Hello, BRN Churches and Ready Churches and Disaster Relief Volunteers. This is Kenton Hunt, your Disaster Relief director.
It’s been a while since I’ve connected with you, and the reason for that is that this has been a pretty uneventful hurricane season. The Atlantic has not been quiet, I would say, but it’s all, the storms have had no effect on the United States, so that’s good for us. I’m happy about that, but it’s kept me from being in contact with you.
However, right now there is a giant storm called Hurricane Melissa. You’ve probably seen some new news coverage on it that it is striking Jamaica right now as I’m making this recording. And by the time you see it, it is probably, we’ll have cleared even Cuba and made its way up into the Atlantic, but way off the coast of the United States.
We do not anticipate that this storm will have any direct impact on the continental U.S., but it may have a great impact on our ability to proclaim the gospel in places where it’s needed, like Jamaica, like Eastern Cuba. And that’s why I’m making this recording.
So, as I speak, I’ve read numerous articles on what’s going on and who’s doing what. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief is spinning up, I know, in Florida and in Tennessee. Send Relief is active and has already shipped some resources to Cuba. And I even heard about Puerto Rico Disaster Relief, who is ready to go to respond as soon as they are able to do that. And that’s fantastic for Puerto Rico.
So, what can we do? Well, number one, we can pray. A lot of people are going to be impacted and this is—this one’s going to hurt, because it is so powerful right now. It’s 175 miles an hour, which is way into Category Five territory. And we don’t usually see that powerful of a storm, but this is a big one, and it’s going to cause a lot of damage.
And so the people that are impacted need to be prayed for, the people that are getting ready to respond need to be prayed for, the churches that are praying about how to, what they can do, we need to be praying for one another.
But really why I’m making this recording is because I want to share some quick information with you. Certainly, we can pray. The other thing is we can do is give.
I’m talking about financial giving. Financial giving is the most important giving that we can do in this regard because money can become whatever tools and resources are needed at just the time that they’re needed, and it costs no money to ship them. We can get it directly to the people who we know and trust, who will be good stewards of that resource, who know the people on the ground who can use the help, and who are organizing to bring aid to those survivors.
So, that’s why financial giving is so important. If you or your church would like to contribute financially, my first suggestion would be to go to brnunited.org, click on the Give button and then just walk yourself right down through the page [to Disaster Relief]. Fill out the fields and put the amount in but also be sure to mention that it’s for Hurricane Melissa. Or you can just click on the local Disaster Relief option, and we will make sure that the money is sent to the entities that we know are helping.
And then finally, I would like to say that we need to be praying as BRN churches for one another because there will be lots of solicitations coming in from different angles, asking you for all kinds of support. And in those asks for help will be things like, send us these things, collect all this stuff… We’re going to put it in a shipping container and send it to Cuba or send it to Jamaica or send it to Bermuda.
What I’m telling you, as your disaster relief director, is resist those. Don’t do it. The best option for giving is financial giving. And just send it to brnunited.org, and we’ll make sure that it gets to where it’s going to go. So, pray—pray for this response. Give financially. I’m so happy that we are in this together. God bless you.
