Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief welcomed nearly 280 participants to its first training session of the year March 22 at Southside Baptist Church in Princeton.
The men and women in the gold shirts have been a welcome sight the past month in eastern Kentucky where floods ravaged the area and, most recently, sent teams to Missouri. The volunteers went with the purpose of bringing help, hope and healing and the gospel to people who are struggling to make sense of a tragic situation.
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A chainsaw team, heavy equipment team, chaplain and assessors are in Imperial, Missouri, responding to tornado damage in that area.
Not only did 280 attend the training session, but 170 — 60% of those who came — were new volunteers. The word is out: Being a part of Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief is like being part of a family and reserved for the “cool kids.”
Some of the hard-working volunteers spent three weeks away from their blood family in February and March but were close to their KYDR family, sleeping side-by-side on cots and breaking bread from the famous KYDR kitchens. Husbands and wives are serving together in the mostly retirement-age group of KYDR volunteers. But don’t be fooled. The work ethic of these volunteers is relentless.
They are highly skilled and trained — part of what goes on at these training sessions they have throughout the year. They recently came out in large numbers to learn and find out what KYDR is all about and how they can be part of it.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Mark Maynard and originally published by Kentucky Today.
