Tornado Relief May 11

Posted on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 by Mike Green

I want to thank so many of you for your prayers, calls of encouragement and offers of assistance.  As you can imagine the first two weeks our focus has been on meeting immediate emergency needs – food, water, shelter.  Nearly 5,000 homes were destroyed in our city of Tuscaloosa. That means over 15,000 people have been left homeless with even more dealing with the physical damage and emotional scars from the recent deadly tornado. I spoke with one of our families today.  A friend has taken them in where eighteen people are living in a small 3 bedroom home.  All the kids are sleeping on the floor.  And there is no additional housing to be found. They need help. And we can make a difference for at least this one family.

We are now moving into the next stage and I want to share with you tangible ways your YFC chapter or church can play a role in meeting physical, emotional and spiritual needs of thousands in our community. 

1. Send an adult work crew. Small teams (less than 20) for several days to a week at a time. Teams will help with debris removal, cut trees and help families do small repairs on homes.
2. Plan to send a youth team to a week summer project in late June to July. The dates have yet to be determined. I would love to hear from you and get your input on dates.
3. Adopt a family. We are trying to focus our relief efforts on individual families that we can make a significant difference for as opposed to just broadcasting supplies across the community. Our support can look like clothes, rent, furniture or even stocking a families food pantry.  And these are YFC families. Kids we have ministry to in local schools.  Would you commit to investing a few hundred dollars or more to help one family?
4. Send us a summer intern. We need college volunteers who would like to help us for 6 weeks(June – July) coordinating our projects. Please consider sending us your best. We need leaders.

One strength of YFC is the huge number of trusting relationships we have with believers across our country. Please forward this on to them and ask for their prayerful consideration to join us in this effort.