When Hurricane Florence hit in 2018, Crisis Response loaded up skid loaders and trailers filled with tools and headed to the East Coast to see where we were going to be needed. When our initial team made it into Morehead City the storm was still causing major damage and flooding inland, but One Harbor Church was already responding on the coast. Our team joined in with One Harbor and dozens of local volunteers in a rush to tarp roofs, clear trees from roads and off homes, and begin gutting homes before the mold set in. We knew by the end of that first week we were looking at the possibility of a long-term response.

What we didn’t know, what we couldn’t have imagined was how wonderful our partnership with One Harbor Church was going to become. As businesses and schools reopened after Hurricane Florence the surge of local volunteers diminished and we began to focus on hosting short-term missions teams to help One Harbor and Crisis Response reach the communities around the church with help and hope. The church had raised money and applied for grants to respond to the devastation, so we were able to help homeowners who would not have been able to buy the materials to fix their homes. More than three years after Florence, we still get new requests each time we enter a new community, so the opportunities to connect people to Christ and to the local church are still there.

Small groups and individual church members have provided meals for years of teams, and they often stay to hear the stories and encourage our volunteers. Church volunteers go on prayer walks with our teams, show up for weekly Wednesday workdays and monthly Saturday workdays. One Harbor started Reach Week, when they “send” a week-long team to serve with us each summer in their own town. Crisis Response staff started a bread-baking ministry, and now some of the church members are going along to meet the homeowners. After Hurricane Dorian in 2019 the church took on their own response in Ocracoke, and our staff went along on work weekends for months. Since then One Harbor has developed more plans and resources to make crisis response ministry a long-term part of their community outreach, including dedicating space in their new storage building to setting up supplies for future crisis response ministry!

There are opportunities for you and your church join us in being a part of what God is doing in Morehead City and the surrounding communities. Even with all the local church participation, we still need short-term missions teams to come and serve in 2022 so that we can continue to build relationships in the community and share the Gospel. We also need your prayers for Crisis Response and One Harbor as we seek where this next step in our partnership will take us.