When Jesus is present, there is always enough. That’s what Jack and Joanne Robinson learned after Hurricane Rita demolished their town of Westlake.
WESTLAKE – When Jesus is present, there is always enough.
Perhaps the boy with the five loaves and two fishes whose lunch fed a
crowd of more than 5,000 learned that lesson the same way Jack and
Joanna Robinson did; their efforts fed about 30 volunteer disaster
relief workers for two and a half weeks after Hurricane Rita.
Jack Robinson, a member of an associational disaster relief chainsaw
crew, had been home only two days from doing disaster relief work after
Katrina when he and his wife had to evacuate as Hurricane Rita
approached the southwest quadrant of the state.
As the name implies Westlake is just west of Lake Charles; it was
whipped by Rita’s eastern side as the storm moved inland. Most
people evacuated, but some, mostly emergency personnel and volunteers,
stayed or came back soon after.
The Robinsons, members at Bellview Baptist Westlake, returned home on Saturday to find Rita had laid waste to their hometown.
Westlake was without electricity for two and a half weeks, but the
Robinsons – armed with a generator, a 38-foot motor home and lots
of tenacity – stuck it out, looking for ways to serve the people around
them.
Food was a necessity, they realized. The couple parked their motor home
at the end of their driveway, cranked up the generator and got to
work. By Sunday, they had set up a dining facility in their
carport and Joanna, 62 at the time, had begun cooking.
By Monday they were feeding meals three times a day to Southern Baptist
disaster relief teams, Coast Guard workers, and people working at the
water plant. In all, there were about 30
volunteers.
In a typical single-dwelling home, kitchens start at about 300 square
feet and are generally equipped to feed a family of four or five
several times a day.
But, working alone, using a three-burner stove and the 80 square-foot
kitchen of their motor home – tight but sufficient for the Robinson
couple a few weeks a year – Joanna produced close to 1,530 meals
for volunteers.
“I didn’t do it; God did it,” Joanna said. “I was just the instrument. I got the joy.”
The experience was not without challenges, though.
“The most frustrating thing was that we had to keep the refrigerator
and the freezer plugged into the generator, which limited electricity
in the motor home,” Joanna said.
Since the air conditioner also had to run in the unbearable heat and
humidity, she found she’d sometimes overload the system.
“I’d plug something in, and then remember, ‘Oh no! This is
electric!’” she said. Several times she threw breakers and had to call
Jack for help.
“But the space never bothered me,” she said. “We just love to feed people.”
Most of all, God allowed Joanna’s health to remain secure, she said.
Having undergone a kidney transplant eight years ago, she must remain
conscious of not getting overtired.
And she didn’t, despite starting her days at 5 a.m. to provide meals for workers who arrived at 6 a.m.
“Sometimes people we didn’t know would come to see someone who was
there, and I’d invite them to eat, hoping that there was enough,”
Joanna said. “But there was never a time there wasn’t enough.”
“The Lord just sent food,” Jack said. “As these (chainsaw) teams
came home, most cleaned out their freezers and brought that.” The
couple was able to get ice from the fire department and the SBC
Tennessee disaster relief team.
“One morning I got up and realized I only had a dozen eggs,” Joanna
said. Needing more, she called a friend, Becky Johnson, who also
had a dozen.
“I told her to keep a couple for her own breakfast, but she refused,”
Joanna said. “She said that God would send more.”
Later that day, several 18-count cartons of eggs arrived.
The same thing happened with bread. At lunch, the meal generally
was sandwiches, but one day Joanna found her bread supply was
low. Becky had about a half a loaf, and between the two of them,
they had enough for lunch that day.
That evening one of the guys came with a whole flat of bread.
“Believe it or not, we ate really well,” Joanna said. “Sometimes
weird combinations, but we ate well. There was never a time that
the pots ran dry.”
While Joanna worked inside, her husband, along with their nephew, Damon
Hardesty, other volunteers, and city workers, cleared roadways, homes,
and driveways of downed trees.
Hardesty, a member of First Baptist West Lake, who stayed through
the storm with the police in the local middle school, remembers that
the principal came through and gave him the key to the cafeteria.
“He told us to use what we could so (the food) wouldn’t go to waste,” Hardesty said.
Hardesty also remembers how God took them through a situation that
involved moving a tree, about 50 inches in diameter, from a woman’s
mobile home without causing further damage.
“I didn’t think there was any way to get it out of there,” he
said. “The only way we could have was with God’s hand. We
had two backhoes on it. The trunk was in the house, too. We
were roped off, and cutting limbs out. We had to get the trunk
out.”
Removing the tree took four hours and 10 people, Hardesty said, while
the owners stood by, helpless, anxious and worried.
“We prayed with them, and they cried the whole time we were taking (the
tree) out,” Hardesty said. “They were so happy to get it out of
there.”
That family was an anomaly in West Lake immediately following the
storm. Generally when chainsaw teams enter an area, the people
are home, but that wasn’t the case for this crew, who worked at homes
where people were absent.
“We didn’t have that closeness – even though it was in our own
backyard,” Robinson said, who regretted not being able to make
connections with people through the disaster relief. “The whole
idea of going is to be with people and tell them about Jesus. Most
people probably never even saw what was in their house or on their
driveway.”
“It was terrible, but it was wonderful,” he said of the ordeal. “Our
bunch worked for almost 12 months after that storm, and we’re still
cleaning up. It’s the Lord’s work. We just do what we have to do.
We did things we weren’t even capable of doing. But God
made it happen.”
“The heat and humidty were brutal,” said Frank Snyder, another crew member.
Lloyd Carrol, pastor at Topsy Baptist Church and also a chainsaw crew
member, remembers coming home in the evenings to return 20 or more
calls from friends and neighbors – still prevented by officials from
coming home – who wanted to know about their houses.
Exhausted from cutting and hauling trees all day, Carrol would fall
asleep calling people back. “We worked daylight to dark the first
month, except on Sundays,” he said.
“The first three Sundays we were without electricity,” Carrol
added. “We made coffee and music with a generator on the porch of
the church house.”
In June before Rita hit, the association had ordered two trailers for
its disaster relief work. The trailers arrived two weeks after
Rita and not until this summer have crew members had time to outfit
them.
The trailers, fully rigged out, cost $15,000 each. They are
equipped with shelving; four chain saws of various sizes; extra chains
and bars for the saws; wheelbarrows and shovels for mud-out work; a
generator for grinding or sharpening chain blades in case there is no
power on site; a high pressure washer; logging tongs; tow chains;
protective gear such as chaps, hard hats, face shields and ear plugs;
and a first-aid kit.
Just before leaving for a disater area, the team will stock up on water and snacks.