Thank You Letter

This group of seven from Kilmarnock Baptist Church, located in Kilmarnock, VA, were an intergenerational group - from youth to adults.  They arrived on June 27 and departed on July 1 to head home.  They came about 800 miles in over 13 hours to help in McDonald Chapel and Pratt City.  More about their church can be found at the church website at http://www.kilmarnockbaptist.org/. They were a pleasure to be around.  A lasting memory for me was after the Kilmarnock group listened to Eve Mitchell, a McDonald Chapel resident, tell how her faith in Jesus brought her through the tornado devastation, Bob Gray said the most precious prayer for Eve Mitchell and the others devastated by the tornados. ~ David Henry

August 3, 2011

To ALCBF Disaster Response and Shades Crest Baptist Church Disaster Relief Team,

Thank you for thinking of us and sending such an interesting book.  It gives all of us better insight into the destruction that occurred in your area. We all took pictures, but our pictures do not capture the intensity of the storms as well as this book.  I am still amazed how much destruction occurred and how seeing it first hand shows how much more the devastation was than what I saw in newspapers, magazines and national TV news.

After we got back home from Hoover, Amanda Moss shared with our congregation some of the events of our trip.  For the next three Sundays some of us shared with our Sunday School Class personal testimonies of our trip as well as showing pictures of the different areas.  We shared with our class our experiences with the Butler Brothers.  This was the group that we were assigned to work with, and the same boys that your church accepted at your Wednesday night events as well as the use of your facilities that same night.  We hope our Christian witness to them and their boys will some day lead them closer to our Lord.  We also shared the story of Lottie Green and how she was led to establish her facility that became a relief center for her neighbors.  And we shared the experience of sitting in a circle around Eve Mitchell and listening to her testimony of how she survived the storm while her home was demolished around her.  She lost all of her processions, yet still has faith and praise for our Lord.

We are still amazed at how Shades Crest Baptist Church has opened its facilities to so many to assist in the cleanup and helping tirelessly to assist neighbors in such needs.  Your members are to be praised for their willingness to personally become so involved.  Your statement of how this disaster has brought many churches closer together still gives me a warm feeling that during tough times we all can come closer when we work together.

And most of all, our group has been lifted up by seeing how our Lord can use a disaster such as this to bring us all together. Our prayers are with each of those with a loss that they soon will be able to restore somewhat some of their losses and soon will be able to have a roof over their heads and return to "normal".

Our plans were to go to Birmingham to try to make a little difference, but we left with more than we gave.

..... Thanks for the breakfasts, your warm acceptance, your friendship and the smile that you shared each day with us.  We arrived as strangers, but we left with a friendship that will always endure..

.... Thanks for pointing us in the right direction, for guiding us through this natural disaster and helping fix our flat tire.

Again we thank you all.

Yours in Christ,

Bob Gray
Kilmarnock Baptist Church
Kilmarnock, VA