WARM SPRINGS, Va.—Despite mechanical troubles along the way, a Virginia Baptist Mission Board feeding unit arrived in storm-damaged Bath County, Va., in the early hours of July 2 and by 1 p.m. had set up operations in time to distribute lunch to hundreds of residents with no electricity.
The team was dispatched by the Mission Board’s disaster relief ministry to assist recovery operations in Bath, Alleghany and Highland counties, where thousands of households remain without power following violent thunderstorms that swept the region June 29.
Virginia Baptist disaster relief volunteers prepare to distribute food from their base in Warm Springs, Va.
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By mid-afternoon July 2 the Mechanicsville, Va.-based unit had served about 500 meals, said Gerri McDaniel, a parish nurse and chaplain in Roanoke, Va., who volunteers as a crisis care chaplain for the Mission Board’s disaster relief ministry.
“We are anticipating that numbers will increase as people hear about the food,” said McDaniel, who was assisting the unit set up at Bath County High School in Warm Springs, Va.
McDaniel said the Virginia Baptist team was working in conjunction with the American Red Cross, which has organized a shelter with showers there. While some residents were coming to the feeding site, volunteers also were distributing much of the food in the area.
The Mission Board’s disaster relief trailer and the truck pulling it nearly didn’t make the 165-mile trip from central Virginia to the Allegheny Mountains along the state’s western border. At Covington, Va.—25 miles shy of the goal—the truck’s “transmission blew out,” said Nichole Prillaman, the Mission Board’s missions volunteer coordinator.
One of the local disaster relief volunteers called a friend with towing equipment and “he immediately dropped everything to come help,” said Prillaman. By a little after midnight, both the trailer and the truck had been towed to the feeding site.
“We were really grateful for his help,” Prillaman said.
Meanwhile, in Lynchburg, Va.—where about 75 percent of the city and its suburbs were still without power July 2—Baptist churches opened their facilities as cooling centers as temperatures remained unusually high.
“We had about 16 people spend the night here last night,” said Derik Hamby, pastor of Randolph Memorial Baptist Church in Madison Heights, Va., just across the James River from downtown Lynchburg. “And people have been coming by all day, perhaps as many as 40 people at one time.”
Hamby said the American Red Cross had delivered 10 cases of bottled water and the Virginia Baptist Mission Board has offered to reimburse the church for food it distributes.
“We’re really grateful for those kinds of partnerships,” he said.
Another oasis of coolness in Lynchburg was Peakland Baptist Church in the city’s heavily-wooded northwestern section.
“The neighborhood around the church is still pretty hard hit, lots of trees are down,” said Don Harvey, Peakland’s intentional interim minister. “We’re hoping the church can be a respite from the heat.”
Also providing assistance in Lynchburg are the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board and the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, which have set up a shelter at the city’s well-known Thomas Road Baptist Church, the late evangelist Jerry Falwell’s congregation.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.