We were contacted to put a tarp on a young lady's roof, assuming it was a short term fix for a leaky roof after recent storms. When we arrived, we found the entire house was beyond repair. We tarped the roof to help temporarily and went to our Monday night Foxhole meeting, but the situation stayed on our minds. At the time, we had no funds—not even for the tarp, which one of our guys paid for out of his own pocket.

Months later, one man in our group still felt a strong burden to help. We started gathering funds, through our church and other donors, and eventually collected enough for a down payment on a mobile home. We tore down the old house, cleared the debris, brought in the new home, set it up, and connected the water, septic, and electricity. Soon, we were eating pizza and praying with her and her family in their new home.

This experience reinforced our firm belief that when God puts something on your heart, you act on it.

One of our group members had a large pine tree dropping limbs on his neighbor's fence and yard. The neighbor wanted the tree gone, and we saw an opportunity to witness to him. However, we had never rigged a tree down from the top limb by limb before. We had experience climbing trees, but not rigging. Despite this, we confidently said, "Yeah, we can do it."

We worked on the tree all day, taking our time and learning as we went. Everything went perfectly, and it was clear that God had His hand on us throughout the project. This job was a turning point for us. Since then, we've done this type of work countless times. God used this situation to allow us to share Christ with the neighbor, help our fellow Foxhole member, and develop a new skill set that opened up many more opportunities for us to serve people.

We've done some disaster relief work at home and locally, but this was our first time traveling and staying a few days away from home. Honestly, we didn't know what to expect; we just packed up and went. We spent our time there sweating buckets and cutting trees out of people's yards and off their homes. Every interaction was positive.

But on the last day, we reached a man's home with a giant pecan tree on his roof. The roof was very steep, other volunteer crews had said they couldn't remove it safely, and tree company had quoted him $10,000 for the job. The man was desperate. We told him, "We'll do it for you."

We began taking the tree down piece by piece, using every saw, rope, and piece of equipment we had. By the end of the day, we had finished the job with no real incidents barring borderline heat stroke. The man was so grateful he asked if he could take a picture of us. This picture. The best part is, he ended up asking Jesus to save him.

This project tattooed disaster relief on our hearts. We would never be the same.