Tornado Recovery: Wait, Pray, Give
12/14/2021
An exterior view of Mayfield First United Methodist Church in Mayfield, Ky., shows the roof torn from the middle section of the building after a devastating line of tornadoes leveled the small town on Dec. 10. Photo courtesy of Mayfield First United Methodist Church via Facebook.
A deadly tornado outbreak December 10 and 11 produced catastrophic damage and numerous fatalities across portions of the United States including Kentucky, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee according to news reports.
United Methodist churches and members in those communities are dealing with death and property devastation. (Read more in this report from United Methodist News Service.)
UMCOR is already coordinating with leaders in those areas and has made initial grants to assist with funding immediately and over what will likely be a long recovery. North Georgia Conference leaders are also in touch with United Methodists in the affected areas.
Our best response today is to pray, wait, give, and prepare.
As always, don’t self deploy to a disaster area. Our agreement with our United Methodist conferences & UMCOR is to wait until we are invited as the locals coordinate their disaster response. We stand ready to send trained ERT (generally a few weeks after a disaster as they'll first use in-conference ERT, then neighboring states ERT, and later extend the request to those of us further away).
We can put funding to immediate use at this time!
Your financial gift to UMCOR is especially appreciated. You may give through any North Georgia Conference United Methodist church by designating your donation for UMCOR U.S. Disaster Response #901670 or give directly at https://umcmission.org/advance-project/901670/.
Contact our Conference Disaster Response Coordinator, Rev. Scott Parrish for more information. We will continue to update as we have more information.