PIKEVILLE, Ky. — If the old expression “cleanliness is next to godliness” is true, then Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief (KYDR) volunteers are offering lots of godliness to Kentuckians hard hit by recent flooding.

KYDR veteran Glenn Hickey is overseeing those units and a whole lot more this week.

“I’m on everything duty today,” he said, while running errands in the area Feb. 25. “We will give you a shower, wash your clothes, clean out your house and haul off garbage. We’re not washing cars,” he teased. “That’s where we draw the line.”

Truth be told, these KYDR servants would wash cars if it meant they got to share the gospel while shining up a fender.

“We will do the best we can” to start a gospel conversation, he said. “If they are willing to listen to it, we are willing to share it.”

The laundry service has only been active for a couple of days, and residents have quickly found their way to them. They come with bags of clothes made filthy from their mud-drenched homes while often covered in some of that same mud. Hickey said the area is a muddy mess. He has seen it before as a KYDR volunteer in Whitesburg during flood recovery efforts there in 2022.

“Floods are, in general, nasty,” he said. “Eastern Kentucky floods are just mud. Sometimes you have flooding where it’s not muddy because of say, a tropical storm. In a flood situation up in Maine a year ago, the water was not dirty at all because it was snow runoff. But what we are dealing with here is mud, and a lot of it.”

Hickey said 60 loads of laundry were completed on the first day of operation. People bring loads of laundry, and the KYDR team will wash, dry and fold them. Some people are surprised to find they offer complete service for no cost.

“They’re a little surprised I guess that we’d go through all that for them,” he said. “We’re happy to do it.”

The muddy water combined with the freezing cold has been a double whammy on the residents there, he said. “We had one person bring in a load and it was frozen. Everything is soaking wet, and the weather has been so cold.”

KYDR has 10 washing machines and 12 showers available. The showers have not been as busy yet. “This is just Tuesday, and the word is starting to get out,” Hickey said. “We will get a lot busier as the week goes on.”

Anywhere from six to 10 volunteers will be working at a time in the laundry and shower units. Providing people with clean clothes is a blessing to people who have already been through so much. It also opens the door for those gospel conversations the volunteers long to have. “It’s our favorite thing to do,” Hickey said.

Hickey is also organizing recovery units to clean homes from the flood water. Three teams from Kentucky and another from South Carolina are on the ground. More are expected to arrive later in the week. It is a cooperative effort that has become a trademark for Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) organizations — one state helping another one that is in need.

The Cooperative Program (CP) provides much of the funding that allows SBDR units to serve in their respective states. CP is the heartbeat for the organization that has brought more than 70 volunteers to eastern Kentucky in the last few days.

“I got here Saturday, and the teams came Sunday afternoon,” Hickey said. “I’m anticipating a couple of weeks being here at least, and it might be more than that. It’s too early to tell, but this is just as muddy as can be.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Mark Maynard is managing editor of Kentucky Today, the news website of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. This article originally appeared at Kentucky Today.)