For many, the shoebox gift campaign called Operation Christmas Child is what the charitable organization Samaritan’s Purse is known for. Few realize that this organization, founded in 1973, has long been providing disaster relief around the globe.
Lisa Letkeman of Niverville first discovered the joy of volunteering with Samaritan’s Purse in 2017. Two years later, she’s provided volunteer aid on seven different occasions at locations around Canada and the United States.
“My whole life, all I ever wanted to do was help people,” Letkeman says. “I felt like I needed an adventure, to step out of my comfort zone and stop being afraid of life.”
Letkeman openly admits that, throughout her adult life, she’s struggled with some paralyzing fears. The most recent, and the one that pushed her to this new challenge, was the moment her youngest child graduated, leading her to reconcile with the fact that her role as a mother would no longer be the same.
It was a moment in her life that she calls her mid-life crisis—and it led to a number of meltdowns that worried her husband and friends.
“I just thought my life was over,” she recalls. “It totally did me in because I’m really close to my kids.”
Lisa did what many Christians do: she prayed for guidance, which she hoped would bring new meaning to her life. When she heard about Hurricane Harvey’s destructive impact on areas of Texas in August 2017, she felt her answer had come.
Still, she had another major fear to overcome. Earlier in her adult life, she’d volunteered with another charitable organization in Europe which she describes as a “really awful experience,” causing her to cut her time there short and return home.
But she pressed on anyway and began an online search for organizations that were providing aid to the communities in Texas. After discovering Samaritan’s Purse, it all felt right.
By October 2017, she was on a plane headed for Pairland, Texas.
“I was almost in my mid-fifties [when I decided to go] and I wondered, ‘Can I even do this?’” she says. “But Samaritan’s Purse [makes it easy]. It’s a great organization.”
Since then, she’s been actively helping victims whose homes and lives have been devastated by hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. Her travels have taken her to New Brunswick, Florida, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island for two- to five-week volunteer engagements.
Most Samaritan’s Purse volunteers, she says, just show up when a call is put out. Letkeman has experienced times when she’s the only volunteer to arrive and other times when they have more than enough. Volunteers only need pay for their flight. Upon arrival, accommodations and food is provided by the organization.
“Samaritan’s Purse has what they call Lighthouse Churches, and so when there’s a disaster… the [local] church basically gives us free rein,” says Letkeman. “They give us space in their building for us to set up cots to sleep.”
Samaritan’s Purse provides trailers with showers and demolition equipment as well as onsite cooks to feed the work crews.
Volunteers are whisked off to the disaster site the day after arrival. In some cases, they may be put to work cleaning up fallen trees, branches, and debris. Other times, they dig into the arduous task of gutting homes that have been partially destroyed by floodwaters. The work crew’s goal is to get the home ready for contractors to rebuild.
“In some places it’s so humid and hot,” Letkeman says. “The mold is often right to the ceiling or in the ceiling.”
Stories of Loss
The work also often entails removing and disposing of the homeowner’s damaged furnishings and life possessions, something that brings an added level of poignancy to the task. Somewhere in the near vicinity, the devastated homeowner often looks on in tearful disbelief but with a grateful heart for the volunteer aid.
For this reason, Samaritan’s Purse tasks each of its volunteers with a second mission: to provide a listening ear, even if it means laying down the hammer for an hour so they can give the homeowner a chance to recount their story of loss.
Letkeman recalls with clarity one such situation: an older gentleman had recently lost his wife and now was faced with the indescribable pain of letting go of many of their cherished belongings due to flood damage. These were the very things that brought her memory to life for him.
Through encouragement and a patient, listening ear, Letkeman was able to help him reconcile with what needed to be done. She still keeps some communication with him to this day.
While there is heartache behind every situation the volunteers attend to, for Letkeman, the most heart-wrenching experience was the hurricane destruction she witnessed in Florida last year.
“It was like Armageddon there,” says Letkeman. “I’d never had trouble keeping it together until [that experience]… It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle it, it’s just that I was really broken by what I was seeing… talking to a mother who’d lost her kids because she was living in a car.”
Working amongst the rubble, Letkeman and her team heard stories of families separated and split between relatives around the country, some families living in tents and others in their cars. Churches and fire halls were filled beyond capacity, trying to provide shelter and food for the many homeless and jobless residents.
Many of these same residents had no insurance on their homes due to the high-risk area they lived in. Most couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.
Team Leader
After just her second deployment with Samaritan’s Purse, leaders within the organization encouraged Letkeman to become a team leader, which essentially gives her the position of job foreman. She accepted the challenge.
Since then, she’s been organizing teams of five to 15 people as they are assigned to her. She provides oversight and encouragement to the volunteers who arrive, many of them women who need to be given the confidence to stretch their abilities and build new skills.
Between Samaritan’s Purse and the benevolence of a supportive couple from Letkeman’s home church, her flights are now covered. She also began attending annual training sessions last year where she learned the basics of safely dealing with mold and where she was provided some hands-on training in roofing and chainsaw use.
She says she’s built strong relationships with the other team leaders. As well, with each of her excursions away, she’s experienced the joy of making lasting friendships.
“For me and for most people at Samaritan’s Purse, it’s about the people connection,” Letkeman says. “Not just the people you’re working together with but the people that you’re helping. There are so many God moments every day [on the job].”
As for returning home from each volunteer assignment, the transition isn’t an easy one, she says. But instead of feeling guilt about the things she still has, she chooses instead to bask in a renewed sense of thankfulness.
