November 4, 2002
VOOUNTEERS Karen Cavin and Cassey Chapman of Mimosa Lane Baptist Church in Mesquite and Tracy Barber from First Baptist Church in Farmersville sort toys and other supplies to be loaded on the Texas Baptist temporary emergency child care trailer.
Texas Baptist Men keeps trucks coming and going
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___DALLAS--When disaster relief trucks roll out of the Texas Baptist Men Missions Equipping Center to serve meals to hurricane victims, or the Victim Relief Ministries trailer sets up a command post at a major crime scene, Dick Talley just grins.
___Talley, logistics coordinator for the Texas Baptist Men missions organization, sees those vehicles as part of the fleet that God built.
___In recent months:
___A Mineral Wells layman attending a missions fair learned about Victim Relief Ministries and donated a trailer.
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___ys and other necessary supplies.
VOLUNTEERS pose in front of the new tractor donated by the Meadows Foundation.
___And God put all the pieces of the puzzle together, according to Texas Baptist Men leaders.
___In mid-September, Keith Boyd was attending a "Texas Baptist Missions Fair" at First Baptist Church in Mineral Wells.
___"I happened by the Texas Baptist Men's booth, and I picked up a flier with a picture of a trailer on it that caught my eye," Boyd recalled. "My first thought was, 'I have a trailer like that.' The second thought was when this little voice said I should do something about it."
___Boyd owned a 20-foot 1998 Pace trailer, which he had used in his business X-raying piping wells. He had built a darkroom in the middle of the trailer, a viewing room in the front, and fitted it with a generator in the rear. After his work on it, the trailer was valued at $17,000.
___"It had been sitting unused for more than a year and a half. We'd had a couple of companies that indicated they wanted to buy it, but they never got back with us," he said. "Now I know why. There was a reason."
___Boyd called the Texas Baptist Men office the day after the missions fair, asking if the missions organization needed another trailer. He learned that Gene Grounds, leader of Victim Relief Ministries, had been praying God would lead someone to donate a trailer or mobile home for the ministry to crime victims.
___Victim Relief Ministries has about a dozen teams throughout the greater Dallas area, consisting of 200 trained victim chaplains. The teams are registered with the Dallas Police Department and other regional law enforcement, fire and rescue departments, and with the Homeland SecurityOffice of Emergency Management.
DICK TALLEY (right) shows the old Texas Baptist Disaster Relief semi-tractor to Phillip Brandon, lay missionary from First Baptist Church of Alta Loma in Santa Fe.
___"We'll use the trailer as a staging area and mobile command center when we respond to a call," Grounds said. It will not only provide a place from which victim-relief chaplains can work but also serve as place where victims can go for private consultations or just time alone.
___The donated trailer will serve as the "nerve center" for victim relief ministries at a crime scene or disaster--whether natural or terrorist-inflicted--according to Steve Shelton, pastor of Buckner Terrace Baptist Church in Dallas and coordinator of the victim relief teams. It will help enable Victim Relief Ministries to "be a presence" for victims at the point where they are hurting, he added.
___"In building this trailer, I never imagined the impact it was going to have. It gives me pleasure to know that I have helped the Lord with this small gift, compared to what he has done for me," Boyd said.
___After Boyd donated the trailer, another Texas Baptist layman allowed Victim Relief Ministries to have his 1996 Dodge "dually" truck to pull the trailer.
___The trailer and pickup truck were not the first additions to the Texas Baptist Men fleet this year. Earlier, the Meadows Foundation had awarded an $84,000 grant to help buy a new tractor to pull the Texas Baptist disaster relief mobile unit. The mobile unit includes a self-contained field kitchen where volunteers prepare meals for disaster victims and relief workers.
___The Meadows Foundation is a Dallas-based, private philanthropic institution that provides funding to projects designed to improve Texans' quality of life.
___The new semi-tractor replaced a 22-year-old rig Texas Baptist Men volunteers had used in ministry from Minnesota to Mexico. The old rig was on its fifth engine and seventh transmission.
___While the old semi-tractor still was serviceable, it no longer was considered reliable for the long hauls and rapid responses required of a disaster relief vehicle. But it was an answer to prayer for a group from Alta Loma First Baptist Church of Santa Fe, near Houston.
___Phillip Brandon, a lay missionary commissioned by the church, traveled to the Texas Baptist Men Missions Equipping Center in east Dallas Oct. 10 to pick up awnings, chairs, blankets and medical equipment for use in ministry along the Texas/Mexico border.
___Volunteers from the church work closely with Patricia Betancourt, River Ministry medical coordinator for the Rio Grande Valley, to help meet needs in health-care clinics in the Matamoros and Reynosa regions.
___When Brandon came to Dallas to transport the supplies, which had been given to Texas Baptist Men by Buckner Benevolences, he told Talley about his church's ongoing ministry in Mexico. Volunteers are helping to put a new roof on the seminary in Matamoros, as well as working directly with several pastors and missionaries in the region.
___For the last three years, First Baptist Church of Alta Loma also has worked on an Appalachian benevolence ministry in an economically distressed coal-mining region of Virginia.
___As Brandon described the needs he wanted to help meet, he mentioned that he needed to find a truck for hauling supplies.
___Talley contacted Leo Smith, president and interim executive director of Texas Baptist Men, to ask if the old disaster relief semi-tractor might be available. Smith polled the Texas Baptist Men board of directors, who agreed to donate the rig to First Baptist Church of Alta Loma for its ministries.
___"Alta Loma needed a truck, and we had a tractor on hand. God brought us together," Talley said.
___Talley showed Brandon the heavily used disaster relief semi-tractor. Brandon said his brother is a truck dealer, so maintenance would not be an issue, and he called the rig an answer to prayer.
___"This tractor will be used for whoever needs it," he said. "I feel like the ministry God has called me to do is to provide support for other people's ministries."
___In mid-summer, the McLane Company had donated a semi-tractor to Texas Baptists for disaster relief ministries. That rig immediately was pressed into service hauling food to the sites of wildfires in Arizona and floods in San Antonio.
___"We are so grateful that the Lord provided this for us, granting us the opportunity to help those in need," said Bill Arnold, president of the Texas Baptist Missions Foundation. "The timing of this was another of God's miracles. We couldn't have ministered to victims of both the fires and the floods as we have without it."
___Another recent addition to the disaster relief fleet of vehicles was the new temporary emergency child-care trailer. The new unit--roughly twice the size of the previous trailer --was made possible by gifts to the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas missions.
___Recently, children's ministers and volunteers from churches in Farmersville, Bridgeport, Cedar Hill and Mesquite spent a full day at the Texas Baptist Men Missions Equipping Center sorting donated items and furnishing the new unit. Most of the items became available when a Rubbermaid factory unexpectedly donated an SUV full of toys and other supplies.
___Top: Volunteers Karen Cavin and Cassey Chapman of Mimosa Lane Baptist Church in Mesquite and Tracy Barber from First Baptist Church in Farmersville sort toys and other supplies to be loaded on the Texas Baptist temporary emergency child care trailer. Above: Dick Talley (right) shows the old Texas Baptist Disaster Relief semi-tractor to Phillip Brandon, lay missionary from First Baptist Church of Alta Loma in Santa Fe. Inset: Volunteers pose in front of the new tractor donated by the Meadows Foundation.
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