Christ Church Tornado Disaster Relief
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Update on Christ Church Joplin, Missouri
Email from Rob:
"Most of you know by now that Joplin, MO was hit by a tornado Sunday May 22. Approximately 75% of the town is gone. The hospital is out of commission. At least one of the Fire Departments is as well. A half hour ago the death toll was around 70. A half hour later it is over a hundred. Today (Tuesday May 24 it is now around 120). More are missing. For those in my church family here, Joplin is about as big as Bulloch County...or Statesboro when the University is in session, just below 50K in population. Here's the link:
I talked to Tim Chambers a few minutes ago. He's leads the Newfrontiers church there. His home is ok. The church bldg is too, tho without power. Some of the members of his church family lost their homes. He is still currently seeking to find out the extent of the damage from the rest of the church family. Tim will be meeting with his leaders/elders this afternoon to talk through it all. I also talked with Bryan Mowry (who oversees Newfrontiers churches in the Midwest) to help assess how much help we could hope to gather for this effort. We both hoped for around ten to twenty volunteers. He was comfortable with moving ahead on the preparation to assist beginning with this email.
I explained to Tim and Bryan that my work with SERVPRO has given me very helpful disaster relief/recovery skills and experience, especially in tornado and flood damages, and we could pull off a trip to work with him. We would focus on the church family members whose homes are salvagable, by examining the extent of the damage, doing tear-out and demo where needed, building/providing temporary roofing to prevent further water damage (though more tornados are forecasted, Tim said). The goal would be to do what was necessary to enable those homes, including the church bldg, to be used to meet further community needs and serving as ministry centers. I suspect that within two weeks we would be able to put a decent-sized dent in making this happen."
CITB Disaster Relief Team
Rob Wilkerson, Alan Ballard and Mark Waters are going as a team to Missouri Wednesday May 25th. They will be there for about a week helping any displaced families from Christ Church and unchurched families with physical grunt work and spiritual upbuilding.
Please pray for the victims of lost loved ones, the rebuilding of a hospital structure, the restoration of order and peace to Joplin, Missouri, and that God's grace would be revealed in very real ways.
If you need any more details or would like to help by sending someone or sending money, please email Jonathan at jdc4jc@gmail.com or call (912) 536-5336.