Daniel Almarode’s eyes twinkled, unshaded from the unforgiving noon-time sun. A crisis-trained chaplain with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team, Daniel was enjoying every minute spent with homeowners and residents in Pinetops, a small Eastern North Carolina town that was inundated recently by Hurricane Matthew.
“God’s people are making a difference at the moment,” Daniel said. “And that changes hearts. That changes souls.”
The difference rested in the work orders filed and completed by Samaritan’s Purse as well as by the ministry of presence offered by the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team.
Chaplain Rick Carter’s eyes filled with tears as he remembered a father and son he had met only hours earlier at the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team’s Mobile Ministry Center.
Rick was among those helping people apply for work orders through sister ministry Samaritan’s Purse, and while he filled out the necessary paperwork, he also asked the father how he was holding up.
As the conversation continued, Rick and the man talked about spiritual matters. The whole time, the man’s 8-year-old son sat on his dad’s lap, absorbing every word.
The father told Rick that he wasn’t sure he would go to heaven if he died, and, after reviewing the Steps to Peace with God, he decided he wanted to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
Rick walked him through the prayer.
“While dad was praying the prayer, his son was repeating it, too,” Rick said.
When the prayer was finished, Rick celebrated the moment with the father before addressing the son.
“You were just praying this prayer with your dad,” Rick asked the boy. “Where is Jesus right now?”
The little boy tapped his heart.
Remembering the moment brought Rick to tears on Friday afternoon. He was moved that both the father and son were prompted to make such significant decisions.
“Eternity is a long time without Jesus,” he said.
The peace and comfort of Christ is paramount in the middle of a storm, particularly a flood, which can wash away someone’s hope along with their possessions.
Chaplain coordinator Strib Boynton said one Pinetops resident had just made the final payment on his home when the flood came.
“Really wipes out his hope and dreams for the type of life he was expecting to have,” Strib said. “But really that can happen in every deployment. Those things do happen. The one thing that is permanent is the love and grace and presence of Jesus Christ.
“Many of the people here in this community know that. Many of the people believe that. But this tests their faith, and I think the presence of the [Rapid Response Team] blue shirts along with Samaritan’s Purse allows that faith to be reconnected where it needs to be reconnected and that’s with Jesus Christ.”
As chaplains pray with individuals in the community, the Rapid Response Team ultimately coordinates with local churches to hopefully place new and rededicated Christians in a family of believers. That follow-up is a crucial part of the entire deployment.
“We want them to be hungry to get into God’s Word,” said Luther Harrison, vice president of North American ministries for Samaritan’s Purse. “The next storm, it may be a marriage; it may be health issues; it may be some kind of financial problems. But the church is that lighthouse in the storm that can give you safe passage.”
Please continue to pray for all affected by the deadly flooding in Eastern North Carolina and nationwide.
