Time to Hit the Road!

If you’ve been following our survey results last week on the blog, you know we need to be responding to Hurricane Ike. If you haven’t you can get the details here. In short, this is no Katrina. People have food and water and a place to stay. Neighbors are helping neighbors. There is a large area of destruction though and outside volunteers will be essential to helping many start their recovery.

Now that most of us have power back and have taken care of Ike’s damage here, we are ready to send a team as early as this next Saturday morning, September 27, 2008. Our long time partners, Hilltop Rescue are setting up two camps to help cover the 200 miles of gulf shore affected by this storm. One between Houston Texas and Galveston at Clear Lake Church of Christ will be ready for volunteers Sunday evening. The other near Lake Charles Louisiana at the Maplewood Church of Christ will be ready for volunteers Monday, but it will be rougher accommodations to start out.

It’s time for Servants to Unite! Please find your part in the following list of needs

• Please forward this notice to your friends, family, and church family.
  
• Start organizing people you know would be interested in this opportunity and pick a date to join a team. To sign up or ask quesitons, email john@servantsunite.org.
  
• Consider donating to cover expenses, and talk to your church leadership and missions team about contributing to our financial needs of shipping people to Texas to work for a week.
  
• We have a special need for people with plumbing skills in Houston ASAP and people in Lake Charles with construction skills. This task is to help prepare facilities for volunteers who will be working there over the coming weeks.
  
• We need team leads to step forward and vehicles for teams to use.
  
• We need your prayers for the success of our mission, for the safety of our volunteers, and for the faith of those we are going to help.
  

Teams will leave on Saturday mornings, travel two days (20 hours) to Houston, or to Lake Charles (17 hours) arriving on Sunday night, work Monday through Friday, and travel home two days the following weekend. Overnight stops will be with our friends at University Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the halfway point on the trip.

• Teams will go every other week for the next 6 weeks and on demand after that.
  
• Ike team 1 September 27-October 5
  
• Ike team 2 October 11-October 19
  
• Ike team 3 October 25-November 2
  
• Special teams may be ran by request for special group circumstances.
  

You will need the same clothing and the same basic tools we have had in New Orleans and Iowa work. Those are listed in the volunteer link on www.servantsunite.org.

Donations may be made by mailing a check (please identify yourself in an accompanying note) to 5511 Copenhagen drive, Westerville, Ohio 43081, or using the Paypal link on the blog and web site. Servants Unite is a 501(c)3 non-profit which makes your donations tax deductible. 100% of donations will go to the care and feeding of volunteers working in the disaster zone. Primary expenses are fuel, food, vehicle rental, and support of our hosts’ expenses to have us.

Normal retail and other stores and restaurants are open in the areas where you will be staying. This is not the uncertain circumstance we went into right after Katrina. You will be staying in safe suburban neighborhoods. The people you will be working for will be extraordinarily grateful for your sacrifice of a small portion of your life for them in the name of our Lord. And just like those we’ve met in the New Orleans area, people are just ridiculously friendly and happy just to have someone listen to their story.

More information and updates as they are available.

Servants Unite!

John McGuire