Bartow Baptist Association in Georgia, which has sent teams of people to the island in the past to do vacation Bible school and church revitalization work, is raising funds to wire money to help in St. Vincent, said missions director David Franklin, and readying to meet additional needs as Baptist leaders evaluate what will be the most appropriate assistance.
Send Relief, the Southern Baptist Convention’s national and international compassion ministry, is “providing food boxes for those who have been evacuated to shelters as well as health and hygiene supplies for women and girls at the shelters,” said spokesman Mike Ebert.
Richards, a St. Vincent native, was a young boy when the 1979 volcanic eruption occurred. He said he became a Christian after a Southern Baptist missionary worked to distribute clean water to residents like him who had none at the time.
Now, working with Southern Baptists and others, he hopes to pay that gesture forward.
“He spent his entire day, day after day after day, delivering drinking water to people,” Richards, now in his 50s, recalled of the missionary. “Sometimes the loudest sermon you preach is not from the pulpit. Sometimes the loudest sermon you preach is with a bucket of water in your hand.”
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This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
