The Sunday Sermonette – Good Deed Doers!

Anthony Kalberg | Posted on September 27, 2026 |

Do you remember the Wizard’s statement to the Tin Woodsman? “Back where I come from, there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called phila… er, phila… er, yes, er, Good Deed Doers! Their hearts are no bigger than yours. But! They have one thing you haven’t got, a testimonial…” Often, good deeds go unnoticed, swept aside in the hustle and bustle of life. Last week, though, in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, I witnessed them in abundance. Here’s my testimonial to those good deed doers!

A group from Gulfport’s First Baptist Church drove to Spruce Pine to continue their good deed doin’ for the good mountain folk who call the awe-inspiring beauty of the Smokey Mountains home. Much of that beauty was destroyed in and around Spruce Pine during the apocalyptic rains and flooding Hurricane Helene caused when she roared into town on September 17, 2024. A towering wall of water swept away entire sections of the town as the rain raged along the North Toe River. The rain caused mountainsides to collapse, dragging everything down with them. Bridges. Railroad tracks. Houses. Businesses. Roads. And churches. Thankfully, only one death was recorded from the storm, but its aftermath is still felt today.

Although FEMA allotted 33 million for disaster relief, two years later, close to a thousand households still live in flooded or damaged houses and trailers, repaired as best they could be, while their owners await help. That’s where North Carolina Baptists on Mission stepped in to help those in need. They are an auxiliary of the North Carolina Baptist State Convention, and their vision is for Christians to share Father God’s love during disasters—using their individual talents and gifts to serve others and glorify His name. Christian groups of all faiths come to the Baptists on Mission headquarters in Spruce Pine to receive their “marching orders.”

Last week, groups came from New York, Vermont, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. They repaired houses. Hung sheetrock. Painted walls. Improved plumbing. Roofs were repaired and reroofed. Groups as far away as Alaska have come to help, as well as a group of Mennonites. I was told the Mennonite women’s long dresses were no hindrance to hard work. Hats off to you, dear ladies!

Members of FBC’s team took on jobs other groups lacked the expertise to handle. Under the adroit direction of LEN CODY, new outside safety cameras were installed and connected to the headquarters’ computer system. A completely new internet system was installed. Yards of old wiring had to be removed and replaced with new fiber wiring. This project created another—removing and replacing many water-stained ceiling tiles. Thank you, LEN, for your energy and engineering talents!

ADAM WILLIAMS helped LEN with the camera installation and replaced three kitchen floor drains that drained into the city sewer system. These broken drains were a major fall hazard in the dining room’s very busy kitchen. It can feed up to 200 people at a time. This job was tedious, requiring creativity and patience. A job well done, ADAM!

BETTY BENSON and TARA, a cute young girl from Pennsylvania with big, round tortoise-shell glasses, accepted a job no one wanted: cleaning up the building’s basement. They persevered as they swept up years of dirt and grime, throwing out rusty machine parts, ragged furniture, and small chunks of concrete. Creepy-crawlers kept them on alert, too! These were some hard-working ladies! Thank you!

KELLY BEYERSTEDT and BETTY BENSON took on another urgent project: organizing the two food pantries. They were large rooms filled with mountains of canned food, tons of kitchen supplies, and rows of boxes packed with plastic plates and eating utensils. I’ve provided a snap of the result of their endeavors. I wish I had a snap of the original rooms. I took one look at them and said, “Yikes! What a hot mess!” These two ladies personified the old saying: “A man’s work is from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done!”

KEN MEADOWS was a gofer. This term is often applied “to a person whose job is to run errands or perform simple, often boring or menial tasks for others, especially in workplaces…” In Ken’s case, this is not an insult! He willingly pitched in where help was needed, assisting with a myriad of jobs. He replaced ceiling tiles and pulled cables, carried in supplies and building materials. Oft times, he entered the dining hall dripping with hard-earned sweat and dirt. He was a shining example of someone who saw a need and lent a hand. Oh! That there were more like him! Thank you, KEN!

DONNA STRICKLAND was FBC’s official furniture restorer! The headquarters’ chapel incorporates a hodgepodge of donated furniture: some antique, some new, some in good shape, some not. Someone donated a large conference table that had seen better days. The molding was missing, and the finish was scratched and pitted. Donna saw a need and not only refinished the table but also handcrafted the missing molding. “Nothing is impossible to a willing heart,” an old proverb says. Her God-given determination and willingness to overcome the many obstacles the table presented turned the impossible into the possible. Hurrah to a job well done!

