Before the sun came up Monday morning, Luther’s Stephen Kearby and Butch Golden got in the cab of the big yellow truck bound for Houston with a load of supplies to help with cleanup after Hurricane Harvey.
The truck from the Luther Community Center and Luther Church of Christ was full of sheetrock, diapers and clothing, answering a specific call from the Clear Lake Church of Christ, a congregation not far from Galveston Bay in an area with significant flooding and damage from the hurricane.
There’s a special connection between this congregation and Luther according to Chris Hill, Luther Church of Christ minister. He said Jason Harvey was a long-time intern at the Luther church and was here when the Luther fires burned so much of the town five years ago. A student at the time at Oklahoma Christian University, Hill said that Harvey brought out a 150 college students to help with the cleanup after the fire.
Now on staff with the Clear Lake church in Houston, Harvey has been in disaster recovery efforts for his neighbors, and also repairing his own home damaged from flooding.
The truck contained 100 sheets of sheetrock, hundreds of boxes of diapers and some specific clothing requests for small children.
Gordon and Kearby were expected to make it to south Houston sometime Monday. They will come home Tuesday.
Mark Hagewood, director of the Luther Community Service Center, said that retailers like Lowe’s and Sam’s were very generous, giving deep discounts and giftcards to fill up the truck with the supplies.
While the Community Center is known for helping our neighbors here in Luther, Hagewood also said they had the resources to answer a call for
help in Houston because “people’s lives matter just like they do here.”
Awesome!!
Glad they were able to help Jason’s neighbors–he and his family are well loved by people here in Luther.