HAYS, N.C. (BP) — Patricia Dvorak planned Springfield Baptist Church’s “ServeNC” project for months. She and other members of the congregation spent the weekend preparing care packages to deliver to residents along their church’s road in the western mountain region of Wilkes County.
But when Dvorak arrived at church on Sunday, Aug. 4, for regularly scheduled services, dressed in her Sunday best and ready to worship the Lord, she didn’t know that soon she’d be coordinating a very different type of service project.
“We’re still going to deliver our packages,” Dvorak said. “We ended up serving in a way we didn’t plan to.”
A local woman with dementia who lives next to the church with her son wandered outside her home sometime between midnight and 8 a.m. Her son woke up around 8, realized she was gone and called other family members to begin searching. When they weren’t able to find her within a few hours, they called local authorities to assist in the search.
Gary Stanley, pastor of Springfield, heard about the search for the missing woman during Sunday school. After finishing the lesson, he and the Sunday school director searched the church property, opening classrooms, checking crawl spaces and walking the perimeter to ensure she was not somewhere on church property.
They didn’t find her, and it was almost time for the worship service to start, so Stanley had to continue with the sermon he had already planned for that morning, knowing that the church’s assistance in finding the missing woman wasn’t over.
“The message [Sunday] was about serving continually from the book of Daniel, and it was amazing how it just tied in with everything that we were experiencing,” Stanley said. “There was our opportunity.”
At the end of the service, Stanley held an altar call during which every congregant came forward to kneel at the altar or sit on a front pew. Stanley prayed for the missing woman to be found safely and quickly. He also prayed for all volunteers to remain safe as they searched into the heat of the afternoon.
Shortly after the service ended, Springfield’s parking lot was filling up with firetrucks, police cruisers and volunteer cars. A few congregants that were already out searching saw the need for a place for volunteers to take a break from the heat. They came back to the church building to start setting up a command center with the help of Dvorak and Stanley. There they provided snacks, cold water and plenty of seats in the air-conditioned fellowship hall.
A few members Walnut Grove Baptist, a neighboring church, heard about a missing woman and that Springfield was being used as a command center and brought food, including sandwiches and snacks to refuel volunteers as they continued the search into the afternoon.
The missing woman was found around 2:30 p.m., standing in a creek at the bottom of a steep bank about a quarter mile from the church. Volunteers have no idea how she got down there unharmed, but they said standing in the creek probably kept her physical condition from worsening.
She was then taken to the hospital to be treated for some minor scratches and bruises.
“We were just so relieved that she was OK,” Dvorak said. “If this had happened on any other day but Sunday, nobody would’ve been here at the church. It was just a God thing that we were there.”
This story originally appeared in the Biblical Recorder.
