Baptists respond to the crisis

Cabrera said the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board reached out to him immediately after Hurricane Maria asking if he would return to Puerto Rico to help with Baptist disaster relief.

The son of an interdenominational church planter, he said he connected with the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma in 2011, about a year after arriving in the state to minister to the Hispanic community. His church, Iglesia Bautista Central, 14401 N May Ave., started as Quail Springs Baptist Church’s Hispanic ministry in 2011 before it became an autonomous church in 2015.

Cabrera said he has been proud of all the work that Baptist disaster relief teams have done in Puerto Rico since the hurricane. In many instances, Baptists, identifiable in their colorful disaster relief and mission board shirts, arrived in some parts of the island before government workers or any other aid groups.

“It looked like a war, the devastation. I had on the North American Mission Board blue shirt and people were running to us. They were waiting for The Rev. Felix Cabrera, center, lead pastor of Iglesia Bautista Central, Oklahoma City, visits his native Puerto Rico to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

FEMA,” he said.

“I said, ‘I’m not FEMA. I’m just a pastor but I’ve come to help.’”

Cabrera said the National Hispanic Pastors Alliance, working with the Baptist mission board’s Send Relief agency, set up 12 “Help and Hope” centers at 12 Puerto Rican churches. He said the centers were created as hubs where storm victims could go for water, hot meals, medicine, diapers and other items. The pastors’

group held a lunch for Puerto Rican pastors on Nov 4 and pledged to give the clergy much-needed emotional and spiritual support.

He said through the ongoing relief efforts, almost 100 pastor kits for clergy leaders on the island — some of which included generators and other items — were donated to help their churches offer support to people in the surrounding areas.

‘We will rise again’

Don Williams, Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma disaster relief director, said he visited Puerto Rico two weeks ago and Cabrera’s dire assessment of the island’s situation is not exaggerated. He said most of the houses were made of tin and wood and many of them did not survive the storm.

Williams likened the destruction to that of a tornado, like the one that wrecked havoc in Oklahoma in 2013, but over a larger area.

“This hurricane did that kind of damage, but Puerto Rico is 35 miles long and 100 miles across, so the devastation is widespread,” Williams said.

Oklahoma Baptists distributed 600 water filtration straws from metro area-based Water Is Life. He said volunteers also have been offering meals they cooked over propane stoves called “buddy burners,” a system they haven’t used since 1967, because of the lack of power. Williams said because Puerto Rico is an island, and the logistics of getting things there is much more complicated, it’s going to take a lot longer to get the island back to normal. Cabrera said about 1,000 Baptist volunteers from many states remain in Puerto Rico as the island seeks to rebuild and recover. He said government aid teams are also diligently working to improve conditions there.

Cabrera said the island continues to deal with the damage wrought by the storm, but he believes the situation will continue to get better with each day.

“We believe that crises in God’s hands are opportunities and we believe that the Lord is giving us an opportunity to build a better Puerto Rico,” Cabrera said.

“The spirit of our island is strong. I know that we will rise again. I know we will be better.”

CONTRIBUTING: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS