SPRUCE PINE, N.C. —  Exactly where Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) Disaster Relief (DR) teams would deploy in the wake of Hurricane Helene was a mystery on Oct. 3, until a call for assistance in mass feeding came from Send Relief.

“A charitable entity contacted Send Relief and said they wanted to help with mass feeding after Helene, including one at Spruce Pine, N.C.,” said Scottie Stice, SBTC DR director. The town, with a population of about 2,200 nestled in the Appalachians off the Blue Ridge Parkway, had been devastated by Helene. Businesses, homes and the town’s wastewater treatment plant were destroyed by flooding.

At 3:30 a.m. the next day, SBTC DR associate Wally Leyerle left his home in Flower Mound for Flint Baptist Church near Tyler, where volunteers had readied the SBTC DR mass feeding unit housed at the church. The team of 19, plus drivers who would deliver the DR trailers to the disaster area and return home, caravanned northeast toward western North Carolina.

There they met another SBTC DR team headed north to join the Spruce Pine effort after completing two weeks on a feeding crew in Florida.

What should have been less than a one-day trip took two. North Carolina greeted them with impassable roads, multiple detours due to damage and near misses.

“Later that week, we found out that one of the bridges we had traveled on with 40-foot trailers collapsed two days after we passed over it,” Leyerle recalled.

After arriving at the parking lot of a major Spruce Pine retailer, they set up camp with five 40-foot trailers, a kitchen trailer, two support trailers, a 30-foot tent, a 20-foot tent, a forklift, two generators and two 48-foot food storage trailers.

“Our footprint spanned one whole side of the parking lot. The retailer allowed us to block off a whole section just for DR,” Leyerle said.

Appalling conditions

“When we got to Spruce Pine, we found a community with no power, no potable water, no functioning bathrooms, no trash service, and an entire population still in shock from the storm,” Leyerle said.

The first meals went out Sunday, Oct. 6.

“At 11, we opened up our feeding lines by holding hand-lettered signs announcing, ‘Free Hot Food,’” Leyerle said.

The people came … in cars, in trucks, on tractors. They came, thankful for the hot meals available at lunch and dinner.

“In all, we served 1,200 meals that day. Not bad for zero publicity except for some social media and word of mouth,” Leyerle said. Counts steadily grew until one day the team distributed more than 2,400 meals.

“The people were very receptive. We stationed chaplains and counselors near the head of a drive-thru feeding line. The chaplains initiated conversations with all drivers and passengers, asking politely if there was anything specific they could pray for them about. Most everyone was eager to be prayed for and our chaplains did it, right there in the middle of the parking lot,” Leyerle said, adding that no one was forced to pray.

“The storm had taken out all their ability to communicate with the outside world. There was no news, no electricity, no internet. Many felt like nobody knew about them and they were going to have to get through this disaster all on their own. When the people looked at the logos on our vehicles, trailers, and our yellow DR shirts, they were shocked to discover that we had driven all the way from Texas with all this equipment just to serve them some hot food. We told them that we came here because they were here and we wanted them to know that God still loved them. Often, they cried.”

By the time the deployment ended, SBDR volunteers from New Mexico, Arkansas and Indiana had joined the Texas team to help.

God provided every step of the way

This disaster came with challenges, but God proved faithful, Leyerle noted.

Unseasonably cold weather, with frost and snow, took a toll on volunteers. When the need for six additional helpers arose, Leyerle asked his church to pray God would send laborers into His harvest. The next day Stice called to say 11 volunteers were coming from two other state Baptist DR teams.

Portable toilets proved problematic. There was no one to clean them out and without bathrooms, the kitchen would have to shut down. People prayed. A man driving a septic clean-out truck just “happened” to stop by and agreed to help.

Another day, a man drove into the feeding line and noticed trash piling up due to a lack of garbage service. He offered to haul it off, explaining he had prayed and asked the Lord to use him in some way like he had seen the yellow shirts being used.

“It may seem silly to pray to the King of the universe about trash and sewage, but God cares about every little detail of our lives,” Leyerle said. “We could have waited to respond to this disaster, but instead we came depending on our God who promised to provide all our needs. And guess what? He did.”

Healing hearts

The SBTC DR team served hot meals not just to survivors, but also to linemen repairing power lines and search and rescue crews still at work. They listened to heartbreaking stories.

One man shrugged in agreement when a chaplain asked if she could pray for him. After she finished a brief prayer, the man looked at her blankly and said, “My brother died.”

“Why don’t you pull over here in this parking place and let a few of us talk to you for a while and then we’ll pray for you again?” the chaplain asked. The man agreed.

A woman drove through the food line with her sister, praying with the chaplain. When they moved forward to the place in the line where water was distributed, the woman told that volunteer, “My husband died right after the storm.” Her husband, a local contractor, slipped when descending a ladder after cutting a fallen tree off their roof. These ladies, too, were invited to pull over and receive additional counseling.

“Sometimes people just need to talk,” Stice said. “That’s a big part of what we do.”

By the time teams left Spruce Pine, the team had prepared 19,561 meals over two weeks. They also gave away hundreds of Bibles, presented the gospel 292 times, prayed with 4,018 people and made 11,196 ministry contacts.

“As we were serving our last meal, people who had been getting food only for their family asked for multiple meals and water to give away to those who lived around them,” Leyerle said, adding, “I am confident that God will continue the work He began through us when we obeyed His command to go to a little town in North Carolina and minister to people we had never met.”

Stice added that an SBTC laundry team remains in Asheville, supporting a shelter there, while a chainsaw team is at work in Georgia and a recovery team has been sent to Roswell, N.M., in the wake of recent flooding.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Jane Rodgers is a correspondent for the Southern Baptist TEXAN, newsjournal of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. This article originally appeared in The Southern Baptist Texan.)