I’ll tell you how it started...it’s a really cool story! Back in the late sixties, when Hurricane Beulah came through, I think...some Texas Southern Baptist men took some buddy burners and started cooking for the folks. The Buddy Burners are little cookers made from coffee cans that our Royal Ambassadors make and one of the Texas men worked at an RA camp and had a bunch of them. (Royal Ambassadors is kinda set up like boy scouts, except it’s focus is Southern Baptist Missions).
That was the very first effort.
Both my boys have made buddy burners and I am looking at them now. They mean a lot to me because of this story.
Anyway, this is the report for 2007...
In 2007, 17,989 trained Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers from 42 state conventions prepared 1,039,989 meals, repaired 1,238 homes/buildings, completed 1,357 mud-outs of flood debris, removed storm debris from 8,565 yards, purified 206,511 gallons of water, cared for 823 children, provided 64,587 showers, and washed and dried 4,547 loads of laundry.
* More than 9,493 new Disaster Relief volunteers were trained in 2007 to 70,410 the number of trained volunteers listed on state rosters.
* 157 new mobile units were added to the DR fleet in 2007.
* 6,257 gospel presentations with 508 professions of faith and 124 other decisions were reported.
* There are currently 2,377 trained DR chaplains on the state rosters. In 2007, are reported 9,186 chaplain interventions took place.
That’s some record of service. You should be proud!