Volunteer trip from Miami Florida
From Jon, San Antonio
We went to an old Wal-mart which had been set up as an evacuation center for people from Houston fleeing Hurricane Rita. We worked for a few hours setting up a food court for 2000+ evacuees to eat lunch. It consisted of unloading and sorting boxes of food, drinks and household supplies, setting up tables and then organizing plates of drinks/snacks, and helping serve the food during the food line.
The place had just opened that day and was pretty disorganized, so the San Antonio Fire Department, who were in charge and trying to get things organized were very appreciative of us being there to help. Dr. Chris accompanied us as well and was able to greatly assist the medical station. She told us afterward of many lives saved and patients that were grateful of her being there and even the other nurses were thankful for her support and encouragement. (This particular shelter was housing about 250 mentally/physically handicapped people.)
We also met a young college student from San Antonio who was volunteering alongside us for the day. We explained that we are fulltime missionaries with the Family International and told him a bit about lives of service to the Lord. We told him our main goal was to minister to people spiritually and that any physical assistance we could offer was secondary to that.
Later in the day we went to the Kelly shelter and were able to continue ministering to the evacuees there. We witnessed to people, listened to them tell us their stories of how their experience at the evacuee site has been so far as well as how Katrina has effected them. We talked to them about how the Lord as been using this disaster to work in many people’s lives, drawing them closer to Him and reminding them of His promise that “All things work together for good to them that love Godâ€.(Romans 8:28)
People were, for the most part, easy to talk to and willing to tell us about their experiences.
