The Gospel with working gloves

At 7.00 a.m. on Saturday morning, Aaron Jones and his family led some of the guys in the youth group to Chapman, Kansas, site of the Kansas Auto Racing Museum and the path of an F4 tornado. About a week and a half ago, the town of Chapman was hit with a large tornado at around 10.00 at night.

Destruction was everywhere. If you look at this picture of the Chapman Elementary School, the missing wall in the middle top is the two second grade class rooms. From the looks of it, the tornado took a swath down the middle of the north side of the town. A lot of the new construction on the far north side of town was untouched. The older part of the town, north of the main business district (and I use the term "business district" very lightly). In the midst of town, the Salvation Army and the local churches set up feeding stations. The Methodist Church from Chapman fed us cheddar brats, and the Salvation army fed us Chicken ala King.

Our job consisted mostly of sorting through piles of rubble. We seperated construction materials from vegitation, and metal from housing debris. It was a mess. There were a few trees left standing, but they had no branches on them. Throughout the day we spent most of our time on two great big piles of rubble. We also hauled a lot of the piles to the road for FEMA to pick up later.

At one point in time in the morning, the guys found a Bible in one of the piles. It was completely untouched.

I don't think any of us shared the gospel with any one...we didn't preach the word, or hand out pamphlets; however, the gospel did put on working gloves that day. It was hard and tiring work, but the kingdom was furthered.

The guys did a great job.

Thanks Aaron for organizing it, and to the Hildebrandts for allowing us to use their van.