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Last fall, a group from Bethel gave up their fall break (Oct. 9-13) to serve on a disaster relief trip to East Tennessee, in an area devastated by Hurricane Helene. With an overflowing trailer of supplies donated by St. Mark Missionary Church, the team of six (five students and Missionary-in-Residence Jeremy Tice) set off from campus at 3 p.m. and arrived in Tennessee at 3 a.m.
Though the trip was put together last-minute in response to prompting by Bethel’s president and cabinet, things worked out providentially. They worked with the Missionary Church network within East Tennessee to identify the need.

“The church [where we stayed] was about an hour away from a distribution center in the mountains,” Tice says. “When we got [to the distribution center] Thursday morning, almost immediately they were passing out the supplies we brought. We were meeting an immediate need.”

The first day, the Bethel team helped clean out a home devastated by the hurricane. The owner was a woman named Ruby who was living what Tice describes as a “Job story.”

The day before the Bethel group arrived, she had lost her husband. Two of her children had passed away a few years ago; the third was addicted to drugs, so she was raising her 10-year-old granddaughter. And last year, she spent 28 days in the hospital and was still recovering. When Hurricane Helene ripped through Tennessee, it destroyed her home.

The Bethel team was in the right place at the right time to serve in love. They mucked out rooms, removing wet and moldy items, carpeting and drywall. The next morning, they had the chance to meet Ruby.

“Through tears, she shared her story. We had no words but asked if she would accept hugs, and all melted into each other’s arms,” Tice says. “It was heartbreaking to throw all of her belongings away, having been destroyed by the flood, then the following weeks of molding.”

The Bethel team was able to clear the home, making it possible to dry out and rebuild. Miraculously, the one photo book Ruby was praying for survived with no damage. The students had made it their mission to find it and were shocked to discover the binder and pictures were clean, despite everything else on the floor being ruined. When they handed it to Ruby, she broke down crying and praising God.

The next day, the Bethel group joined another team that was working to plant a church in the town of Hampton, Tenn. Together, they removed mud-saturated drywall and paneling, where flood waters had reached three feet. They left the house ready to receive new life, while expanding this church planting team’s presence in the community.

The Bethel group worshipped with their host church Sunday morning and returned to campus around 11 p.m. that evening, exhausted but filled with gratitude.

“I think when disasters happen, people think ‘I want to help, but I don’t know how.’This is perspective-changing for us. To know we can be used to help people come out of the depths of despair was just really impactful,” Tice says.