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If you need encouragement today, this guide is for you. Just text silent to 94878 to get your free copy. Life audio. 25 years ago, the United States experienced a shocking and horrific event that would forever change the course of our history. In a matter of hours, thousands of lives were lost.
Families were shattered, and a sense of safety many of us had taken for granted was gone. But in the midst of unimaginable grief and fear, there were also stories of courage, unity, compassion, and people simply showing up to serve. On this special episode of Words of Life, we remember September 11th through the eyes of people who were there and the powerful ministry of the Salvation Army in the days that followed. Um Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life. Our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly attacks.
Terrorist acts. And I just turned the TV on and saw that the North Tower was on fire. All of a sudden, we just heard this awful noise, and the world shook again. And I looked up and just saw the whole top of the building starting to come down. When we arrived A fireman had just come out of the pit.
He looked at me and he said, Salvation Army Do you have some water?
Well, within two hours of notification that the plane had hit the building, Salvation Army canteens from the National Capitol area were here. The city at that point calls the Salvation Army. And says we need 35,000 sandwiches for lunch. I need sixty thousand sandwiches for dinner. And I immediately say, no problem, hang up, and then the staff here who were in the command center began to worry about how to do that.
We still feel that there's work to do. We will continue to serve people. We will continue to help people. I was actually here at Territorial Headquarters. I started as the Territorial Disaster Services Coordinator in January 2001.
So, nine months later, The terrorist attacks occurred. I remember sitting in my office, and a gentleman by the name of Major Frank Doras came down to my office. He's like, You need to turn on the television right now because he had heard. And at that point, the first plane had hit the building, and then the second plane hit just a little bit afterwards. We were serving in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
We were at a United Way meeting. And at the end, the United Way meeting had just ended, and the hotel lobby. news was showing the first plane hitting. And so from there we went directly over to the Savage Army's Shelter, the Center of Hope in Fort Myers, so we could continue to watch the news. And we knew very quickly that the Salvation Army would be called upon.
Well, I happened to be in my office that morning. early which was uh pretty standard for us because it's a Tuesday morning. uh which was divisional finance board so I traveled in early, probably got to the office about. 7.30, 8 o'clock. And was in the office going over the agenda, really, for the board meeting.
And our grants and contracts specialists came in and asked me had I heard about the what happened in New York. We start, you know, tuning in a little bit more then and figuring out what went on. And then, as time went on, of course. the attack happened at the Pentagon. And I can remember that very clearly.
It's looking out the window towards the over across the the river there towards the Pentagon. and seeing the smoke coming up from the building. Even here in Atlanta, I remember calling, you know, friends and family and saying, you know, you should probably leave the city because some of them also worked in high-rises. And so there was a mass exodus from some of those taller buildings, especially after the second attack occurred in Washington, when it was clear this wasn't an accident. Because at the time, it was hard to say, you know, was this just, you know, was this just a terrible accident that occurred?
And then as the second plane hit, and then the third and the fourth, you began to realize that this was very intentional and you didn't really know where was this going to spread to. Um Hey, you're listening to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. We're gonna take a quick ad break and we'll be right back. It is God who directs our paths. I'm Christy Graham, host of the show On the Ground with Samaritans Purse.
And I recently talked with Franklin Graham, my father-in-law and president of Samaritans Purse. We talked about how he stays grounded as we respond to man-made and natural disasters that seem to grow increasingly more frequent and more intense over the years. If we lose sight of our our purpose, you get discouraged. And what I mean by our purpose, we're there to help people, but to do in Jesus' name. We want people to know About God's Son Jesus Christ.
So that's our focus. And if one person gets saved, if we're able to help one family, if we can help one group of people, then it's worth it. To hear this encouraging conversation, listen to this episode of On the Ground with Samaritan's Purse, wherever you get your podcasts. Again, that's on the ground with Samaritan's Purse. After we saw the planes hit, we said to our team in Fayetteville, which is a quality team, it's military retired guys.
We said, load the canteen, load the trucks, get the team ready. We don't know where we're going, but we're going somewhere. Yeah. The Salvation Army, yes, we served in New York, we served in Washington, we served in Pennsylvania where that other plane was unfortunately crashed, but we also served in places like Canada. There were hundreds of flights that were diverted and everything was grounded.
So wherever people were stranded, the Salvation Army was stepping up to serve those folks who had been, who couldn't get home. And at that point, you had no idea when the airports were going to reopen.
Well, at the time I was a divisional secretary for the National Capitol and Virginia Division, so That time, once we confirmed everything that was going on, of course, we started implementing the Salvation Army response to the event. Start calling in disaster services units from some of the outlying corps in the area so that they could get down to the Pentagon and then. We set up a command structure and a command post at the Arlington Corps. Then it started the Full-scale response to the event. We went to the Pentagon.
The building was still on fire. And we were assigned to the Evidence Recovery Center. We did 24-hour meal service, so we did meals on the 6ths and on the 12ths. And in it, the teams that we served got larger every day, as did the security around us. And a lot of it was honor guard.
It was young men and women who were spending the days going through debris, trying to find human remains to identify who is deceased. Probably the most Bibles we ever handed out, the most tools we ever handed out. We tried to make sure that we had significant amounts of home-style cooking, a lot of pastoral care. People were wondering as a nation, people were wondering in their, I mean, you're talking, you know, young 20, 25-year-old soldiers who are looking at their own humanity. But the Salvation Army You know, our core services, they always matter in disaster.
Yeah. You know, food service. Hydration. Emotional and spiritual care, the distribution of emergency relief supplies. It really doesn't matter the type of disaster that you're on.