DR. JIMMY STEWART proved himself to be far more than a good pastor! He’s one heck of a good weed wacker, too! He attacked the weeds around the headquarters with a vengeance. When that job was completed, he went to visit Rebecca, whose porch and deck had been rebuilt by another FBC group the year before. There he found another massive weed-whacking job. But that was not all! On another day, JIMMY, BETTY, AND KELLY cleaned out Rebecca’s old shed in her backyard. It, like the headquarters’ pantry, was a hot mess! She asked if they could clean out another old shed, unopened for twenty years. When the fearless trio discovered it was covered in poison ivy, they decided they’d leave completion of that job to a younger, more inquisitive group. (Big smile.) THANK YOU to FBC’s fearless trio!

A huge THANK YOU to everyone from FBC Gulfport who became the earthly hands and feet of Jesus! Serving in His name, loving in His name, and witnessing in His name. Your willingness to serve blessed all you helped. 1 Peter 4:10 states: “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” And each of you did just that, using your God‑given gifts to serve as an act of obedience to Jesus Christ. Again, THANK YOU, Good Deed Doers!

Not long ago, LEN purchased a large house near the group’s headquarters, which he intends to use as a home for missionaries on sabbatical, or as a place for families with children to stay while working with North Carolina Baptists on Mission. The house is a 1970s time capsule. Paneling reigns in all its dark-brown glory. Avocado green was the color of the day for bathroom fixtures in the 70s. They’re still there. Mid-century furniture and lamps hold court in each room, along with sofas and chairs upholstered in thick, velvet brocade. Then there was the outdated wallpaper, which was everywhere the paneling wasn’t.

That’s where JOYCE MOREE came in handy. Because of her interior design expertise, she’s been given the job of redecorating the house from “cellar to dome.” That’s a work in progress. At LEN’S request, she and I created large, outdoor wreaths for both Fall and Christmas. We also created one as a present to LISA, whose testimony is listed below. Everyone in FBC’s group, except Ken, stayed at the house during the week. Six people can dirty a lot of clothes, and all of it needed washing. They ate a lot of lunches, which we made. Lots of dirty dishes needed washing, floors needed mopping, and carpets needed vacuuming. Needless to say, Joyce and I were busy bees.

Last week, I discovered that many, many people’s talents were needed to complete the myriad tasks that Baptists on Mission needed fixing. Many, many worker-bees were needed, as well. I had the privilege of talking with many of them, and here are a few of their God-Stories.

GEORGE was the chief cook during our visit. He was from Michigan. His family was in the mineral and mining industry in that state. He had a boisterous laugh, bright brown eyes, and was “a right jolly old elf.” One day after Hurricane Helene departed, George was at the First Baptist Church of Spruce Pine, helping feed people who had lost everything. He handed an elderly lady a plate of hot food. She looked at him with tears in her tired-old eyes and said, “Thank you, sir. This is my first hot meal in a week.” Her words warmed his heart, and he decided to join Baptists on Mission. At the height of the disaster, they fed 15,000 hungry people a day! “I’ve never regretted my decision!” he said with humble tears in his eyes.

MIKE was on his 19^th trip to Spruce Pine. He was proud of his time in the Air Force and thankful for his wife of 58 years. When he looked at me, his faded-blue eyes sparkled with the wisdom of age. His wrinkled face was warm, his smile bright. He told me he was drawn to Christian service after he saw other Christians help save a drowning couple years before. A flood in another state had swept them downriver. “I was never very religious,” he said. “Never saw the need to be. Never went to church. But then I saw those men plunge into the river to save those people. It changed how I saw things. I should be doing the same…helping others. Loving them as Christ did. My wife and I started attending a local church after that.” He paused, holding back a tear. “The members took us in, treated us like family, and loved on us. Our choice saved us in so many ways.”

NEAL was a retired internal medicine doctor. He grew up Catholic in New York City. “Although I was one in name only,” he said. I spotted him one day, replacing nasty ceiling tiles. He was short, jovial, and soft-spoken. He awaited LEN’S instructions, then carried them out to the letter. One night at supper, Biltmore and Asheville popped up in conversation. He looked at me with his intense grey-green eyes and asked, “Do you know what famous writer based his autobiographical novel on Asheville?” I replied, “Thomas Wolfe.” A wry grin creased Neal’s face. “I think you and I are going to get along just fine this week,” he said. And we did. Discussions about literature, art, theater, and opera followed. I asked him why he was helping Baptists on Mission. Without missing a beat, he said, “Because of a delirious, eighty-year-old man.”

