LIVE OAK–When Jeff and Melody Scott got the call about helping with Florida Baptist Disaster Relief feeding efforts at their church in Live Oak, they felt like it was a great opportunity to show God’s love to people experiencing flooding and/or power outages due to Hurricane Debby.
But the plot twist in this volunteer feeding scenario was that they would not actually be cooking one single thing. All the food would be prepared by the Disaster Relief feeding team set up at First Baptist in Perry, about an hour away.
The food arrived at First Baptist of Live Oak the morning of Thursday, Aug. 8, in large cooler type containers. And the Scotts and their team of about 30 volunteers got busy filling Styrofoam clamshells with food and distributed about 285 meals in just over an hour. All the meals were served drive-thru style from the church parking lot.
The hot and hearty meal on this day was a beef and vegetable stew served over rice. Each meal included pudding and pear packs and bottled water.
“It was a great opportunity to serve people right here in our community,” said Jeff Scott, who leads men’s ministry at his church. “We still had a lot of people experiencing challenging situations due to all the flooding.”
Scott said the work they did helped to fill a need as there were many homes and businesses in the Live Oak area still without power and still dealing with flooding from the 12 inches of rain Debby brought to the area. He noted some in the area had not fully recovered from the effects of Hurricane Idalia almost one year ago.
While it has not been done regularly, David Coggins, FLDR director, said setting up this satellite type feeding station is something they will likely do more of in the future.
The need varies depending on the density of the area being served and the impact from the disaster, he said. With Hurricane Ian, for example, nine kitchens were set up in the area serving hot meals, including several field kitchens brought in from other states’ disaster relief teams.
When Coggins heard about the need in Live Oak from Phillip Herrington, North regional catalyst for the Florida Baptist Convention, they decided to have volunteers prepare the meals in Perry and then transport them to Live Oak for distribution from the church.
“Our goal as Florida Baptists is to keep churches on the forefront of what we’re doing,” Coggins said. “We want to keep them involved in every way in what’s going on.”
Coggins was looking at doing the same in another outlying area this week, but that community had progressed further along with recovery and restoration of power, so the need was no longer there. “There was not a lot of need for survivor feeding,” he said. “We’re always laser-focused on the survivors.”
As the Scotts arrived at church to get ready for the feeding, they set up teams for each task to be accomplished. A parking lot team would direct traffic; a prayer team would pray with people in their cars; the greeting team would provide information sheets for those needing help with cleanup and flood recovery, as well as church literature; the assembly line team would put food in the clamshell containers. They even had a kid’s team who put the plastic forks inside the clamshell.
Scott said he enjoyed participating in many of the tasks, especially praying with people and encouraging them. With it being so hot, Scott worked to make sure all volunteers were drinking cool water and staying hydrated. He said it was great to see God’s people helping each other.
“This was God at work with all of our quirky personalities not getting in the way too much,” he said.
The Live Oak team did meals again on Friday, Aug. 9, but this time they sent someone to pick up the meals from Perry.
Scott said he and his wife were super impressed with the FLDR team and how well organized everything was. It made for a smooth operation.
“They had a system. They explained it to us, and it worked out very well,” he said. “That was huge. They make it so easy to help people.”