ST. LOUIS – Missouri Baptists have an opportunity to reach St. Louis residents with the gospel through Missouri Disaster Relief’s (MODR) efforts to rebuild homes damaged last year by flooding.
Though MODR has already coordinated rebuild efforts at 14 homes, more than 100 homes still need work, according to MODR Director Gaylon Moss.
While the immediate response to a disaster garners more media attention, Moss said that long-term recovery efforts – including rebuild efforts – can often have a greater spiritual impact. MODR’s rebuild efforts include both home repair and new construction, though home repair is more common, Moss said.
“Rebuild not only refers to the physical act of construction,” Moss added, “but many times it is a rebuild of someone’s life. … The longer term nature of repairs and new construction yields more opportunities to share the love of Christ.”
He and other MODR volunteers have seen spiritual and relational healing come from their rebuild efforts. One man, Moss said, shared that because of MODR’s ministry, “he and his estranged wife are mending their relationship.”
MODR volunteer Dan Freeze similarly shared how his team was able to provide encouragement to a St. Louis woman as they rebuilt her home earlier this month.
“This week we had a small job at a house,” Freeze shared in a MODR email update, June 7. “I thought we were running behind schedule because we couldn’t finish the job before time to quit and had to return the next morning.” But “God knew the real reason” for the delay.
The woman who lived in the home was disabled and had been a widow for three years, but her college-aged granddaughter moved in with her this summer to work with UPS.
When MODR volunteers returned to complete the job the next morning, this widow was “visibly shaken and nervous,” Freeze wrote. Her granddaughter had been robbed, with a gun put to her head, the previous evening.
“She could hardly talk, telling us the story,” Freeze said. “We were able to pray for her and encourage her.” Then, she immediately began to pray for the MODR volunteers and “thanked God for sending us at just the right time in her life.”
Alongside rebuild efforts in St. Louis, MODR teams are working on rebuild projects in Missouri’s bootheel – namely, in the town of Hayti, where two homes are currently being constructed.
To learn how you can be involved in MODR relief and rebuild efforts or to give to MODR’s ministry, visit https://modr.org/.