Posted: 5/12/06
Baptists help after tornado
By John Hall
Texas Baptist Communications
WESTMINSTER—Texas Baptists went door-to-door in Westminster, offering help to families hours after a tornado tore through the small North Texas town.
The Texas Baptist Men Collin County chainsaw team, Victim Relief Services chaplains and leaders of the Collin Baptist Association surveyed the area in conjunction with the American Red Cross to find people in need.
Two tornados swept through portions of Collin and Grayson counties, damaging at least 26 homes, killing three people and injuring dozens.
| Carroll Prewitt, a Texas Baptist Men volunteer from First Baptist Church in Lindale, works on a home in Westminster that lost its roof to a tornado. |
For residents who had all the help they needed, Texas Baptists offered an encouraging word, prayed with them and listened to them.
Other people needed help repairing their homes. Texas Baptists spread tarps on the homes to provide temporary roofing. Ministry of this sort enables Texas Baptists to share God’s love in a tangible way and start conversations through which the gospel is shared, said Joe Detterman of First Baptist Church in McKinney, coordinator of the TBM team.
“You can tell the world God loves them, but words don’t mean a lot sometimes,” Detterman said. “But when you go out and work hard to help people, they open up.”
Collin Baptist Association Executive Director Rick Ballard echoed Detter-man’s thoughts.
“It’s important for our churches and believers to be the hands and feet of Christ,” he said.
Texas Baptist disaster response efforts are financed through designated gifts to the Baptist General Convention of Texas. To support these ministries, send a check designated “BGCT disaster response” to BGCT Texas Baptist Mis-sions Foundation, 333 N. Washington Ave., Dallas 75246, or give online by visiting www.bgct.org and clicking on the disaster response icon.
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