8th Annual Sonshine State Experience @ Florida Bible Camp

Photos above are of some of the activities going on this weekend here at FBC. There was a special play time for around 40 Foster Kids. Many games and a petting zoo was fun for all.

Photo above is Dick & Nina Stockton they are my friends and Sojourners. I met them in Mobile while working Katrina. They also came to New Orleans to help me while I was doing disaster assistance there. They stopped by Florida Bible Camp last night and left this afternoon. We talked about the work here at FBC, Sojourning and the disaster assistance mission. Dick and Nina are just finishing over 2 months of sojourning mission work here in Florida.

Great Photo of the Midwest Flood

Photo Taken from USA Today.

Update from Don and Rosemary

The following was taken from Missions with Don And Rosemarry's blog.

After several months being away from this blog, we are now able to rusume this work. I must say, that I did not know how may of you appreciated and read this blog until we were unable to publish it for a while. The problem was that we were, with all of our other evangelistic work, building a new house. We also had a two month mission trip with the Sojourners that we wanted to complete before we started again. We had a great mission trip in the state of Florida. We worked with congregations in Key West, Hollywood, Cape Coral, ( near Ft. Meyers) and Lakeland. We were involved in Vacation Bible Schools, Gospel Meetings and many Bible Studies. We baptized nine people into Christ on this mission trip. We found many people very receptive to the gospel message. We would have liked to have worked more in door knocking and setting up Bible Studies, but other work was also required on this mission. By the way some really good news, many of you know Mike, who has worked in so many disaster related activities, well good news, he is now heading up a new program called "Disaster Assistance". You can find out more info about it by going to his blog www.mikesmissionupdates.blogspot.com It will certainly be one of the efforts about which we will be writing. In my opinion, Mike is one good guy. Again thanks for your encouragement and support of our mission efforts. Please tell a friend about the return of this informative blog. Our blogsite is www.donchudson.blogspot.com Don

Sojourners Group Photo at FBC

Sojourners working on fence at FBC

Sojourners at Florida Bible Camp

The photos below are of Sojourners painting the cabins on the boys side of the camp.
The brown one is the old color and the green ones are the new ones. Also one photo of two of the men repairing the roof on the boys bath house.

Tornado kills 1, rips swath through Lake City

A tornado ripped across northern sections of downtown Lake City around 9:45 a.m. Friday. One resident died when her home was destroyed by the storm. The storm damaged more than 40 homes in Lake City's northern neighborhoods were damaged or destroyed. The storm also knocked down the rear portion of the tobacco barn along Lake Jeffery Road, destroyed a portion of Lake City Industries and overturned a UPS delivery van in the downtown area.

State emergency officials said the tornadoes touched down in the Gulf of Mexico coastal town of Keaton Beach and Capitola, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Tallahassee. In Capitola, a handful of homes were destroyed, while others were damaged.

Tornado cuts swath through downtown Lake City

A home at Northwest Matthews Street and Northwest Stadium Street was destroyed when a large oak tree blew down on the home. A woman and her daughter were temporarily trapped in a closet, but both were rescued and not injured ... Power poles near the Lake City Post Office were snapped and power lines were down ... Severe residential damage has been reported along Martin Luther King Avenue in Lake City, as well in the vicinity of Annie Mattox Park ... Injury reports still are unknown.

Tornado Capitola, Florida

Capitol, Florida is just east of Tallahasee. I have talked to my contacts a Timberlane CoC in Tallahasee and they just had high winds there. They are checking on Capitola for me. I will keep you updated.

Sojourners Are Hard At Work At FBC

The above photo is of the Sojourners RV's parked here at Florida Bible Camp.

Sojourners Coming To Florida Bible Camp

March 3-20 the Sojourners will be working here at FBC. If you would like to join us for a day or more your help would be greatly appreciated. Also the start of youth camp weeks will be here before we know it. The list of paper products below are needed here at camp during those weeks. If you can donate or know of a business that could donate any of these items it would be a great help.

Paper Plates
Cups
Napkins
Paper Towels
Toilet Tissue

Photos from Hunter Hills CoC

The first picture is of the drainage system beside the Walmart parking lot. The second is also in that parking lot. The last picture is the gymnasium of the Prattville Christian Academy, our Church of Christ academy (K-12) just across a parking lot from our church building. The rest of the academy was not seriously damaged (some roof damage), and the church was virtually untouched. David Cannon

Another Story From Prattville, AL

There was also good TV news coverage on various occasions with the supplies as well volunteers reaching out to those with needs. The mayor, other relief workers and affected families were very appreciative of the quick response and the heartfelt gift from Tennessee.

P.S. I spoke with one of the first families to receive relief supplies and they said that they had just used their final monthly allottment of food stamps at Walmart prior to the tornado striking. They were outside with their groceries and shopping cart and had to run inside
Walmart for cover, abondoning their shopping cart. In the process they lost all of their food when the tornado hit the Walmart shopping center. You and you volunteers can imagine how grateful they were for the relief supplies.

God Bless,

Wayne Gaines

Tornado Update Prattville

Below is email from my contact at Hunter Hills CoC in Prattville. Above photos are of the semi from Disaster Relief Nashville being unloaded.

Hello Brother Mike—

It is a quiet day here in Prattville after three days of very tiring work involving food & supplies distribution, as well as putting up tarps where there are holes in roofs, putting fences around swimming pools that had previously been surrounded by privacy fences, seeing about people’s cars, etc. We took food from the Emergency Response truck from Nashville and pre-staged portions at three other distribution centers in town. Two of our elders helped work with all these details.

As it turns out, the area was not declared a disaster area, because 98% of the people had insurance. It seemed that just about everybody had a lot of friends, and the “war zones” were crawling with people for three days.

By today, I think people are using the rainy weather as an opportunity to rest a little, and, as with some of our own families, concentrate on paper chores. We are maintaining close contact with many, and the shipment from Nashville has made a huge difference for everybody. This was truly a blessing.

Quite a few church groups/religious organizations have also been involved, in addition to families and friends. I have been very impressed with how everybody has jumped in to help. I believe we will go forward much more quietly from this point. This will be that “quiet time” when people might be more inclined to talk about their feelings about what has happened. We pray that there will be a good opportunity to use this tornado as an instrument to bring people closer to their God.

Blessings to you, Mike.

Dave Cannon

Early Hurricane Forecast for 2008

The preliminary forecast calls for a total of 13 named storms in the Atlantic. It also says it is probable that at least one major hurricane will hit the U.S. coastline. We all know the past two seasons the predictions have been much higher than what actually happened. We still need to be prepared it only takes one.

6.0 Quake in Northeastern Nevada

A strong earthquake shook rural northeastern Nevada. The quake was centered in a sparsely populated area 11 miles southeast of Wells near the Nevada-Utah line. Reports say it was felt across eastern Nevada, Utah and as far away as Southern California. People reported items falling off shelves. There was no reports of serious injuries. One truck stop was evacuated because of a propane leak.

Prattville, AL Tornado Update

Here is some of the information I received in a email from one of the local Churches of Christ there in Prattville around 11PM last night. They received a semi load of food and supplies last night and finished unloading it around 8PM. Than some of the leaders had a dinner meeting to review their options. They have about 20 houses destroyed and about 3 dozen more with serious damage. They don't feel there is crisis of major proportions. They are going to be delivering the supplies to the damaged areas today in smaller vehicles. Than review again at the end of today and see if the need is greater than they first thought and let me know if they need any help.