Relief will arrive from Kentucky on Sunday and work for a full week.

We, along with chaplains from Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, were invited to attend a meeting to speak with local pastors about transitioning to “Long Term Recovery” and what the next steps should be. About a year and a half ago, this ministerial alliance decided to start Terre Haute Ministries to bring a unified response to disasters and other needs. They are in the infancy stages; however this disaster has catapulted their planning into action. Bringing on staffers, created disaster preparedness plans and now becoming a long term recovery organization were all things they thought would take years to develop but now it looks like those dreams will come to fruition sooner as a result of this disaster.

The volunteers had a great day yesterday and have been with us all week. The work they are doing is very labor intensive but smiles continue to radiate from their faces with the satisfaction and joy of helping others!

OBI also just received a donation of 10 commercial grade air purifiers which should arrive by Tuesday. The purifiers will be placed in moldy homes two hours before volunteer teams go in to help purify the air in addition to the volunteers wearing safety masks for protection. Tomorrow we are looking forward to another big day with 33 volunteers from out-of-town!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Disaster, Jody Herrington, North America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.