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Iowa Churches Repair Hurricane-Damaged Homes in Texas

By November 17, 2017No Comments

ANKENY, Iowa—Three Iowa churches banded together to help repair homes in Texas following Hurricane Harvey.

Members of Ankeny Baptist Church, Community Baptist Church in Ankeny, and First Baptist Church in Eldora traveled to Katy, Texas, where the group repaired the homes of members of Good News Baptist Church. Pastor Gerald Hawk of Good News Baptist had a list of projects for the group to work on and materials ready for use.

Assisting the team was Larry French, a retired missionary builder with ChurchCare, a ministry of Baptist Church Planters. Larry’s “supervision and participation greatly enhanced our production,” says Russ Pals, a member of Ankeny Baptist. “Larry was a great pleasure to be around and work with and for.”

Prior to the trip, Larry had visited Good News Baptist Church to assess its needs, and he saw firsthand that some of the church’s members had suffered great loss in the hurricane.

Over several days, Larry and the Iowa team replaced a home’s drywall and prepared it for the owners to paint, painted several rooms in a house being restored, painted half of the church’s nursery, and repaired the ceiling in an elderly couple’s home. “We did try to maintain a production mind-set and put in full days working,” Russ says.

While planning the trip, Russ was uncertain if enough people would be interested in participating, but that uncertainty was eliminated by inviting sister churches to participate. He says if Ankeny Baptist Church were to consider a building or disaster-relief trip in the future, the church would utilized this partnership model from the start.