Marlin stood on the porch of his one-story home in Black Mountain, North Carolina, watching the worst of Hurricane Helene slip over the distant mountain peak in a “big, gray-black cloud.” Sheets of rain and gusts of wind were already ripping through his hometown.

The small stream at the back of his property — “the end of the line,” he called it — began to overflow with water, sand, and silt, spilling onto his lawn.

When the flooded stream reached the chestnut trees lining the center of his yard, he told his 10-year-old grandson, “Get ready to go. We may have to leave here in a minute.”

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As they quickly packed rain jackets and an extra pair of boots, the water rose to the first step of their back porch, flooding the yard in minutes.

“It traveled 250 feet or more in about five minutes. … If we had waited three more minutes, we'd have had to stay in the house. We couldn’t have gotten across the high water,” recalled Marlin, who only wanted to be identified by his first name.

Wading through knee-deep floodwaters, Marlin and his grandson climbed into their Jeep with their neighbor and left their house behind.

A week later, he returned to find no trace of his once grassy lawn or metal shed. The trampoline was buried nearly three feet in silt and his home was ravaged by water and debris after the flood reached as high as the middle of his first-story windows.

“I basically got to start back from scratch. I hate it, but ain’t nothing we can do about it but live it,” he said.

The tragedy that struck Appalachia — particularly in unsuspecting western North Carolina — has stirred up a profound emotional response within the local communities and throughout the country. Digging out mud, cleaning debris and donating are a few contributions volunteers have made in western North Carolina. In response, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association deployed chaplains from their Rapid Response Team to minister to homeowners alongside their sister organization, Samaritan’s Purse.

“It's so easy to see the holes in the roof or the mud in the living room, but we can't drive by and see what's going on in somebody's soul,” said Erik Ogren, BGEA’s media relations director.

Chaplains trained to handle crisis, tragedy, trauma and grief are playing a significant role in the recovery from the hurricane. Marlin quipped that while material donations are great and needed, “I’d rather have you standing and shoveling with me.”

Gina Small, a chaplain coordinator with the BGEA, echoed Marlin’s take.

“The homeowners, when they see all of us coming from all over, they can't believe that people really care and they want to help. And I think it encourages them and gives them hope that, still, people out there are hearing about what's going on and they still want to help,” Small said.

Marlin described his town as “snotty,” saying nobody really knew one another. He had never met his next-door neighbor of 12 years until after Helene’s destruction, a seemingly common sentiment: “I didn’t know my neighbor until this happened.”

“People around here are coming together. … It’s amazing the people coming together–neighbors, friends, people you don’t even know,” he marveled.

‘Cabins for Christ’

Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian disaster relief organization, is among the many groups deploying thousands of volunteers each day. These volunteers help muck out homes, cut down fallen trees, and even build small, temporary cabins — called “Cabins for Christ” — on the properties of displaced individuals during renovations.

Marlin received his own cabin furnished with a heater, pillows, blankets and a recliner instead of a bed. His back doesn’t fare well on beds, he mentioned casually, so the recliner will suffice.

“Some days there's been 1,300 Samaritan's Purse volunteers all just in Asheville, and there's six different deployment sites with Hurricane Helene,” said Josh Holland, international coordinator for the BGEA Rapid Response Team.

Samaritan’s Purse volunteers, like many other organizations, engage in physically demanding tasks. The demand is still prominent as an estimated 1,000 homes just in Asheville, still need attention.

In contrast, the chaplains have engaged in an emotionally demanding task. Each affected individual and home carries its own tragic story. The chaplains respond by sitting with the hurricane survivors and sharing in their tragedy.

This can lead to second-hand trauma, a risk for those exposed to tragedy for extended periods. The chaplains from the Rapid Response Team are deployed for a week at a time to safeguard their well-being and are replaced by rested chaplains.

The heavy call is answered by 350 volunteer chaplains who provide support to all disaster sites affected by Hurricane Helene.

“They know it's not easy work, but it's eternal work,” Holland said.

The chaplains recounted stories they had heard about homes and loved ones being swept away right before people's very eyes. They described cars trapped between fallen trees, leaving occupants to endure the worst of the storm from inside their vehicles. They detailed neighborhoods where entire streets were without houses due to the river changing course and erasing the land. Many homes were flooded so rapidly that some residents could not escape, and the lucky ones managed to float above the water on mattresses.

While the emotional toll can be challenging for chaplains, their primary purpose remains unchanged: To share the love of Jesus with the brokenhearted, replacing the loss with the hope of Christ.

The chaplains observed various small miracles and acts of grace, which they referred to as “God moments.”

Some looked like coincidences. After communities lost water and had gone a week without showering, a donation of a portable shower arrived just as a first responder visiting the chaplains mentioned the need for one.

Others were as simple as witnessing someone’s eyes light with hope for the first time in weeks. Samaritan’s Purse has reported 225 conversions to Christianity since their work began. 

“Every person I talked to … I just asked them, were they affected? And yes, and then they would tell their story, and the tears would come and, we would pray with them and hug them and, they're just like, I can't believe you care,” Small recalled.

Praising God and encountering resistance

Chaplains have also encountered resistance, as some people do not want prayer or association with evangelical Christianity. They expressed their response with love, and sometimes, they are eventually permitted to assist with home clean-ups.

“Sometimes God uses hardship and tragedy to get our attention and to get us in a place where we're open to spiritual things,” Holland said. “When everything is going well, the deception that we all have in humanity is that we don't need God. You know, everything's going okay, but God loves us enough to allow us, sometimes, to lose things or to go through a difficult trial to point us up to him and to reveal his love.

Electricity and running water have come back to western North Carolina, but the water remains undrinkable. Many organizations have set up water filtration systems, taking water from the once-flooded Swannanoa River, and cleaning it to be distributed freely among local residents.

“It’s crazy hearing people coming by, praising God for having dirty water in their toilets. They can’t drink it, but they can flush it and they give all the glory to God … it’s a crazy perspective to have,” said John Michael, an engineer with Samaritan’s Purse’s water filtration system.

Small emphasized that what people truly need is to be remembered. Tens of thousands of homes have been demolished and countless lives disrupted. The affected communities face a long road to recovery. Small and the chaplains have made it their mission to provide support and foster healing until the work is complete.

“We will be here as long as it takes. You know, the world might be going on, but we're not going to leave you,” Small vowed.

Marlin, who once lived quietly in a town full of strangers, never liked attending church much before. He’s considering it now, though, thanks to the recent kindness of local churches. Living out of his Cabin for Christ, built by a group of volunteers from Virginia and Massachusetts, he supervises the volunteer clean-up of his home and spends time with the chaplains.

The man from Virginia was particularly nice, Marlin noted, and he hopes he will come by again soon.

“The Lord sure has shined on me…He’s shined on me for all the help I’m getting,” he admitted.

Alexa Wandersee is an American journalist based in Prague. She is currently studying for a B.A. in Journalism and Media Studies at Anglo-American University.