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RENDEZVOUS

The Good Guys and Gals Are on Your Side

by Nancy Newbold, Condon

The decree to love your neighbor as yourself has its roots in the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:18) and weaves itself repeatedly and unmistakably throughout the New Testament. For volunteers of the Condon/Swan Valley Quick Response Unit (QRU), who are often roused from their sleep in the wee small hours of the morning by the tones of their emergency pagers, this edict has become a lifestyle.

Many rural communities in America's Rocky Mountain region are served by local Quick Response Units. These units are staffed by volunteers with emergency medical training to care for and transport the sick and injured. The community of Condon, Montana is one rural area that has been graced with a QRU, and remarkably, a majority of this QRU's crew attends the Condon Community Church. This unit is setting a fine example of loving "in deed and truth," rather than with only their voices (1 John 3:18).

Ellie Greenough, a member of the Condon Community Church, had an integral role in forming the Condon QRU in 1980. She was volunteering as a reserve deputy with Missoula County and felt it would be beneficial to have emergency medical training. Once she became the only certified Emergency Medical Technician in this small community, injured people started showing up at her front door.

One harrowing night, two young boys with second and third degree burns from a diesel fire were brought to her. The burns suffered by one were life threatening. By God's grace, there was a wedding party next door to Ellie that day attended by a nurse who was a burn specialist from Washington. She helped Ellie with the immediate care of the boys until they were flown by helicopter to the hospital in Missoula. Ellie remembers that night with clarity and has a picture embedded in her mind of the nurse placed there by God, who cared for those children in an ice-filled bathtub, clad in her bridesmaid dress.

Ellie experienced the vulnerability of isolation spoken of in Ecclesiastes 4:12 and immediately decided she did not want to be the only one in the Valley with medical training. She and five others who were concerned about the welfare of the community organized and formed the unit over 24 years ago; they conducted their first official Condon/Swan Valley Quick Response Unit meeting the night Mount St. Helens erupted.

Jim Moore is the pastor of the Condon Community Church. He is also an active member of the Condon QRU. He joined the QRU to get to know people in the community and saw it as an avenue of reaching the community as well as fellow QRU members for Christ. He agrees with Ellie that the prospect of responding to a call alone, without the support of other crew members, can be positively "unnerving." In relating this very realistic need we have for the support of others in ministry and outreach efforts within our churches, it is apparent to me those ministry endeavors that consist of a group effort (i.e. more than one person regularly involved) succeed where those that don't, often fail.

Pastor Jim recognizes that in this "apathetic world, it is often hard not to grow weary of doing good." The Lord, in His infinite wisdom, has a solution to this problem: "Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).

Pastor Jim readily recognizes this. God may use the responders during an emergency incident to plant a seed in the heart of the victim. On several occasions Jim has had the opportunity to pray with these people who are hurting. It is likely that for some of these folks, it is the first time they have heard anyone pray for them. How blessed to be cared for spiritually as well as physically!

Every incident reveals someone new who is in need of God's love and subsequently every incident triggers a chain of prayer that commences within the Moore home the moment the emergency call is received. Not only is Pastor Jim praying about the incident while in route, but his wife Diane prays about it until Jim returns home. What a secret blessing it is to be able to pray for these wounded people whom you otherwise would have never known.

Sometimes the QRU responders even get a glimpse of God's miraculous work in action. Once, family members were trapped in a vehicle following a wreck and thus mercifully unable to view a child who had been ejected and did not survive. Or the traffic collision last winter, resulting from a driver hitting ice while passing another vehicle, losing control and ejecting a little boy. This boy could have been driven over by the vehicle that had been passed, which also ended up out of control, but by God's grace responders found him wedged between the guardrail and the vehicle's right front tire. He recovered from his injuries.

Sometimes the emergencies they respond to do not end well and it is necessary to inform family members of the death of a loved one. Even given this distressing task, the members of the unit who have a saving faith in their Lord Jesus Christ are able to offer a message of hope to grieving family members.

In Psalm 27:13, David writes, "I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

For emergency victims cared for by Condon's first responders, we pray that the fleeting, healing touch of their faithful caregivers would provide those victims with a glimpse of God's goodness here on earth.