Four Disaster Care Volunteers Recieve The President's Volunteer Service Award

The President's Volunteer Service Award is an initiative of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and is administered by Points of Light Foundation. Through a shared mission of inspiring more to answer the call to service, the President's Volunteer Service Award celebrates the impact we can all make in bettering our communities and our world.

The President's Volunteer award is a tremendous honor and recognizes those who have set themselves apart from their peers in their willingness to volunteer and serve their community and Nation.

The Disaster Care Ministry is proud to share that four of our members were selected to receive this award for the 2016 year for their efforts in the service of those impacted by Disasters. 

David Ricks, Dan Cowan, Dianna Lee and Greg Bourbon were presented with their medals, a certificate, and a letter from the President of the United States on January 8, 2017. The Awards were presented at by Rev. Glenn Merrit who was the first Director of LCMS Disaster Response. The Disaster Care Ministry hosted a reception to celebrate the four winners, The assembly of 1500 Flood Buckets in 2016, The delivery of 5000 Flood Buckets since the Bucket Brigade began in 2008, and the 30th Disaster responded to since 2000.

Operation Christmas Hope is Big Success

On August 16, 2016, prolonged rainfall in the southern part of Louisiana resulted in catastrophic flooding. In September the Disaster Care Ministry worked with Lutheran Churches in North Texas to put together a work weekend and feeding event. On the way home, we discussed how there were so many children who had lost everything and were not going to have much of a Christmas. From that conversation, Operation Christmas Hope was born.

We decide we wanted to provide children in Baton Rouge with the message of Christ birth by giving them a copy of Paul L. Maier's "The Very First Christmas" accompanied by a shoebox gift.

LCMS Disaster response agreed to supply the books if we would come up with the shoe box gifts. The Disaster Care Ministry purchase gifts and plastic boxes to assemble 700 gifts. 

Members From  Beautiful Savior Lutheran Arlington TX, Trinity Hawkins Lutheran TX, and Lamb of God Lutheran Flower Mound, TX. donated 252 gifts for a total of 952 presents.

On December 10 we loaded up the 952 presents and 1000 books.

On December 12 we delivered the trailer load of goodies to Camp Restore Baton Rouge, LA.

Trinity Lutheran Baton Rouge and Camp Restore Distributed the presents and books the week before Christmas.

Special Thanks to Trinty Lutheran Baton Rouge, Camp Restore, LCMS Disaster Response, Trinity Lutheran Church, Hawkins, and Lamb of God Lutheran Church, Flower Mound for their help.

Operation Christmas Hope

In August, the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana suffered the worst flooding to occur since Hurricane Katrina. According to the Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce, 110,000 households were significantly affected by the flooding. While the Disaster Care Ministry was working in the Baton Rouge area it became apparent that a large number of children were impacted. The prospect these children having a good Christmas is low.

The Disaster Care Ministry at Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church would like to ask you to join us in Operation Christmas Hope. Through Operation Christmas Hope our goals is to bring the hope we have in Christ to 1000 children in the Baton Rouge area.

Our plan is to provide each child with a hardback copy of Paul L. Maier’s “The Very First Christmas” and a shoe box gift. We are asking your church or organization to consider assisting us by providing some shoe box gifts. Each shoe box should contain a gift or gifts valued at between $10 and $15. The gift should be wrapped and a tag with gender (Boy or Girl) and age group (preschool –Kindergarten, 1^st – 3^rd, and 4^th - 6^th) should be placed on the top of the box. Gifts need to be delivered to Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church, 5851 New York Ave., Arlington, TX 76018 by December 4^th.You can e-mail David Ricks. (e-mail disastercare@bslc.net )

Gift Suggestions

Toys: Include items that children will immediately embrace such as toy cars, yo-yos, jump ropes, balls, Toys that light up and make noise (with extra batteries), etc.

School Supplies: pens, pencils and sharpeners, markers, notebooks, paper, solar calculators, coloring and picture books, etc.

Accessories: T-shirts, socks, hats, sunglasses, hair clips, jewelry, watches, flashlights (with extra batteries), etc.

Do not include food, breakable items, or items that might melt.

   Sincerely,

  David Ricks

   Disaster Care Ministry/BSLC

Disastercare@bslc.net

Flood Clean Up in Louisiana

Last week a group of Texans from Beautiful Savior Lutheran Arlington, Trinity Lutheran Tyler, The Summit Lutheran Aledo and The Holy Cow Smokers from Lamb of God Lutheran Flower Mound  Traveled to Baton Rouge, LA to assist with Flood Recovery.

