The yard was in discouraging condition. Huge trees lay everywhere, and branches and leaves littered the ground. Just a few minutes after arrival, the sound of chainsaws filled the air, and volunteers scurried back and forth, dragging branches to be burned or carrying armfuls of wood to be stacked.
Wind gusts of up to 80 miles an hour uprooted trees, sending them smashing onto people’s homes and cars, turning a once peaceful backyard into devastation. One such woman was Dorothy, who had over 25 large, mature trees fall in her backyard.
Michigan Adventist Community Services and Disaster Response (ACSDR) first came in contact with Dorothy through her neighbor, Snowrene Mitchell. Mitchell is the Lansing Adventist Community Services director, and her yard was also devasted. A volunteer on his way to Mitchell’s home mistakenly pulled into Dorothy’s driveway.
In just three days, Chelli Ringstaff, ACSDR director for the Michigan Conference, pulled together a team to help Dorothy. Several conference employees were present to lend a helping hand, as was Rich Holz, who serves as Lansing’s disaster response coordinator.
The yard was in discouraging condition. Huge trees lay everywhere, and branches and leaves littered the ground. Just a few minutes after arrival, the sound of chainsaws filled the air, and volunteers scurried back and forth, dragging branches to be burned or carrying armfuls of wood to be stacked.
Michigan’s disaster response volunteers are trained to operate a chainsaw for disasters like these, and after just a few hours, a significant difference could be seen in Dorothy’s yard.
There was still more, much more, to be done, and Dorothy was primarily cleaning up the yard herself, as her husband worked long hours.
When Ringstaff mentioned to several STRIDE missionaries about the state of Dorothy’s yard, they were touched. STRIDE is a new initiative of the Michigan conference Publishing department. The acronym stands for Students Training, Reviving, Integrating, Discipling, and Evangelizing and STRIDE missionaries work diligently in the communities alongside several local churches to establish contacts for cooking schools, home ministries, and Adventist Community Services.
On their day off, the STRIDE students headed out to Dorothy’s to help her clean up even more of her yard. They spent several hours working alongside Dorothy. “She was so involved,” shares Danny Waller, who is serving as a STRIDE missionary, “it showed us that she really needed our help, and it made our efforts so much more meaningful.”
The teams who help with clean-ups such as Dorothy’s backyard are mostly comprised of volunteers, who either use their vacation time or spend their day off to help someone in need. The labor is hard and sometimes tedious, but volunteers come anyways. “We feel a sense of duty,” Danny says, “we need to help this woman, she doesn’t have enough money to pay someone to come out and helps, and she doesn’t have the tools or the skills to do this herself. We knew that this would help her immensely and we were happy to help.” The attitude of Disaster Response volunteers is both refreshing and inspiring.
Michigan ACSDR is still working with Crisis Cleanup and MIVOAD in the wake of the storm and will continue to help residents with clean-up.
Michigan Conference Adventist Community Services
