The Baptists in the Storm and in our Region
As Exemplified by Three Forks Baptist Association in Watauga County
By Ben Cox and Wesley Smith
From the Winter 2024 Journey : Stories from the Storm
BEN COX: Today is Friday October 4, 2024, just one week after Hurricane Helene rocked our region in unbelievably devastating ways. It’s late in the day and I am sitting here with Wesley Smith. I have had the privilege to get to know Wesley over the years, and if you could see his eyes right now, you would see they are very tired. Wesley is the Missions Director of the Three Forks Baptist Association and we’re sitting here in Rutherwood Baptist Church in East Boone, NC, which is a distribution center for this neighborhood. Is that correct?
WESLEY SMITH: Yes. This is a distribution outlet for the neighborhood and the 32 churches that make up our association. So, our desire out of this distribution center is to be able to make sure that all of our churches have access to the supplies that they need to minister to their community. The events that have transpired from the time the rain started falling hard on Wednesday September 25, 2024, until the proverbial bomb went off on September 27 hit all of us really hard. There were several of our churches that were able to immediately respond to the needs of their community, but there are many churches that have not been able to due to storm damage they sustained. Therefore, they are so thankful for the donations of time and resources from lots of people who helped them.
“The events that have transpired from the time the rain started falling hard on Wednesday September 25, 2024, until the proverbial bomb went off on September 27 hit all of us really hard.”
We have resources to be able to give to churches so that they can minister and show the love of Jesus as they encounter people in their communities. That’s what we desire for them to do. We don’t want people to come to the association; we want people to come to the church.
THE HISTORY OF THE THREE FORKS BAPTIST ASSOCIATION
B: Could you give our readers a brief explanation of what The Three Baptist Association is, along with a brief testimony of how you and your wife Bonnie came here for her to be the principal of Valle Crucis Elementary School and for you to be the Director of Missions with the Association.
W: Yes, so the Association has been in existence since 1841 when 10 churches came together to emphasize evangelism, missions, prayer and Christian education. And from that point on, churches in the Three Forks Baptist Association churches have been working together to do that, following the Great Commission that Jesus gave His Church to go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit found in Matthew 28:19. We do that in conjunction with what Jesus emphasized as the 2 Greatest Commandments of God’s Word to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt. 22:37-40 contains the whole context of Jesus teaching) So, we serve as a catalyst to help churches do that, to keep that a focus and to also encourage them to do that, but to provide support for pastors, staff members, church leaders. So, we provide many opportunities for pastors to network, to learn, to grow, and church staff as well. We provide them the opportunity to network, learn and grow together. And then we also provide support for deacons and for Sunday school teachers and small group leaders and all the like, to really help a church be who God’s called them to be. That’s what we we’re here to do. And each church has a different call. Each church has a different way of doing that.
So that’s one of the things I love about the association. It is a family of churches that we all have the same goal to lead people to know who Jesus is so that they will trust Him as Savior and Lord of their life. In regard to how I got I came to be the Director of Missions here in Boone, it goes back to when I made a sincere commitment to Christ at the young age of 6 years old in the Baptist Church I grew up in. And here are some key milestones along the way: I became a Sunday School teacher at 15, a deacon at 18, graduated from college in 2001, married my high school sweet-heart and stepped into full time ministry in 2003. For 20 years I served in direct church ministry as a youth and children’s minister and then as an associate pastor just before becoming the DOM to serve the Greater Cleveland County Baptist Association in 2016. That’s where I was serving when the Lord opened the door for me to come to Boone.
BONNIE SMITH’S CALL TO BE A PUBLIC-SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
But my wife’s been in education since we got married. She was a PE and health teacher, and then really sensed the call on her life to be an administrator. She had been an assistant principal at a school for about 10 years and after about four or five years of doing that, she really had a strong sense to be a principal. So, we began to seek the Lord about that, and she felt led to look elsewhere outside of Cleveland County, which is probably 15 or 20 minutes from where we both grew up. That’s what led her to apply for the principal position at Valle Crucis Elementary School And on August 1, 2019, the board approved for her to be here, and she moved less than two weeks later, and started school. When she pursued that calling, we agreed together that if God calls you to be somewhere else, I believe he’ll call me to go with you! And we trusted God for her to move there and for me to remain in Cleveland County until the Lord opened something here for me.
