SAN LUIS—The beds had legs, but nobody expected them to walk away.
When Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast, the small community of San Luis wasn’t among the first to receive help.
“It’s not on the maps, so it went unnoticed by a lot of relief groups that first week,” explained Glenn Young, pastor of First Baptist Church of Clear Lake in Houston.
His church already had been working in the community, however, and he was pleased when he heard a contingent of Texas Baptist Men would be coming to work in the area.
The TBM crew brought a large air-conditioned tent for the disaster relief crews to sleep in. Young, who came to the Houston church in May from First Baptist Church in Devine, knew Frio River Baptist Association had a disaster relief bed trailer for just such a circumstance.
The bed trailer was the idea of layman Kent McCary of First Baptist Church in Dilley, who had the foresight to see the need for the trailer.
The idea was born out of his own experiences as a disaster relief worker.
“The people who are doing disaster relief need a good mattress to sleep on at the end of a hard day, and these are good four-inch mattresses on steel frames that give good support. This is something I had often wished for,” he said.
Hill Country Baptist Association donated the 12-foot trailer in which the beds are transported, and the beds were bought with a grant McCary solicited from Home Depot.
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In the 18 months Frio River has had the bed trailer, it has been used three or four times, said Jimmy Smith, director of missions for the association.
This time, the beds’ destination was the Texas coast.
“Initially, it was a lot of the Baptist Men relief workers staying in the tent and using the beds, but as they left, the families in the area whose homes flooded and had all their furniture destroyed began sleeping in the tent,” Young said.
Everything was going according to plan until the families in the small community between Kemah and Galveston began returning to their homes.
“The pastor there in San Luis said he couldn’t send them back to homes without beds when there were beds right there on hand. So, he let them take them,” Young said. “I told him that I totally understood, and we’d take care of it.
“The intent was that the beds would be returned after we used them, but the right thing was for the pastor in San Luis to take care of his people.”
The cost of the replacement beds was covered by funds sent by several churches to the Clear Lake church for disaster relief.
“Some of the money that came to replace those beds came from a church in downtown New Orleans that our church ministered to and developed a relationship with following Hurricane Katrina,” Young said.
“The pastor there said, ‘You helped us when we needed it, and now we want to help you and your people to minister after your storm,’” he explained.
While glad to have his trailer returned stocked with beds, if it hadn’t worked out that way, it still would have been all right, Smith said.
“I think, knowing the guys in our association, that they would have said, ‘I don’t know that I would have done anything different” than the pastor in San Luis, he explained. “These people had lost everything they had.”
But at least they have a place to lay their heads.
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