When the Carolina Conference received a request from the State of South Carolina to open a warehouse for the handling of donated goods to serve the survivors of the severe flooding there, several volunteers from the GA-Cumberland Conference were asked to join with them to facilitate the swift set up of this operation. The warehouse worked closely with the Governor’s Office to accomplish this.
A shipment of 630 flood buckets was received from the Allegheny East Conference, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asked the staff of the warehouse to come with her as she visited the affected counties and to hand out the buckets to the victims during her visit with the counties. The governor came by to personally thank each ACS DR volunteer for helping with her mobile distribution program and for operating the warehouse for the state, and to have her picture taken with the group.
The warehouse was shut down for the afternoon this happened, leaving Terry Haight behind to answer phones, unload any stray trucks, etc. A Regional Director from the office of US Senator Tim Scott saw the ACS banner and stopped by to see what was happening. After a golf cart tour of the warehouse (it was an 85,000 sq/ft building), Haight invited the Director into his office, and the two of them discussed ACS DR for over a half hour about what we do, how we do it and what Adventists believe. The Director said he knew Presidential hopeful Ben Carson, was an Adventist, but had no idea what Adventists believed. They spent over a half-hour discussing these things, following which the Director declared that he had visited many of the other volunteer operations helping out in the state, but had not seen any of them anywhere nearly as organized as the Adventists, and that he was going to recommend that the Senator come and inspect this operation himself, to see how donated goods should be handled.
This was certainly a “High Day” for ACS Disaster Response and the Seventh-day Adventist Church! We all pray that we represented our Savior in the best possible way.
