Submitted by philip on
By Marilyn Stewart, Regional Reporter
LAPLACE – Overwhelmed by flooded homes and broken lives after Hurricane Isaac last fall, Celebration Church LaPlace Pastor Checkerz Williams knelt in his gutted office and prayed, “Send us workers. Help us impact this community for Christ.”
God answered by bringing Eight Days of Hope, a faith-based organization directed and co-founded by Stephen Tybor III of First Baptist Church, Tupelo, Miss., that mobilized 2,510 volunteers in March to provide 143,000 man-hours of labor for work valued at $4.1 million.
Numerous first-time commitments of faith to Christ were recorded among homeowners and volunteers as the group prayed with area residents and met nightly for worship.
“Our city will never be the same,” Williams said. “I believe the people of our community are much more open to the Gospel as a result of what took place over the last eight days.”
Four Louisiana Disaster Relief shower units – from Baton Rouge, Slidell and North Louisiana areas – joined the project. A Mississippi Baptist Disaster Relief Feeding Unit has accompanied the organization on each of its ten trips since the organization’s founding in 2005.
The workforce was Eight Days of Hope’s largest volunteer group yet and included participants from 43 states and 4 countries. According to the parish communications director’s office, the group was more than double the total number of volunteers who have worked in the parish to date.
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans gave the project front-page coverage as lead story and quoted one homeowner who said: “I’ve never been so loved in all of my life.”
Six days after Williams’ prayer for help, Billy Puckett, New Orleans Baptist Association’s volunteer coordinator, called and asked him to meet with Tybor. Matt Tipton, pastor Hope Church, Metairie, had heard of Eight Days of Hope and had contacted Tybor, then Puckett.
When Tybor told Tipton a point person in the parish was needed, Tipton’s answer was, “I know just the man.”
Williams became the liaison with parish administrators, securing the St. John the Baptist Parish Community Center in LaPlace as the group’s headquarters for job allocation, feeding, and housing for women volunteers, and mobilizing Celebration Church members from three of its five campuses to do home assessments prior to the event.
A the initial meeting, Tybor had told Williams he anticipated bringing 1,500 volunteers.
“I watched on Facebook and the numbers just kept going up,” Williams said of the registration that began last November.
One homeowner came to faith in Christ during pre-event home assessments. Throughout the week, Williams received email updates of other commitments of faith, including that of a 75-year-old man.
“People are drawn to His love,” Tybor said. “We’re here to show Jesus’ love in action.”
The organization’s name draws on the biblical symbolism of the number eight, meaning “new beginnings.” Led by an all-volunteer staff, the group works in areas devastated by natural disasters.
Tybor, a vice president and senior manager with the building materials supplier ProVia, co-founded Eight Days of Hope with his father Steve Tybor, Jr., after a trip to the Hurricane Katrina devastated Gulf Coast. Trip plans began with a handful of friends but grew quickly to 680 when Tybor advertised the first trip on American Family Radio, a Christian network.
“When God gets involved, I just step back,” Tybor said. The non-profit formed soon afterwards and registration has grown with each trip.
Juliette Miller, 17, Beaverdam Baptist Church, Beaverdam, Va., a five-trip veteran, heard about Eight Days of Hope on the radio as a 12-year-old. She told her parents, “We need to do this.” Miller’s family – parents and seven siblings, the youngest 2 years old – marked their third trip together.
“Jesus told us to bear one another’s burdens,” LeaAnna Miller, mother, said. “It’s such an awesome thing for our kids to be a part of.”
Juliette Miller said the homeowner, a single mom, told the group she duct-taped her severely disabled son to her back and walked out through the water to safety. Miller reported that the son, age 20, weighs 70 lbs. Volunteers re-plumbed the bathroom to make it handicap accessible.
Parish President Natalie Robottom greeted the group on their arrival and presented Tybor a “key to the city.” The parish’s Long-Term Recovery Group, a coalition of local churches and organizations working with FEMA and the United Way, presented Tybor’s organization $155,000 for building materials.
Billboards at the community center displayed projects and allowed groups to pick up assignments quickly and follow-up another team’s work. Tybor said parish administrators were “overwhelmed at how much we got done.”
“We are so thankful for Eight Days of Hope,” Williams said. “We now have the task of continuing the work of the Lord in the coming days.”