Thousands of North Carolinians seek supplies to local church, prayer: 'People are broken'


5,000 people sought help at First Baptist Church in Hendersonville

HENDERSONVILLE, NC – A member of a local church helping residents with disaster relief by distributing basic supplies after the destruction of Hurricane Helene said the crisis has left the community broken but united.

“I've heard story after story; people are broken,” Kristi Brown of First Baptist Church in Hendersonville told The Christian Post on Monday. “It was unbelievable what I heard today.”

According to a video that senior pastor Justin Alexander posted on Facebook, about 5,000 people in the town of about 15,000 drove through the parking lot of the church, which is 25 miles south of Asheville. The area attracted national attention as the epicenter of the devastation that destroyed the region and wiped entire communities off the map.

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'It's so overwhelming'

Brown, who serves as executive director of the Ascend Women's Center in Asheville, is no stranger to crisis. Her crisis pregnancy center in West Asheville made headlines in 2022 when it was among those vandalized by members of the radical Antifa-affiliated group Jane's Revenge, who smashed the center's windows and spray-painted the building with threatening graffiti.

She was among about 100 volunteers and staff at the church handing out food, water and basic hygiene products to residents from about 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday. Volunteers also ministered to their spiritual needs, and she said she offered to pray with suffering local residents and highlighted several horror stories that “blew her away.”

One woman whose house and shed were crushed by fallen trees told Brown she hasn't had contact with a single family member since last Friday when the storm hit, leaving the area without electricity, internet or gas for days. Bodies were reportedly found in trees, and more than 1,000 people remain unaccounted for, according to the New York Post.

“I found when I would ask people to pray about things, they would tell me some things to pray for: their home, a missing loved one, whatever the need,” Brown said. “But they all said, 'I just don't know what to do with this'.”

One young mother told Brown she was upset because her husband helped clear the hundreds of fallen trees from the roads and realized she wouldn't have been able to feed her baby if she hadn't had the forethought to sanitize 25 bottles before the. a storm She reached for her last bottle of water when she got to the church.

“She started crying when I first started talking to her,” Brown said. “She said, 'It's so overwhelming.'

“I kept hearing that nobody was prepared for this,” Brown added.

Brown said most people tried to smile and keep a good mood, although one woman was honest and told her she was “really struggling.”

“After I prayed with her, she just put her arms up – I didn't know her, never met her in my life – she said, 'Can I hug you?' I said absolutely. So we just hugged through the car window, and she just hugged me, wouldn't let go and she was sobbing in her car.”

Even though their house was spared, Brown said many are straining under the trauma of witnessing the shocking scale of devastation in their community.

“People now just need people to care and love them and let them know it's going to be okay,” she added. “But I'm sharing all of that to share the brokenness that's happening right now.”

'Blessings in this storm'

Despite the widespread suffering, Brown remains hopeful and said there is “absolutely” opportunity for the Gospel amid the darkness.

“That's why we asked people if we could pray with them today: to give them spiritual hope in the midst of all this crisis and devastation,” she said.

“As we prayed with them and gave them food, water, everything they needed, we just let them know there was hope and there was peace. None of this caught God off guard. Even though we are. all caught up in it, He will still provide all the needs that everyone needs, so we tried to give them that spiritual hope today.”

Brown, who said she herself is struggling, urged Christians to pray urgently for the restoration of the region's critical infrastructure and for the mental well-being of residents, who will need patience as they realize “this is going to take years, not weeks, to recover from .”

“People now don't even know where to turn for the basics,” she said. “We probably need mental health professionals here because everyone is probably going to have some PTSD from this. People are hurting, but they need to know that people care.”

“It is not that I doubt God or His sovereignty; it's just that I'm struggling with so much loss and destruction,” she added. “How do people come back from this?”

The nearby city of Asheville is a liberal city in an otherwise deep-red part of North Carolina, but Brown believes the crisis has succeeded in uniting an otherwise divided area in a fractured nation. She noted that locals could not wait for the federal or state response and had to act to take care of each other.

“I'm trying to find the blessings in this storm,” she said. “This storm is bringing our community together in a way that I haven't seen in a long time. I think nationally, our community has been divided in this whole political season that we're in. But now people are helping people.”

“So a blessing is, I think, the unity that has formed because we are all in crisis together,” she added.

Source: www.christianpost.com

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