Somerset Church of Christ Headed on a Mission of Compassion

SOMERSET, OH – Volunteers with a local Church are heading south this October on a mission of hope.

For the past 20 years, members of the Somerset Church of Christ have been traveling down to Bayou Le Batre, Alabama to partner with the Hemley Road Church of Christ to help and support families that are still feeling the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

Elder David Neal, says, this originally began as a clean up effort back in 2005 but has now evolved into a compassionate initiative to provide clothes, food, and other essentials to those who need them the most.

“It initially was storm recovery.” Elder Neal said. “It has transitioned in time to, where rather than being recovering from a storm, we are helping the congregation there to feed the community. We’ll buy food at the food bank in Mobile and give it away at the church building.”

This year the Somerset Church of Christ is working to help Hemley Road Church with food and clothing distributions, repair projects, as well as other outreach efforts in the Gulf Coast fishing village.

Neal says there are plenty of ways you can help, he suggests if you are able to join the mission trip. He says if you are unable, instead you could collect up personal care items, clothing, or food donations to give to the Church and they will hand them out.

“After a hurricane, I know in Ohio we don’t experience hurricanes, we have tornadoes, but in a hurricane you have the water, the wind, and tornadoes all in one, big storm.” Neal said. “So people not only lost their homes but they lost their livelihood. Bayou Le Batre is on the Gulf Shore Coast, it’s just right there, so they were heavily involved in the fishing industry. Lost a lot of shrimp boats there, which a lot of them haven’t been able to continue their business, simply because, when the storm wiped out their fishing beds, the processors in the area went offshore to foreign markets to buy their seafood. Unfortunately they’re still able to buy that cheaper than what the local people can catch and process it there.”

If you’d like to help on this mission of bringing relief to families you can contact the Church at (740)-605-0296.

The deadline for donations is Tuesday, September 30th.