Flooding in Mississippi

I was in Clarksdale, Mississippi last Friday with Sherry and Steve Lanier helping First Presbyterian Church of Clarksdale to begin to explore how they would respond to local flooding. As you can see from the photos, flood waters have not yet receded. Flooding is widespread.

Please pray for the folks in the Mississippi Delta Region as they deal with the aftermath of floods. Keep an eye out here for more information about relief efforts. 

Example of flooding in the area. Flood waters have yet to recede.

A business impacted by flooding.

Citizens gather at the courthouse to hear from MEMA regarding relief.

Widespread flooding on both sides of the road.

More flooding near Clarksdale.

Opportunity to Serve

There are a number of ways to begin to serve in disaster response. One of the easiest and most convenient is to spend a day or more at the MNA Disaster Response Warehouse in Rome, GA. There is much to do at the warehouse, so whatever your team's skill level, we have something that you can do. Contact Mike Kennamer to plan your visit.

Thanks to Highlands Presbyterian Church - LaFayette, GA

I had a good time visiting with the good folks at Highlands Presbyterian Church in LaFayette, Georgia yesterday, where I spent some time talking about disaster response and how to show God's mercy to those who are impacted by storms.

Visits like this are important for me to meet and connect with people in local churches as it gives me contacts in each church that I can reach out to should a disaster strike in that community. Further, it helps to expand the reaches of this ministry, which is a big goal for this year. Speaking of goals, here are the goals I set our for this year:

• Outreach - Inform local churches about the ministry so that I can have contact information should a disaster strike nearby and they would have my contact information should they need my help. 
• Key Leaders - Develop a network of key leaders who would be the key liaison between local churches and MNA Disaster Response. To this end, we are planning a key leader training this year in each presbytery that I serve. 
• Raise Support - My prayer is that I could raise enough support so that my efforts may be focused on the work of the ministry rather than constantly trying to raise support. Any contribution to this work is much appreciated. 
• Engage Churches - A strong, underlying objective in each of the goals above is that God's people would engage in grace and mercy with those whose lives have been disrupted. It is exciting to see Grace Community Trenton (my church) put together flood buckets at the Disaster Warehouse in Rome and to see the folks at Grace Presbyterian Church in Fort Payne, Alabama to take a weekend relief trip to South Carolina to help build a house. As we move out in mercy and grace in Jesus' name, God is glorified and His Son is worshiped and enjoyed. 

And that's the real objective here.

Please let me know how I can help your church to move out in mercy and grace. 

March Newsletter Distributed

The March issue of the MNA Disaster Response TAG newletter has been distributed to our email list and archived to the Newsletter tab on this site. To join our email list, please sign up on the right column of this page.