Kymber Wilson, a senior accounting and finance major, first joined the ULM BCM her sophomore year.
Ever since, it has been a haven and a family for Wilson who says everyone there supports and prays for each other.
In the recent event of the Louisiana flood, the BCM partnered with the North Monroe Baptist Church to help with flood relief programs. Ten of the 14 BCM volunteers were from ULM, Wilson being one of them.
The Monroe group worked in flooded areas for an entire weekend and were able to help out with around eight houses.
Wilson’s decision to reach out to victims down south was influenced by the flood event that plagued Monroe.
“I knew these people had it 10 times worse than we did [in the March flooding]. They had way too much on their plate to handle by themselves,” said Wilson.
The group stayed at Jefferson Baptist Church during the whole trip and mostly worked in Denham Springs.
The severity of the flooding, according to Wilson, was not comparable with what she had expected it to be.
“Up here, it was just few houses here and there. Down there it was every single house,” said Wilson. “You could look down the road and just see trash piles all the way down the road which were taller than the houses in most cases.”
According to Wilson, the flood relief program had about 400 student volunteers, with representations from seven different states, the country Canada and 22 different colleges during that single weekend mission.
All the 14 student volunteers had to drive in a single van to Baton Rouge.
Wilson’s bag only had the necessities like working clothes, water boots, safety goggles, mask, gloves and a few handheld tools like hammers and nail pullers.
“We had enough for every student to have a tool. So everyone was working and no one was standing around doing nothing,” said Wilson.
Melody Kramme, a sophomore psychology major, described her volunteering experience as eye opening.
“Families cried when we came to help, and it felt amazing that we were able to go and be there,” said Kramme. “My group helped pull out nails from the wall, scrape up vinyl flooring, move furniture, clean out sheds and tear out walls,” Kramme said.
Kramme said all the hard hard made an impact.
Part of their service also required them to demolish damaged walls, bathtubs and anything else deemed unusable.
Wilson shared that the main purpose of the trip was to provide service.
The majority of their time was spent doing labor works like floor ripping, pulling off nails and cleaning houses.
“They definitely need donations. They need fans to dry houses and dehydrators to pull out water from the walls,” said Wilson. “Pray for them because God can move in every situation, and if you have free time, go help and if you don’t then send donations. Any little bit helps.”
