Texas Baptist Men: "First In, Last Out" To Care For Ida Victims

DALLAS, TX —"You could call it a lot of things," says Rupert Robbins, disaster relief associate director for Texas Baptist Men in Dallas. "Glamorous is not one of them."

Having arrived only yesterday in Gonzales, Louisiana, Robbins is among the first relief workers to survey the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Ida last weekend. He and a few coworkers drove down to New Orleans to see what food could be salvaged before spoiling from another ministry that does its outreach in human trafficking. Robbins was saddened, but not surprised, by what he saw.

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"I've been at this for a while," the director said, "so when you see a place turned upside down like this . . . Sure, what you see gets to you. There are trees inside people's homes, victims whose clothes and belongings are buried in mud. But my mind goes to the people first, not material things."

As he sees it, TBM has two missions when they show up at the site of a disaster. One is to relieve suffering and repair what they can. The other is to provide hope through the church's evangelistic outreach.

"The overall situation is precarious right now," he explains, "because we're gearing up to serve 6,000 hot meals tomorrow — which is nowhere near our capacity, by the way —and we have the first of several chainsaw crews coming in as well." All in all, we're about 5,000 volunteers and three full-time staff members."

While Robbins and his crew start to deliver meals on an epic scale, TBM's chainsaw teams will begin to delicately separate debris and muck from what Ida's victims have spent a lifetime trying to put together.

"You find that you're trying to dismantle some things while you're doing everything you can to save what's underneath," said Robbins. "And people get to see that we try to put Jesus' love into action. It's one thing to talk about giving people hope for a better tomorrow, and another thing entirely to see it demonstrated before your eyes when people are carrying wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of your belongings out to be salvaged."

For the time being, TBM's command post is encamped on the grounds of Ascension Baptist Church in Gonzales. But they're also operating with other Baptist Men organizations from across the South. All the relief efforts — which includes contributions from FEMA, the Red Cross and the Salvation Army — are being coordinated by Louisiana Disaster Relief.

"We're really just getting started," the director said, "and when we set out from Dallas on Monday, we had a mission, but we didn't have a destination. Now we're here to provide hope and healing to people who've had some of the worst days of their life.

"And," he concludes, "you know what? I consider it a privilege. Left to my own devices, I'm pretty much a rascal inside. But having a calling like this and living your faith . . . everything else goes to the side."

While Robbins is not much for the limelight, he does want people to know that TBM is entirely donor-based.

Back in Dallas, Communications Director John Hall said that TBM's work often lasts months, and their deployment in Gonzales could easily last another 90 days. "We're always the first in, and the last out," he said.

Donations to TBM can be made through their website, TBMTX.org.

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