Friends and fellow Christians team up to take baby supplies into areas crippled by Rita's winds
Dianna Hall has bought a few baby supplies in her day.

Suffice it to say, though, that the mother of five and grandmother of eight had never plunked down $1,190 for diapers, formula, jarred baby food and Pedialyte in one day.

That is, until she received an urgent plea for help from Jasper, Texas.

Hall, together with friends Tonya and Max Baker and “all the churches of Christ in East Texas” collected more than $5,000 in a hurried effort to buy and deliver baby items to the Highway 96 South Church of Christ for distribution. The trio made the trip Friday with Doug Hufstedler, director of Tyler Collegiate Outreach, driving a church van filled to the brim with all things baby-related.

Hall, a member of the Henderson, Texas, church, said she received an e-mail about the urgent needs on Tuesday. As she was reading the message, Tonya Baker, from the University church in Tyler, Texas, called and asked if Hall had seen the reports about Jasper’s plight.

“Both of us said at the same time, ‘We’ve just got to do something,’” Hall said. “By that point, the adults’ needs were being met somewhat, but no one had anything that the babies or children most needed.”

Small congregations, some with no more than 30 members, ,gave more than $1,000 after their Wednesday night services toward the project, Tonya Baker said. Max Baker, an elder at the University church, began to organize transportation with Hufstedler while the women gathered the funds and bought supplies.

“The desperation of the situation in Jasper just broke our hearts,” Tonya Baker said. “We knew we had to act quickly because children were getting dehydrated and malnourished from not having any of these items on hand.”

When the group arrived by mid-morning, volunteers at the Highway 96 church eagerly loaded dollies with cases of formula and piled the diapers on top to take them inside. From there, other volunteers separated the supplies into care packages for workers to deliver to those who couldn’t get to the building to pick them up.

Gas shortages, power outages and piles of limb and debris weren’t going to keep the volunteers from reaching those in need, they said, thanks to their ‘extended family members’ bringing in fuel, and items in short supply locally.

“I’m tired, but I sure do feel good,” Hall said as she and others sat down for a moment with a cold bottle of water. “God’s people have done a lot of good here.”

For more information about church relief efforts in Jasper, see Managing Editor Bobby Ross' blog at http://bobbyrossjr.blogspot.com