Hurricane Florence meandered through our area in September, leaving a trail of destruction from wind damage to flooding. An evacuation order was given for our county, so Patty and I boarded up our home, sandbagged the Center and quickly headed back to Maryland for a week. Many of our friends down here suffered damaged roofs, sheared siding and flooded homes. When we returned we found NO damage to our home. Just dozens of cubic yards of limbs and leaves in our yard. The Sunday after we returned four Marines showed up after church and cleaned our yard in under 2 hours!

I am so blessed to report that your prayers on our behalf were answered. The only damage to our Center was a 4-ft. section of our white PVC fence blown out and a golf-ball sized hole in the small kitchen roof of the Center. We didn’t discover the hole until several days after we returned. Several Marines came out early our first Friday back and cleaned our yard of all the branches and pine needles. One of our Marines, Nick, climbed up on the roof to clean the gutters and discovered the hole. We were wondering- with 30 inches of rain and a hole this size, why didn’t we have any water damage in the Center? At the same time we discovered the hole, Patty and Greg, one of our Marines, were in the Kitchen getting everything ready for the meal that evening. They took down the Aluminum serving trays we keep on top of the refrigerator and found ALL the water that came in drained perfectly into the serving tray! I patched up the hole the next day and we fixed the fence later in the week.

Unfortunately, Florence was not as kind to the Chapel on Camp Johnson where I do the majority of our outreach. The Chapel, a National Historic site, constructed in 1940, had several of its roofs fail and over 6 inches of water in the sanctuary. Ceilings came down throughout the building and there is structural damage. The chapel will be unusable for more than a year as repairs are made. Compounding the situation, the current Chaplain, a very good friend of mine, is being transferred to 2^nd MARDIV at Lejeune in November and his replacement is not due until the first of the year. PRAY we can start the Reconnect Service back up as soon as possible. I helped Chaplain Dunlap start this ministry and I want to see it continue.

Ministry continued through the storm and its aftermath. Many of our Marines have PCS’ed to other assignments all over the world. About 5 or 6 more are preparing to ship out to the frozen north on the other side of the planet this month for training that will last several months. And still more have 6 month deployments scheduled for the end of the year. Please pray with us for our Men and Women on deployment and training missions.

This past summer has been amazing, with dozens attending our Dinner/Bible Studies every week. The spiritual hunger and growth among our men is amazing. Weekly they come in telling of how they are sharing the Good News with their fellow Marines. While we continue our outreach, we look forward to reaching more Marines and Naval Corpsmen with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We are still short on support for the year, offerings have been down for some time now – some of our churches have had to cut back – we may end the year “in the red” – any help to offset this shortage is appreciated.

Finally, a quick update on our building project. I am happy to report that drawings are currently being made by our Architect and we are on track to be permitted and ready to break ground in the first of the year. Your faithfulness has in our Building Fund Bank Account to currently show $43,000 of the $84,000 we need for this project.  And we just got a call that another $20,000 is on the way! That will put us at $63,00! Pray with us the remaining $21,000 will come in exactly when we need it. I am searching for a General Contractor with a North Carolina license who will work with us and our budget. Pray with us that we find the right man. We will be issuing the call for work teams to come down and help us build next year. Keep looking for that announcement as well.

THANK YOU AGAIN for your love, support, and especially all your prayers for us through this most difficult month.