It took 18 months, but in August of 2020, I started a conversation with the Three Forks Baptist Association search team. They had been looking for a director of missions, and they felt like it was a good fit. So, in October of 2020 at that semiannual fall meeting at the Blowing Rock First Baptist I answered God’s call to serve here, and we’ve been here ever since.
FROM THE COVID DISASTER TO NOW
B: So you came to Boone in 2020 when the world was emerging from another disaster of a worldwide pandemic called COVID. And who would have thought you would be dealing with a disaster the magnitude of what we’re experiencing now.
So here we are at Rutherwood Church and it’s literally breathtaking how much food is here at this distribution center. Where did this food come from?
W: Well, it’s not just food. We have paper products, tools, flashlights, batteries, cleaning supplies, trash bags, and really anything that anybody could need along with the non-perishable foods. We had a donor that worked out a deal with Walmart–not our local Walmart, but Walmart headquarters from D.C.–and we received a 53-foot loaded tractor trailer of food, 26 pallets.
I’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED ANYTHING LIKE THIS. I HAVE BEEN ON MISSION TRIPS, BUT I HAVE NEVER DONE A WHOLE LOT WITH DISASTER RELIEF.
So that’s where a lot of this food came from. We had an army of people that unloaded it. We’ve had another company that brought us two truckloads of water. Along with the water, they brought us some skid steers to use. So, we’ve been using those skid steers to offload pallets of donations and help on job sites with recovery efforts. But by using that skid steer, some folks here at this church got us a pallet jack, and about 10 to 15 young people unloaded that entire truck in an hour.
There’s been a steady flow of things coming in. By the time many of you are reading this, I am sure you will recall that Boone had been inundated with supplies. So much to the fact that we had to pause because all of our distribution points were full. The high school was full of stuff. Summit pickleball was full of stuff. Mount Vernon Church was early in the game of receiving donations and they were full. Howard’s Creek was also early and had to pause on taking donations. Everybody was full. I spent more time last Thursday and Friday redirecting resources because we really had not yet been pushing them out as much as we had been getting them in. The generosity of people during the storm has been unbelievable— from financial support, supply donations, and volunteers I was just on the phone with a guy that is at one of our Baptist on Mission (by the way, we have had 15 sites across western NC set up through them doing clean up, recovery, feeding, etc.) who told me they had to close their volunteer portal because they were so full. We have volunteers that are signed up to come here through at least mid-November if not longer. And, not to mention, Samaritan’s Purse had over 1,000 volunteers on the ground Saturday, October 5th. It looked like a Clemson date with all those orange shirts.
B: Yeah, Samaritan’s Purse, the orange shirts, came in my neighborhood, and it was amazing how much they did in a very short time before they moved to their next assignment.
W: I’ve never experienced anything like this. I have been on mission trips, but I have never done a whole lot with disaster relief. I certainly have not lived through a disaster. This has been something to witness in terms of seeing how all this has come together, initial response, and how things are ramping down as infrastructure returns and power gets turned back on. It has been something to say the least.
THE VALLE CRUCIS FLOOD EXPERIENCE
B: So, since your wife is the Principal of Valle Crucis Elementary School can you give us a first-hand account of how y’all handled that?
W: My wife and I, along with about four or five maintenance guys for the county schools, were at Valle Crucis Elementary during the hurricane. Starting Wednesday evening, before the storm hit, we were getting tons of rain. So, that Wednesday night we started pumping water out of the school and we pumped water all night into Thursday. I got about two hours of sleep. Thursday, I went to work and then went back to the school that evening. During all that time, maintenance staff had been rotating in and out. We had these vac machines that were sucking water up and we were dumping it out the windows of classrooms that were flooding. So, Thursday we did that all night again into Friday. Friday morning the power went out. We lost the ability to pump water, and we also lost communication. So, had we been able to communicate we would’ve known the maintenance director said you all just need to go on. But we did not get that message and stayed there.
