Amid forecasts calling for more rain on Thursday, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers will travel to New England this week as Vermont struggles with “historic and catastrophic” flooding in Montpelier and other parts of the state.
Gov. Phil Scott’s emergency declaration remained in effect on Wednesday (July 12).
“The damage is greater than it was for Hurricane Irene, which was supposed to be our one-every-hundred-years flood,” said Dan Molind, a Vermont pastor and coordinator for Disaster Relief for the Baptist Churches of New England (BCNE).
Multiple states ready to serve
Floodwaters stopped just six feet away from Molind’s church, Enough Ministries in Barre. He was at the church Tuesday morning to make breakfast for first responders, cooking 20 dozen eggs before more volunteers arrived. They made lunch and dinner and planned to be back for breakfast Wednesday, serving first responders and members of the community displaced from their homes.
As Disaster Relief coordinator and Send Relief director in the region, Molind is working with multiple states preparing to send flood recovery and feeding units to Vermont.
Teams from North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio will arrive this week, and units from across New England also have been activated. Disaster Relief volunteers will operate out of incident command centers in Barre and Rutland. Molind expects the response to last several months.
“Certainly be praying for traveling mercies for the teams that are coming up to deploy,” he said. “Be in prayer for our witness to the lost in this area, and be praying for those teams, the family members that they are leaving behind in order to come up here and help us.”
An opportunity to love people
At least one Southern Baptist church sustained damage in the flooding, said Russ Rathier, BCNE’s regional coordinator in Vermont. The basement of Resurrection Baptist Church in Montpelier is under water, Rathier told The Baptist Paper, and there are 7–8 inches of water in the sanctuary on the first floor.
So far, it’s the only church that has reported damage in response to Rathier’s communication with pastors, but he’s still working to connect with the state’s family of around 50 Southern Baptist congregations. “None of us need to go at the task at hand alone,” Rathier told pastors in an email.
As Disaster Relief teams arrive in Vermont, Rathier prays that people affected by the floods would come to know Christ in the aftermath. God can use these circumstances, Rathier said. “We’ve seen Him use these things time and time again. He’s sovereign. This didn’t catch Him by surprise. He’s giving us an opportunity to love on people.”
Vermont is the least religious state in the country, he said, emotion evident in his voice.
“I just want the love of Jesus to be felt by someone,” Rathier said. “I just want people to understand who God is, and maybe it would take something like this, where it would open the door for a conversation.
“Just pray for those conversations, opportunities for the gospel conversation.”