The Holy Cow Smokers stayed at Trinity Lutheran Church in Baton Rouge. This was their base of operations as they fed over 6000 meals to the community. The Rest of us stayed bout 5 miles down the road on property owned by Trinity Lutheran that has become Camp Restore Baton Rouge.

During our stay, we did a number of tasks to help prepare Camp Restore for full operation. On the evening we arrived we put covers on all the mattresses covers on all the bunk beds in the Building  and move bunk beds around to optimize the setup . One team worked to "demolish nature." We removed under trees and underbrush from an area where the camp wanted to park a semi-trailer from Orphan Grain Train. One team worked to tape and bed sheetrock in a room that was being finished out for addition bunk space.

While some teams stayed behind to help put the camp in order, The Majority were out in the community helping victims of the storm put their lives back together. Most of the work was gutting houses. We removed wet sheetrock and insulation, tore down wet ceilings.cleaned out flooded storage barns, and whatever else we could for the homeowners.

We did a lot of great work this weekend, but the amount of work still left to be done is overwhelming. If you would like to volunteer you can contact CampRestore at 504-242-2636.  

Buckets To Baton Rouge

On August 16 prolonged rainfall in the southern part of Louisiana resulted in catastrophic flooding that submerged thousands of homes. Louisiana's governor, John Bel Edwards, called the disaster a historic, unprecedented flooding event. Rainfall Exceeded 20 inches in many parishes.

On August 20 the members of the Disaster Care Ministry at Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church loaded up our trailer with 288 Flood Buckets, 50 Quilts, 150 Bath Towels, 150 Wash Cloths , 75 Hand Towels and 288 Bibles.

Loading Buckets in the rain - photo by David Ricks

On August 22 David Ricks and Dan Cowan Headed to Trinity Lutheran in Baton Rouge, LA

Unloading Buckets- Photo by Dan Cowan

We spent some a brief time talking with volunteers and relief staff.

After unloading the trailer. We returned home.  round trip and unloading took 20 hours.

Our relief effort could not have happened without the support of our volunteers and donors. A  grant from LCMS Disaster Grants paid for many of the supplies in the buckets

Calming The Storm: The Life of a Flood/Disaster Bucket

Calming The Storm: The Life of a Flood/Disaster Bucket: Part of the Disaster Care Ministry at Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church is our Bucket Brigade. This year alone, we have already distrib...

The Life of a Flood/Disaster Bucket

Part of the Disaster Care Ministry at Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church is our Bucket Brigade. This year alone, we have already distributed over 1000 Disaster Buckets and we have another 200 ready for delivery. I often get ask what a Disaster or Flood Bucket is and how our program works.

Flood Bucket with its contents

A Disaster/ Flood Bucket is a 5-gallon bucket containing cleaning supplies. Each bucket contains a roll of paper towels, a rag or cloth, a bottle of glass cleaner, a bottle of liquid cleaner (like Spic & Span), a powder cleaner (like Comet), a gallon of bleach, a scrub brush, two pairs of rubber gloves, 2 sponges and devotional material. We also send a Bible with each Bucket.

Picking up empty buckets at our local Home Depot

Although we purchase most of our bucket supplies, some items are donated.Our funds for purchasing supplies come from our fund-raisers, donations from individuals and churches, and grants like the one we currently have from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Assembling Flood Buckets

We order most of our supplies on-line from Dollar Tree. They are delivered to the local store where we pick them up. We try to get our buckets donated, but when we have to buy them, Home Depot gives us a good discount. After we have picked p our supplies we schedule a work day to assemble the buckets. We store the buckets in the same room we assemble them in.

Loading the Trailer

The Buckets are stored until they are needed. When we get a request, we load the buckets into our trailer.

Unloading Buckets at Bethel Lutheran in Bryan, TX.

Working through the local Lutheran Church, we deliver the buckets to the area affected by the disaster. When possible we help deliver the buckets to the victims.

Delivering buckets to McAllen Texas to be sent to Southern Mexico.

We always try to work through the local church or other Lutheran organization.Our ministry is based on a ministry of presence so it is important that we make that personal contact, listen to the victims and ask to share a prayer with them.

Annual fund-raising dinner.

 Those who deliver the buckets are always ready to share the hope they have in Christ Jesus. Without that, we are just another social ministry.

Passing out buckets at the Arlington Tornado recovery Center

The LCC Comfort Dogs Helping us deliver buckets