WELS members, churches safe after severe weather
Filed Under: Arkansas, ice, Kentucky, Oklahoma, storm, tornado, WELS relief
WELS members in Oklahoma City, Okla., are safe following a series of tornadoes that tore through the region Feb. 10. Rev. Craig Born, pastor at Gethsemane, Oklahoma City, says no members sustained damage to their homes, and that the worship facilities of Gethsemane—and neighboring WELS congregation Holy Cross—were not damaged.
Born says the tornado touched down about two miles northeast of Gethsemane and produced winds of about 120 miles per hour. As far as tornadoes go, he says, this one was weak—but very unusual because it was so early in the year. Oklahoma's tornado season doesn't begin for about two months.
"These things happen and God uses them to bring people closer to him," says Born. "And he certainly works to keep people safe."
WELS congregations in other parts of the country are also recovering from storms that produced record amounts of ice at the end of January. Two of the hardest-hit states were Kentucky and Arkansas.
Rev. Paul Horn, pastor at Faith, Radcliff, Ky., says no members were injured, and their homes—and the storefront Faith worships in—sustained no damage. The community, however, is a mess due to fallen trees and power lines; Horn says thousands in the region are still without power.
"The biggest thing affecting people is loss of wages from not working for a week," he says. "And then the people that lost power lost their groceries. So they had to spend extra money on that, and then on the generators, and now on chainsaws."
To help out, members of Faith have been going around town with chainsaws to help with cleanup—a process that Horn says will take weeks. "We've just been calling people and trying to help out where we can," he says.
Cleanup efforts are also underway in Arkansas. Although power has been restored to most homes there, Rev. David Kapler, pastor at Trinity, Mountain Home, says it's going to take a while to get things back to normal. Shortly after the storm, he contacted WELS Relief for help. WELS Relief sent $2,500 and a trailer of relief supplies to help members of Trinity and the Mountain Home community.
Trinity is using relief dollars to purchase and distribute generators to those still without power. They are also helping lower-income families in the neighborhood purchase essentials like food and gasoline for their generators.
And congregation members are helping clean up where they can. "We are just eager to help people," says Kapler. "God wants us to be concerned about the physical needs, but especially the spiritual needs of other people. And God has given us this opportunity to show them the love of Christ by helping them out in both ways."
