MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. – When disaster strikes, Arkansas Baptist Disaster Relief (ABDR) volunteers are quick to mobilize and offer the help, healing, and hope of Jesus Christ. Sometimes, those volunteers will spend a week or more on a deployment, ensuring all those who need help receive it.
While on those longer deployments, an asset for the volunteers are ABDR’s shower and laundry units, which provide shower and laundry services. On rare occasions, the units may also be used to provide services to the public.
“The primary function of a shower and laundry unit is for the volunteers,” ABDR Director Randy Garrett said. “It’s one of the things we do to support the volunteers.”
There are currently six shower and laundry units in Arkansas. That includes the one recently acquired by the White River Baptist Association.
“It is beautiful, and it is wonderful, and it was given as a gift from God,” Associational Missionary Stace Cupples said of the association’s newest addition to Disaster Relief services.
When Cupples took the helm at the White River Baptist Association in 2016, he said the association’s Disaster Relief team was on the decline. So much so that when they did take out the trailer for the chainsaw unit, the tires popped while driving up the road.
“It tore up the wheel well and everything. … We realized we had a big problem,” Cupples said.
Then a gentleman by the name of Greg Mills came along, Cupples said.
“He just had a passion for (Disaster Relief) so we began the process of rebuilding our Disaster Relief team,” Cupples said. At the time, White River’s Disaster Relief primarily consisted of a chainsaw crew.
“Through that we have expanded. It’s been great. We’ve been able to take that particular team out both locally and statewide on a number of trips,” he said.
Then the Lord really started speaking to Mills, Cupples said, and “he had this desire for us to look into getting a shower trailer.”
Mills began to pray about it and was soon approached by someone who told him there was money available through Marion County Courts for disaster relief related items.
Mills dove into the process. Through their faithfulness, White River Baptist Association received a grant from Marion County which allowed them to purchase a new shower and laundry unit. It was built by a manufacturer in De Queen, who matched the cost to the grant.
“It was one of those things I didn’t expect to happen and then all of a sudden it was there because of Greg’s faithfulness and listening to what God was saying,” Cupples said.
Mills said every obstacle just kind of melted away.
“It was absolutely God’s plan that we have this trailer because to us it just seemed like an impossibility. Doors just kept opening and we just kept going through them,” Mills said.
The new addition to White River’s Disaster Relief has four showers and two laundry units.
Cupples said the association has also begun the process of starting a Disaster Relief box unit, which provides flat boxes, tape, and markers to survivors forced to move after a disaster.
“In that box ministry is an opportunity for that individual to pray with the homeowner and with that folks have come to Christ,” Cupples said.
“It is just a beautiful thing. All this stuff happened without an expectation and God has just done some amazing things. It has been exciting, and I am looking forward to what will happen in the future with this and what God is doing.”
For more information on Arkansas Baptist Disaster Relief, click here. ABDR’s next training event is Aug. 10 at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville.