As I travel around, people always ask me the location of CRF’s headquarters. “Amarillo,” I say. 

“Amarillo? Are you kidding me?” 

Yes, CRF is located in the Panhandle of Texas. It’s kind of hard to believe all of the good stuff that happens out of this arid part of West Texas. Children are supported. Wells are drilled. People are fed. Relief goes out to disaster areas. If people are in trouble, we try to help them. 

And trouble came home recently. Amarillo has gone through some incredible flooding. A year’s worth of rain came in about a month. The water rested in some playa lakes. And over a billion gallons of water had to be pumped out of these little holding places for the rain. CRF found ourselves needing to help ourselves. 

And then the tornadoes hit. First of all, there was Perryton, Texas. Then there was Matador. 

People were killed. Homes were demolished. Businesses were wrecked. And it was all in our own backyard. When I went to Perryton, I saw the damage of a tornado that was nine football fields wide that simply dropped into the town unannounced. I couldn’t even tell where some of the houses were before the tornado hit. I looked at the movie theater on Main Street. A car had been hurled through the front of it. An eighteen-wheeler had been lifted and turned around to face another direction. So many people had no place to go. 

CRF has tried to give the families in these disasters fresh starts. We have funded the victims of disaster with what they need to resume their lives. There were so many people who didn’t have insurance, causing them to lose nearly everything without a way to begin again. CRF started accounts in a lumber yard where the uninsured could go and freely get building materials. 

We are joining Mike Petersen, a minister in Perryton, with “Operation Move In.” As houses are rebuilt, we want to be able to furnish the uninsured with mattresses, washers, stoves and refrigerators. This is where you can help. You pretty well know the prices of these kind of items. Could you give to buy a mattress? How about a washer? Or a stove or a refrigerator? You can go on our website to give money for these. 

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