So, by the time all of that happened, Dutch Creek was flowing across the road at the Mast General Store Annex, which is to the left of the school. We couldn’t get out. There was a landslide that happened on the other side of the original store. So, we couldn’t go anywhere. We sat there until about 4:30 Friday afternoon until we finally decided to see if we could get out because the rain had subsided. There were some folks that had cleaned up a mudslide near Broadstone and were able to use one lane so we followed them in my pick-up truck. None of us could find a way to Boone. We went Mast Gap to 321, but you couldn’t go 321 to 421 because 421 had several washed-out places before you got to Boone. We couldn’t go to Baird’s Creek because the bridge was washed out. Eventually we came back to Broadstone and Mast Gap and there was a caravan of people. In the front was a big ole’ tractor with a guy lifted up in a bucket who had a chainsaw. There was a trail of about five or six cars behind him. The chainsaw guy would cut down a tree to create a path and we would all follow and just weave, and weave, and weave. He said they were on their way to Boone, and we could follow them. He had just made his own path down Broadstone. It was sketchy at best. When I got over to Cove Creek and saw the destruction there, I was just blown away. As we passed it I saw people sitting on their porches on old 421 with no access to the main road. Their bridges were just gone. We finally made it to 105 and just went home.
B: So, your house wasn’t destroyed?
W: We didn’t have any damage at our house, but of course we didn’t have any power. Ironically enough, we did have water, but that didn’t last long. We came back to Boone on Saturday and stayed here, sleeping wherever we could find space.
To give you more of an idea of the damage in Valle Crucis, I think there were over 20 classrooms in Valle Crucis that flooded. The water coming off the backside just kept coming and coming. The Watauga River has a record of 29 feet and the gauge read 27 feet. We believe the gauge probably broke though. It was just wild to be out there and see it. I literally saw what many people have only seen in pictures. There was a building that floated down Dutch Creek and ended up right in front of the annex store. There were also two or three campers from a campground that washed down there and just disintegrated.
B: Yeah, any of us that have been around the county have seen destruction that is just mind boggling. You have shared many stories that have been heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. I have lived here close to 50 years now. I have seen some storms, seen some hard snowstorms. But I have never seen anything like this. I don’t think any locals have. The biggest thing to rival this was the flood in 1916.
W: It has been beautiful and heartwarming to me to see the church in action and the beautiful unity among churches. You and I have been praying for that for a long time, and I’ve seen it happen over these past couple of weeks. For example, we had two churches that took severe damage. South Fork Baptist Church in Todd had their basement flood. They lost everything in their basement, including two or three of their HVAC units. Also, Brushy Fork had a tremendous landslide behind the back of their church that brought in a lot of water and mud. Two or three different teams from Perkinsville Church went to both of those locations and helped get them cleaned up. Howard’s Creek Church did the same, they went to Watauga Baptist in Seven Devils which had water in the basement. Then, Howard’s Creek sent a team into Avery County to work at Minneapolis Baptist Church which was hit hard. It has been awesome to watch. Mount Vernon Church has been feeding meals, serving as a distribution center, and encouraging the community all while sending teams out. I have been very thankful for all these churches’ responses. I can see love and care developing for one another.
B: And, that’s translating over. It speaks very loudly to people that don’t know the Lord. We’ve always had this mandate from the Lord to rescue the perishing and make disciples of Jesus. Not disciples of our churches, right, but followers of Christ. Jesus shows up strong in the midst of suffering. I love what we’re hearing and what we are going to be telling: churches reaching out to help one another. Now, that’s the kind of Church the world needs to see!!
W. You often wonder if God is hearing you, especially on things you don’t see like how we have been specifically praying for the unity of the church. We’ve had some moments wondering, “is this ever going to happen?” And it is happening now in so many ways.
