Cedar Rapids- 3 weeks after FLOOD

Sunday night we sang at Immanual Baptist Church in Cedar Rapids. This church is located 7 blocks from the edge of flood waters and was setup as a Red Cross Emergency Center. We came into CR from the north end seeing first-hand the areas where water had been up to roof-tops of homes and totally covering some businesses. FEMA has these huge vacuum pump systems hooked up to the large businesses and building sucking out the water. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief teams were on-site providing over 3000 meals a day to people. It is a very organized operation and takes 100s of people to pull it all off. New teams were arriving as we pulled in from South Carolina, Illinois, Virginia and Texas. The church has a huge parking area and every inch of space was being used for Red Cross trucks, shower and laundry semi-trailers, food preparation and included an area for serving meals. Many SBC teams were there for the "mud-out process" (scooping out the mud and debris from homes and basements). As we drove through town, we notice large neon labels on the doors of homes as we passed. We found out that each home that was flooded was inspected by FEMA and label with a color code to indicate whether the home was salvageable or needed demolished.

Many volunteers from SBC Disaster Relief and Red Cross came our the concert that evening. We took time to talk with several before the concert. Even in their state of cleaning up and so many families without homes, the church felt our concert was divinely appointed to bring some "good news" among all this devastation. We had a very sweet time of worship. To them, we brought joy. To us, they brought encouragement and an extreme love to God's people who see the need to help others! What an inspiration they were to us! We all needed each other!