Members of two Marshall organizations recently traveled to the Texas Hill Country to aid flood recovery and relief efforts.

The volunteers not only brought supplies and more to people affected by flooding as well as to the emergency responders searching for victims and clearing debris, but also provided emotional and spiritual support.

“What they needed was people to come down there and love them and cry with them and talk to them,” said Jason Skinner, president of The Remnant Ministries of Marshall.

Members of The Remnant Ministries traveled July 9 to Ingram and cooked meals for members of the Ingram Fire Department.

After one of their members was sent there in a chaplaincy role with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, other members of the ministry decided to accompany him.

The goal was to give law enforcement, firefighters and others dealing with the aftermath of the disaster a warm home-cooked meal – and a listening ear.

Skinner said many of the emergency responders were there to recover victims from the all-girls Camp Mystic and had to go through emotionally challenging situations.

The group from The Remnant Ministries stayed at a church and would go to the fire department to cook meals for emergency responders. During the day, those responders performed searches and then returned to the church where other organizations such as Texans on Mission provided additional resources.

“You know, part of the pleasure of being in a ministry is we’re doing this because the Lord — that’s what he’s charged us to do,” Skinner said. “And so in our time of service, we got to worship him a lot.”

Tom Solomon, a board member with The Remnant Ministries, described looking at debris from the flooding near the Guadalupe River.

“That’s a cabinet, somebody’s house, that’s a kid’s football, there’s a pillow – just stuff just deposited everywhere on the riverbank,” he said.

Solomon recalled walking toward the river to see the damage when he saw a tree with branches taller than him full of trash and items caught there from the flooding. That’s when he realized how high the water had risen.

“All of these houses and homes along this river are gone,” Skinner added.

What mattered the most for volunteers from The Remnant Ministries was to spiritually support and care for the emergency responders responding to the disaster.

“But in all of that, we were able to go down there and see the Lord moving in marvelous ways,” Skinner said.

Bishop Pastor Rickey Moore of New Vision Missionary Baptist Church in Marshall brought donated supplies to Calvary Temple Church in Kerrville earlier this month.

Sandy Schiller, a member of Calvary Temple, said how grateful she was for the donations.

“I would like to thank the people in East Texas for their support, for their love, for their generosity and just being Jesus with skin on,” Schiller said.

This week, Moore will return to Calvary Temple Church to drop off more donations and letters of encouragement from children in the Marshall area to those in Kerrville.

“We want to thank all of the East Texas community for allowing your children and grandchildren to write letters, cards, teddy bears, love gifts, notes to just encourage the children of Central Texas,” Moore said. “I can truly say after 46 years of pastoring that East Texas has a heart for helping their neighbors. Thank you, thank you East Texas.”