I traveled to New Bern, North Carolina, recently to answer the call for volunteers to assist in disaster relief for those who suffered the battering wrath of Hurricane Florence in September of this year. It wasn’t the first mission trip to a storm-ravaged community for me. In fact, being a trucker had a big part in my first such mission trip in 2006 during the long recovery after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in ’05. Our church paid for the fuel for me to transport a load of food and supplies from the large food bank in our area. After delivering the load and spending a week helping to restore a couple homes of the hurricane survivors, I was hooked.
Since then, being an owner-operator has been a blessing, as I’ve been able to turn off the truck for at least a week a year to go and serve people in need after a natural disaster.
Being involved in this type of mission work literally has changed my life. I confess and am embarrassed to say that, years ago when I went to help in Biloxi, Mississippi, after Katrina, I thought pretty highly of myself for going. Even after the leadership walked us through an orientation about serving the victims of these natural disasters, describing the need to develop a servant’s heart, it took time and experience to fully understand and embrace what helping with a servant’s heart really means.
Lessons learned when I’ve volunteered have helped me live life more humbly, even adjust the way I conduct business. It was only when I stopped and took the time to sit and listen to people’s stories that I realized they needed much more than some new shingles and drywall. So many needed a willing ear in which to pour their feelings of tragedy and loss.
I now know I don’t have to go on a mission trip to find such people. I keep my antennae out in my daily work for dock workers, truck-stop staff and other truckers who are suffering and just need a little empathy and a listening ear.
Having a servant’s heart also means I need to constantly set judgement aside. The organizations I have worked with have to pick and choose just whom their workers will help. Though I’m not involved in those decisions, I have found it easy to second-guess them.
There have been times when the crew felt that the family was not grateful enough, or judged them for not pitching in and helping after they got home from a day of work. I have worked on both very nice homes and ones that were on the verge of not being worth the work of fixing them up. There can be judgement on both sides of that coin. There was a lot of judgement going around after Katrina about living on the coast and not having flood insurance — until we found out that you can’t even buy flood insurance unless you are in a recognized flood plain. Many homes we worked on were well outside it. Yet the huge storm surge swamped them.
