Good Shepherd United Methodist Church

This is the Church I volunteered at for Sunday Night's Dinner.

If you want to help the Madison/Limestone County Tornado Relief, you can donate to Good Shepherd United Methodist Church (Mark Tornado Disaster) at 1418 Old Railroad Bed Road, Madison, AL 35757-6613 or send a check made out to the American Red Cross at the same address and specification.


CAPSHAW, Alabama -- Rev. David Tubbs has a church filling up with contributed food and clothing and a steady line of diners being served three meals a day. He has a brigade of eager volunteers from his church, Good Shepherd United Methodist, which has been designated by the Red Cross as the emergency shelter for tornado evacuees.

He also has "an amazing story how God provides," he says on this hectic afternoon.

"Last Wednesday morning, a truck showed up here and dropped off food for 150 people for four days. Paper products, all kinds of supplies. We were supposed to have a Kairos (prison ministry) out of Limestone prison," Tubbs says. "The team comes here (as its headquarters) and they go out to the prison, and they're feeding the inmates."

Before the Kairos team could arrive, the tornado did. The prison ministry program was postponed.

"When the Red Cross called me Wednesday and asked us to serve as a shelter, they said, 'David, how are you going to feed all those people?' I said, that's the least of my problems.

"We had all the food, all the paper products," Tubbs says. "It's like we were stocked and ready to go."

On Wednesday, between 500 and 700 people sought temporary refuge -- "Standing-room only," Tubbs calls it -- at Good Shepherd, which rests only a few miles from some of the most devastated areas in Harvest.

Though only 50 people have chosen to spend the night at the shelter since the tornadoes struck, more than 1,100 meals had been served through Monday breakfast.

"We're feeding anyone who needs it," Tubbs says. "We're feeding volunteers, we've fed tree-trimming people, we're feeding power company people, we're feeding the homeless and displaced. We're feeding people that don't have power. It's a really mixed bag."

Tubbs sings the same chorus as others coordinating volunteer efforts throughout the area.

"This community has been absolutely unbelievable responding to things," Tubbs says. "I think the community always rallies around the needy, but even I've been overwhelmed by the way they've rallied."

Tubbs shares another simple story.

One day last week, there had only seven packs of diapers at 10 a.m. He put out a call for help and "I bet we had 700 packs of diapers by 4 o'clock," he says.

The Good Shepherd gymnasium is the collection point for supplies and food. Piles of clothing line the far wall. Tables are covered with food, from a pyramid of SlimFast cans to a nursery's worth of baby food to canned soups. There are toiletries and drinks and snacks.

Eight folding tables are set up for dining. A CandyLand board game rests on one.

Chaquita Butler is in the gym, a pizza box under her arm. The tornado stripped half the roof off her house in Lakeview, where she lives with eight children and one grandchild. She's not nearly as concerned about her own well-being as she is others. She still frets over her family in Tuscaloosa; as of noon Monday, two of her aunts were still unaccounted for.

Because Butler has a car and some neighbors don't, she's transporting them to the shelter to gather supplies. Or she's simply driving over and delivering things back to them.

Happily, it seems for every bag being hauled outside, another generous soul arrives with something to provide.

In one corner of the gym, as you enter from a dark hallway lined with cases of bottled water, there is a hand-drawn sign on poster board:

"No Food or Drinks in the Gym"

That rule has been ignored.

Right now, the more food and drinks, the better.