CBF at Pearlington
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has been in Pearlington all year. Read this article to find out a little bit more about why Marion and Shirley Black chose Pearlington as the place to offer their help and how they got Steve Street and Greg Wolfe of CBF-MS involved.
If you notice this article was posted to the CBF website in November. A lot has happened in Pearlington since then, but for many people the feeling of being “about a month behind” is rapidly approaching the feeling of being “about a year behind.” Volunteers have flooded through Pearlington this year, and CBF is meeting the goal stated last fall of building several houses for people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to rebuild. This is finally coming to fruition after months of first cleaning, gutting, hauling off debris, treating for mold, replacing water pumps, and generally seeing to it that families had what they needed to at least get by temporarily in FEMA trailers.
Greg Wolfe’s comment about people being “at least one month away from reoccupying their homes” seems overly optimistic to me to have been quoted last November. My own perception is that people have only just this summer begun moving back into their homes, and most of those who are back in their homes even now are people who had some of their own resources to work with and were not completely reliant on volunteers. I say this only to make the point that despite the many hours of hard work and the many thousands of dollars that have already gone into helping the little town of Pearlington, we’ve only just begun. This is a project that will take years, not months to complete. CBF has some real disaster relief heroes on their team, like Marion Black and Charles Holmes, who are committed to Pearlington, who love the people there, and who are seeing to it that any money donated is spent wisely in direct aid of the people most in need.
One of things I appreciate most about CBF is that they are helping people based on need not on creed. There is no questioning process about religious beliefs. All they are asking is “What do you need?” and “How can we help?” One Saturday earlier in the year, I was being the “gofer of the day” at a particular work site. The family we were helping came and worked with us for part of the day. The man said to Marion Black, “I just want you to know this is a Christian family you are helping.” Marion said, “We’re very happy to know that, but we would have helped you anyway.”
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is getting things done in Pearlington. Keep reading throughout the day to learn more.
If you notice this article was posted to the CBF website in November. A lot has happened in Pearlington since then, but for many people the feeling of being “about a month behind” is rapidly approaching the feeling of being “about a year behind.” Volunteers have flooded through Pearlington this year, and CBF is meeting the goal stated last fall of building several houses for people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to rebuild. This is finally coming to fruition after months of first cleaning, gutting, hauling off debris, treating for mold, replacing water pumps, and generally seeing to it that families had what they needed to at least get by temporarily in FEMA trailers.
Greg Wolfe’s comment about people being “at least one month away from reoccupying their homes” seems overly optimistic to me to have been quoted last November. My own perception is that people have only just this summer begun moving back into their homes, and most of those who are back in their homes even now are people who had some of their own resources to work with and were not completely reliant on volunteers. I say this only to make the point that despite the many hours of hard work and the many thousands of dollars that have already gone into helping the little town of Pearlington, we’ve only just begun. This is a project that will take years, not months to complete. CBF has some real disaster relief heroes on their team, like Marion Black and Charles Holmes, who are committed to Pearlington, who love the people there, and who are seeing to it that any money donated is spent wisely in direct aid of the people most in need.
One of things I appreciate most about CBF is that they are helping people based on need not on creed. There is no questioning process about religious beliefs. All they are asking is “What do you need?” and “How can we help?” One Saturday earlier in the year, I was being the “gofer of the day” at a particular work site. The family we were helping came and worked with us for part of the day. The man said to Marion Black, “I just want you to know this is a Christian family you are helping.” Marion said, “We’re very happy to know that, but we would have helped you anyway.”
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is getting things done in Pearlington. Keep reading throughout the day to learn more.
posted by Sharon Gerald at
4:24 AM
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