Ike Relief (donate@southaustincares.org via paypal)

A group of us travelled yesterday to Houston, Pasadena and Galveston County, to provide disaster relief. We arrived in Houston pretty late...but met a group of about 25 families at the church of one of the pastors staying at my house.

We carried things like ice, water, beans, rice, canned tuna and chicken, paper goods, crackers and bread. Of course the ice went first…..we had carried about 10 coolers each containing 6 huge bags of ice…and although I had always heard that it was a commodity….it was of course the first thing that people asked us for….especially after we ran out.

Okay, so first things first, we went by Lewis Signs and got our red “DISASTER RELIEF” signs plastered on our trailers, so that we would have an easier time in any checkpoints and running around after curfew. Then we made a Sam’s run to get all the goods. We had about 8 of those flatbed carts filled with all the stuff we were buying. In the meantime….people were coming up to those of us outside and giving money for “the cause”. Funny how God places compassion within all of us in times of need.

We only filled up one of the two trailers...so we went back for more.

So we got off to a later than anticipated start, but we rolled into Houston before dark and got to hand out food at the church. Then we did some individual drop offs. The most amazing thing was how well, people were taking their situation, looking out for each other, calling on neighbors to come get stuff from us. We had one guy lead us to another family who had a newborn (who needed some diapers that we had) and Brandon delivered them to the door, got to meet the family and had time to share what we were doing and prayed with them.

You know, I thought about God glorifying himself in disaster and I realized and witnessed it happening first hand. As we roll up in our trucks with trailers, folk knew we were a church organization. We simply met a basic need…..food and water…maybe some ice and chicken…but overwhelmingly the thing I heard most from the people we were serving was, “God Bless y’all! Thank you”. I don’t know the faith backgrounds of everyone we served. But like me, they are on a ‘journey’. Whether they know God or not, they are walking through life…and I pray that as we went…made ourselves…our resources….our time available to them…that the Kingdom of God, became more Tangible for them.

I noticed one guy at the last apartment complex we went to, told us no less than 5 times….”thank you guys so much, God Bless y’all”. No doubt he saw Christ last night.