Pain and suffering are real. In this world we experience heartache and sorrow. In a split second we can be thrust into the world of agony and mourning. Early this June I invested a week of my life to meet with over 100 people to best see how the Church can respond in times of disaster and crisis. The Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College sponsored the fourth Disaster Ministry Conference June 7-10, 2016. Attendees from over 11 countries and speakers from across the globe brought experience and insight to encourage and share with one another how to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

I wrote an article in October 2015 about how our community was responding after the active shooter event at Umpqua Community College on October 1. Dr. Jamie Atan, founder and co-director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute, reached out and invited me to present at the conference.

While I shared some specifics of our communities story, I anchored my talk around a passage of Scripture found in Exodus 3.

“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey...”

— Exodus 3:7-8b