Serving Anywhere God Calls
When the airwaves were filled with horrific images of men, women and children begging for their lives during the unreal events of hurricane Katrina, it wasn’t uncommon for hearts across the nation to well up with compassion. Thousands of people volunteered their time, tens of thousands gave their money and resources. Few people gave up their way of life.
“I felt God leading me to serve,” says Connie Tulp, Salvation Army disaster relief volunteer. “I knew I needed to be about my Father’s business.”
Her heavenly Father’s business was to give away all her possessions, give up her apartment and her middle-income job and head down south to work on a Salvation Army mobile kitchen (canteen).
After the initial two weeks with the Army, Tulp found a southern Baptist church in Hattiesburg, Miss looking for workers to shingle roofs for a week and then again worked with The Salvation Army for three weeks.
Finding God opening more doors, she connected with Lutheran Disaster Services for an additional five and a half months as a chaplain in the hardest hit cities of Mississippi.
While serving in Biloxi, God allowed Tulp to be part of His miraculous grace. She and another chaplain were making the rounds and knocking on doors. They came to the home of Hoat Bui, an elderly Vietnamese woman.
“She kept repeating, ‘They stole my money,’” Tulp said. Tulp and her companion took the woman to a translator and found she had been swindled by a phony contractor for $16,000. Furthermore, she was a Christian and had been praying for four days and four nights for help. “And then we ended up on her door steps.”
Tulp called her home congregation of North Heights Lutheran Church in Roseville, Minn.
“They had been collecting funds to give to disaster relief and offered $11,000,” she said. “That was matched by Thrivent for Lutherans.” Tulp had been working with Habitat for Humanity to rebuild Bui’s house and needed $24,000.
(In the building process) “I began praying for an army,” Tulp said. Along came a platoon of United States Airforce through the city, marching past Tulp. She didn’t waste anytime taking God up on His next offer. “They (Airforce) helped rebuild the house from start to finish.”
In June she returned to Minnesota to live with her sister and begin classes at Northwestern College where, after earning an Associates Degree she plans to enter seminary.
The August tornadoes in southern Minnesota called her back to a Salvation Army mobile kitchen to serve meals to emergency workers, residents and volunteers.
“I don’t know why disaster is my thing,” she said. “It fits like a glove. I’m one of those people who has to be where the action is but my heart is to serve anywhere God calls.”
Her compassion for disaster survivors is wrought through her own suffering.
“I understand their hurt,” she says. “I don’t necessarily understand trauma of a natural disaster but I understand being set free from trauma and hopelessness. Through my service I want to bring hope to the hopeless and set captives free.”
Her captivity was a childhood and young adult life of abuse, a mother who committed suicide and a husband killed in a car accident. In her pain, she turned to thoughts of suicide and then to a religious cult. Finally in 1994, through a Christian friend of her daughter she was introduced to Jesus Christ. A relationship with Him opened the cell that had caged her joy.
“All along the way God has provided for my every need,” Tulp says. “My father is true to His word and does what He says He will do.”
