A local Pontotoc church opens warming shelter
PONTOTOC, Miss. (WCBI) – With the temperature being very low, people in Pontotoc County are making sure residents have a warm place to stay.
Friendship Baptist Church is opening a warming shelter.
In Pontotoc, multiple organizations wanted to come together and open warming stations for the public.
The warming station is a place for anyone who needs to charge equipment, stay warm, and have free food provided.
“What we found was a lot of people, when we put the word out that we had a warming shelter, other churches had provided that as well,” Jason Davis said. “A lot of people really need the charging stations. They had batteries and their phones that just needed to get that charged back up, and so we have been able to provide that with some snacks and food at night.”
The Mississippi Baptist Disaster Relief is a volunteer organization that provides emergency assistance throughout the state, such as chainsaw work, roof tarping, mass feeding, and cleanup.
Incident Commander Thomas Nix said the warming shelter is a huge help to people during a time of need.
“If someone wants to bring jobs in and says that it needs to be done, they can come by here and we can provide information,” Nix said. “Then we would send somebody out to test it and see if it’s something we do. It is great that they reached out to the community even before we got here. They did a great job on that, and they are doing a great job supporting us.”
Friendship Baptist Church Pastor, Jason Davis, says it is essential to offer useful resources during this type of weather.
“Anytime there is a need in our community that we can meet, we want to meet that,” Davis said. “I am thankful one of the things that Southern Baptist like is we say we can accomplish more together than we ever can apart and so by being able to partner with other Southern Baptists that are coming from all over the state right now to be on these chainsaw crews but also they put the word out for other surrounding states as well. But, it allows us to do more and just be able to show love to our neighbors.”
Warming and charging stations will continue to be open during the winter severe weather.
