We want to be able to help people when and where there is a need.

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, the people of Blue Ridge stepped up and donated more than $11,000 to be used in helping the victims. Also, more than 110 volunteers signed up to help in whatever ways might be needed. Our next step was to send a team of three people to scout the area and see how we could put those resources to the best use. While there, they handed out supplies like bottled water, food, toiletries, clothes, Bibles and Christian books.

They also made a connection with Crosspoint Church in Gulfport, Mississippi. The Crosspoint ministry and philosophy resonated with our team, and they decided it was a place where we could give hands-on help to people in desperate need. What Crosspoint really needed most was someone to partner with them to come back after the initial frenzy of help went back home – someone who would commit to being there in two or three months when the novelty wore off but the roofs would still need to be replaced and clean-up would still be going on.

Over the course of the next several months, we sent five teams to the Gulfport area with between 8 and 25 people per team. They cleaned up mold and debris, gutted and reconstructed houses, stripped and re-shingled roofs, etc. People invariably came back exhausted but so glad they had gone. Lives were changed on each of those trips. Both lives of Blue Ridge people who gave of themselves sacrificially, and lives of the homeowners in the Gulfport area who were blown away by seeing God's love demonstrated in such a tangible way.