I can recommend UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee On Relief.
We Methodists don't care what unique branch of the human race you are, or where you are located, or what deity you pray to, if any.
If you have an urge to roll up your sleeves and pick up your shovel, or pry-bar or sponge 'n squeegee and get busy, you are who we are looking for.
I got involved with these good people last November when a forest fire in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park roared into Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
The flames were started by two teenagers throwing firecrackers out of their car window.
In 48 hours these flames, fed by tinder-dry conditions and high winds became a firestorm that destroyed hundreds of homes and part of Gatlinburg itself.
Knowing how to operate a Bobcat front loader, I joined a demolition team that was sent up Ski Mountain Road to clear away debris and charred wreckage.
I particularly remember a closed motel that the fire and wind had reduced to nothing but scorched cinder blocks.
The temperature at that site two days after the fire was still hot enough that my team worked in 20 minute shifts to avoid heat stroke.
This in November, and in the Appalachian Mountains.
The heat from the firestorm was so intense that anything that could burn had been reduced to ashes, then blown away in the wind.
The sand and mortar matrix of the cinder blocks themselves had become so hot that it had been melted into tiny glass beads that were fragile as all get-out. However, if you charged at a cinder block wall made of these beads to knock it down, it would crumble like sugar but still have enough mass to half bury you and the Bobcat you were driving.
The Carhart coat I was wearing was so permeated by the beads that I had to throw it away.
When not doing demolition work, my team helps put cleaning buckets, hygiene packs and school packs together for storage in UMCOR's Disaster and Mission Depots. Last weekend, Miz Grawp and I were creating cleaning buckets that were replacing those sent to Florida and Georgia.
I think our creations were shipped this week to Puerto Rico.
So we've got more work ahead of us.
If you're in a giving mood just now, whether of your time, your energy, cash or whatever please contact:
http://www.umcor.orgSelah and Mahalo, my friends.
The world will never love us. They respect us - they might even grow to fear us.
But they will never love us, for we have too much audacity!
- Theodore Roosevelt – “The Wind & the Lion” (1975)