It’s all gone

Can you imagine losing your husband, wife, or children?  If your home and all its memories and contents were literally blown away, how could you even function, much less consider recovering or rebuilding?

The city of Phil Campbell, Alabama was just about blown off the map in Franklin County when the tornadoes came raging through on April 27^th.    Death and damage rocked this rural community as well as neighboring Hackelburg, just a bit to the west, but also in direct line of the storm path.

Pastor Sammy Taylor of Phil Campbell’s Mountain View Baptist Church and I became friends just yesterday.  Because of relationship connections that extend from Camden to Phil Campbell shared by our church families, I wanted to speak to the pastor that I had read about to offer encouragement, intercessions and the assistance of the good folk here in the Camden Baptist Church.   

Pastor Sammy and I became fast friends. 

He told me of the 16 families within his church whose homes had been totally destroyed.  He mentioned to me the 3 fatalities of those who were members of the Mountain View Baptist Church.  He told me of the sad fact of 12 precious lives that perished just across where the MVBC gathers to worship.  His heart was understandably saddened.  My heart was overwhelmingly stunned to hear first-hand of such calamity.

The building that houses the Mt. View family is gone as well.  Pastor Sammy has answered the pastoral call for 33 years at MVBC and the Phil Campbell community, and he is not backing away from the greatest challenge and calling of his life and ministry now that the damage is done.  In the midst of the wreckage, Pastor Sammy sees hope.

Camden Baptist Church will respond in a direct partnership with Sammy and the Mountain View Church now that the recovery process has begun and is progressing.  Next Tuesday, I and members of the CBC Mission Action Team will meet Pastor Sammy personally.  We will take with us a trailer of items that he specifically mentioned are urgently needed.  We will begin to develop an action plan that will assist our brothers and sisters in Christ and express the grace of Christ in the midst of such painful loss.

I am asking all CBC family and friends to rise to the challenge of living beyond ourselves once again.  Pray for Pastor Sammy and the Mountain View Church Family.  Assist by the contributions that you can make both financially and through provisions that are being asked for through the ITEM LIST that has been posted on our website. 

“It’s all gone.”  We cannot replace what has been lost, but we can express the heart of our Loving God and Redeeming Lord in the days, weeks and months to come to our new friends in Phil Campbell.  ‘Faith without deeds is dead’ says the Word.  At CBC, we will put shoe leather to our faith once again…this time in Franklin County, Alabama.