Geneva Association active part of Yellow Shirt Army

In 2018, Geneva Baptist Association’s disaster relief team was revitalized — and just in time.

The association’s team jumped in at full speed to assist with cleanup and recovery in Florida after Hurricane Michael slammed into the Gulf Coast in October 2018.

Then following the March 3 tornadoes that hit several Alabama counties, including Geneva, the team helped friends and neighbors with cleanup.

“We’ve done more than 300 hours of volunteer labor, helped 30 families and 11 communities,” said Tim Folds, disaster relief coordinator for Geneva Association and pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, Slocomb.

‘Never be the same’

Some of those places “will never be the same, but we want to do the best we can to help them move on,” Folds said.

That same attitude was expressed by volunteers from other Alabama Baptist associations who spent hundreds of volunteer hours helping with storm cleanup.

“Our volunteers were constantly deployed for more than four months,” said Mark Wakefield, disaster relief strategist for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. “They just kept going and going. I’m very proud of them.”

Opportunities to serve flooded areas of Tennessee and Nebraska are in the works, Wakefield said, and more volunteers are being trained to join Alabama’s Yellow Shirt Army, including more in Geneva Association, Folds said.

“We want to be equipped and ready to shine for Jesus,” Folds said. “We want to meet their specific needs. We count it a privilege to be able to do that.” (Grace Thornton)