“After retirement, a doctor friend of mine invited me to go on a mission trip with his church to Ecuador, where a bad earthquake had caused much destruction. He was very active in his church, but I’d not been to Mass in years,” Neil said with a roll of his eyes. “But something inside me said, ‘Go.’ So I did. While there, we worked in a makeshift hospital. One day, I overheard the hospital staff—not the most experienced—discussing the elderly man. They didn’t know what was wrong with him.” Neil winked. “But I had a hunch and ordered a round of bloodwork.”

Turns out, the man had Lyme disease, and that bloodwork saved him. Neil then decided to go on other mission trips with his friend’s church. “That old man saved me in a way,” Neil said. “I realized God had given me the ability to help those in need, those less fortunate than me. And my retirement gave me the time to help. I decided to trust God’s direction, that He would send me where He wanted me. To do good in His name. I went back to church, too.” His sincere words brought tears to my old eyes.

LISA was the last person I interviewed. I planned it that way. I knew her God-Story would stir my heart in so many ways. And it did. She was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, in a Christian home. Her grandfather was a Baptist preacher. But at eighteen, she got “the itch” to see the world. She left home and fell in with a bad crowd who drank and did drugs. She met a man who would be the father of her three children. Not married, they fell deeper into the drug world. One night, in a drunken rage, he tried to slit her throat. She and the children raced back to her home in Charlotte, where they lived for a while until the “itch” came calling again.

Once again, she took up with a bad crowd. While hanging out at a crack house, she met her future husband, Chris. They led a nomadic life, wandering from state to state, holding odd jobs to raise enough money to buy more crack. “Andy, the Lisa you see now is light-years away from the Lisa back then,” she said, her bright brown eyes dancing, her smiling face drenched in the warm afternoon sunlight, as we sat in the headquarters’ dining room. She told me that she knew their drug-infested lifestyle was getting them nowhere fast.

“When we had no jobs, we’d steal stuff,” she said. “If it had wheels, we stole it. If it was movable, we stole it! But our lives were a wreck! We’d both become needle junkies.” My face denoted what I was thinking. “Don’t know what that is?” Lisa asked. I nodded. “We were both pretty much addicted to heroin and meth. I shot up so much that my arm began to swell and I got sepsis. I almost died. But every time I wanted to go home, Chris would yell and say, ‘You’re gonna drag me home to the Jesus Police!’”

But the Jesus Police—Chris’ name for Lisa’s parents—was what was needed. “I just got tired of the lifestyle,” she said with a sigh. “The drugs. The stealing. One night, I OD’d. Chris got so angry with me, he threw me out at the hospital and left me for dead. It was then I came to my senses and went home.” Like a female version of the Bible’s Prodigal Son, Lisa did, indeed, go home to “get clean.” Her face lit up when she said, “My amazing life today would not be what it is if it weren’t for the trials and tribulations of my life then. I am thankful for them. They taught me to trust God and Jesus in all things. My mental health and my physical health (Lisa was diagnosed with terminal cancer but is now cancer-free) are in His hands. And for that I’ll be forever grateful!” She and Chris, who also had a radical Christian transformation, are now married and are the Directors of Baptists on Mission in Spruce Pine! Amen!

After a very busy, productive week, we left for Gulfport in the cool darkness of last Saturday morning; I paused just before boarding the bus. Even in the darkness, the mountains loomed tall and called out to me. The scent of spruce and loamy earth filled my senses. As I took my seat at the back of the bus, the week’s memories of FBC’s accomplishments touched my heart. Looking out the window into the darkness beyond, a silent voice reminded me that our mission trip wasn’t just a place to visit. It was more than just a week marked on our calendars. It was more, so much more! Because every job completed was a chance to show someone Jesus’ love!

As the bus jostled along, the old hymn, “Ye Shall Be My Witnesses,” played in my mind. Lest we forget, dear ones, our witness doesn’t stop when we leave the mountain tops, walk out of church, or struggle through life’s valleys. It keeps going. At home. At work, around the neighborhood. And wherever Father God sends us. Sometimes the easiest way to tell people about Jesus is to lend a hand, show kindness, and be there when someone needs us.

Perhaps the Wizard was right all along. It’s really best to be Good Deed Doers—doing our best in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Ponder this and go forth.