Samaritan’s Purse CEO Franklin Graham told The Christian Post that God is faithful amid suffering and that Americans must rely on each other after the recent hurricane devastation in the southeastern United States that afflicted his hometown.
He also advised Americans against waiting for the government to save them in the wake of the damage from Hurricane Helene, which tore through a corridor extending from the Florida panhandle into Appalachia last week.
The storm left wide swaths of death and destruction, especially in Graham’s native western North Carolina, where his nonprofit Samaritan’s Purse is based in Boone.
The relief organization has been using helicopters to carry food, water and medical kits to some of the state’s remote western counties, Graham told CP. They are also responding in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. Earlier this week, Graham toured the devastation with former President Donald Trump in Valdosta, Georgia.
Graham noted the surreal nature of the fact that Samaritan’s Purse, which ministers to devastated populations around the world, is now helping people in its own neighborhood. He said his own house in Boone continues to be without electricity, and that the media is not able to adequately portray the devastation in western North Carolina.
“I think it’s much worse than what people see on television,” he said. “The smells and so forth, you don’t get that through a television set; the filth that people are having to live in and work in and try to survive in.”