Those services matter to a greater or lesser degree wherever people are in need. We pray that you're enjoying and being blessed by this conversation. Uh We're going to take one more ad break and we'll be right back. It is God who directs our paths. I'm Christy Graham, host of the show On the Ground with Samaritans Purse.
And I recently talked with Franklin Graham, my father-in-law and president of Samaritans Purse. We talked about how he stays grounded as we respond to man-made and natural disasters that seem to grow increasingly more frequent and more intense over the years. If we lose sight of our purpose, you get discouraged. And what I mean by purpose, we're there to help people, but to do in Jesus' name. We want people to know About God's Son Jesus Christ.
So that's our focus. And if one person gets saved, if we're able to help one family, if we can help one group of people, then it's worth it. To hear this encouraging conversation, listen to this episode of On the Ground with Samaritan's Purse, wherever you get your podcasts. Again, that's on the ground with Samaritan's purse. I remember my first experience at Ground Zero very, very vividly.
I had flown in to Newark, taken a cab to Greater Newark Divisional Headquarters. And so it was later in the day when I finally got to a ground zero, and I was riding around on the back of a golf cart. Because the Salvation Army in New York Had positioned itself with canteens and those stations that you talked about with people like Molly Schatzberg who were handing out emergency relief supplies. And when the firefighters or the construction workers would come in, they would remove their boots from their feet and she would wash them because they needed to go back onto the pile. What you don't realize about that pile at that point in time, it was so hot.
Because all that jet fuel had leaked down through the rubble and debris. And you see that smoke, it was still burning in those early days. And so, when firefighters and people would walk on that pile, their boots would melt. And so, giving those firefighters a break to wash their feet, give them clean socks, put them back on so they could go in, it wasn't just about. you know, the physical, it was about giving them the mental break as well.
There was a picture of uh a Saudi Army officer in in New York, literally washing feet of firefighters. And I realized in that moment that that's the part of the ministry I want to be involved in, is meeting human need. The Salvation Army served at Ground Zero, but at the morgue, we had what was called Sal's Cafe. and it was we had taken over a sidewalk. And it started with a canteen just on site there, providing meals to the people who had the coroner's office who had the terribly unenviable task of identifying all these remains as they came in.
But the Salvation Army is there feeding and ministering to those folks.
So, the scripture talks a lot about the word of God, but the word of God wasn't written at the time for the New Testament.
So, what was the word? It was the word was written and placed in the hearts of men. It's that deeper part of the law and grace and the relationship of being called to be a holy people that's written in the hearts of men, and it's in those moments where you see the hearts of men. It happened to be all men on our team. But when you see the hearts of men show up, you're like, there's the living word.
In very special ways, trying to convey the written word in order to change the lives of others. And I'll always be thankful for that. My most vivid memory is that you would have regular shift changes every, I don't know if it was every eight hours, but that those shift change times, you would see hundreds of firefighters come walking down the main streets into ground zero. These were the relief crews that would come in and they would walk just past this Salvation Army kitchen that was there, that was our 53 from the field kitchen that was providing meals and just the magnitude of People that were coming in and the looks on their faces to go in to continue to search for people who are lost. Mm-hmm.
One of the moments. Of that experience was the first day. uh that planes were allowed to fly again. And it was interesting how eerily quiet it was in DC with no planes flying. On that first day that planes flew, we were up on the the upper side near the lawn.
People ran when those planes flew over. And there was a measure of fear there that I'm so thankful that we don't have to live in every day. from that fear It just reminds me, a lesson that you don't forget is those people that go and serve in our military and serve in difficult places and serve in those places of fear. That when so many would run, how to honor those who would go in and serve in those places so that we might have protection.
So, I would say, in those moments, I had to respect both the fear, the courage of those who would serve. And the privilege that we don't live in that fear every day. You know, we just kind of go along in our daily routine every day. and not ever think of anything like that happening. you know, in in in in the US.
But Then this happens, and that sort of gives you a renewed respect and appreciation for the The safety and security that we enjoy here in the U.S. The Salvation Army Shield, the trust in that shield has been built up over generations. And it's something that we should never take for granted. I remember coming into this role, and the Army at the time was very cautious. About Being seen as a faith-based organization in disaster, because there was a feeling that.
Maybe the government's not going to be that comfortable with all these faith-based organizations doing what they do. After 9-11. That never became, that issue went away. I love it. Because it was at, I remember, it was at ground zero where chaplaincy and emotional and spiritual care was probably the most important service we provided.
It's a cup of cold water in Jesus' name. To bring us back to the privilege that we have to be a part of an organization. With such a resolve about just being present, that is the ministry of presence. As we remember this tragedy, we pray for the wounds that have yet to heal. We honor those who lost their lives.
Those who ran toward danger to serve others, and the families who continued to carry their loss. If you'd like to learn more about how the Salvation Army serves during times of disaster, visit salvationarmyeds.org. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next week. God bless. Thanks so much for listening to Words of Life.
We want to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the show. Visit lifeaudio.com, where you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They have shows about prayer, Bible studying, parenting, and more. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.
Hey there, it's Nicole Yunes, host of the How to Study the Bible podcast, where every single week we join together to encounter God through his word. You can subscribe at lifeaudio.com. Writing should enhance your flow and mental alignment. Elevate your daily notes and planning with a G2 Boost Collection from Pilot. Featuring the legendary Smooth G2 gel ink, comfort grip, and powered by the science of color, with blue for productivity, purple for creativity, and pink for optimism.
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