BROOKINGS Brookings resident Gregg Stern, 53, now in his third trip to a mountainous area of North Carolina where he is helping with recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Helene, has been helping others in need for more than 20 years.
Stern and his wife Pam are owners of Powershop Gym in Brookings. In 2002 they worked together through their church in a ministry called U.S. Missions, U.S. Maps, helping build churches and Teen Challenge facilities.
When Katrina hit (in 2005), we hooked up with a couple different ministries, Greg explained. Mercy Response was one of them. After Katrina there was a lot of cleanout: the water damage, where you tear out all the sheetrock, insulation, cabinets, electrical. The structures were there; it was just a matter of getting everything dried out, so they could rebuild it.
They had worked with couples from Wisconsin, Mississippi and Illinois. And would do so again: Greg said, We just kind of stayed in touch, as storm to storm we would contact them: where are you headed, where are you going, lets meet up, lets work together. Then there was Hurricane Ike, the Galveston (Texas) area (in 2008).
Following Ike, in 2011 Stern shifted his focus geographically, from the United States to India, and his mission: We were at a point where we kind of felt that the locals would take over the rebuilding process, so we didnt take away business, like from construction workers. We were there to help originally.
From 2011, after we got done doing hurricane relief there really werent any major hurricanes or storms after that.
Asking God where to go
With those events behind him, Gregg Stern found himself asking God, Where do you want me to go? I want to help. And God made up my heart then, in 2011, to help with kids in sex trafficking.
So for almost two years, I researched in the United States ministries, organizations that were doing this kind of thing. A lot of them were awareness groups, where I just felt like OK, which is great, but there arent a lot of ministries or organizations that are actually rescuing kids. They needed financial help, which we did help people in ministries. His where-to-go question would soon be answered.
In September 2013, the Sterns were at a by-invitation-only gathering of Advocare distributors, a nutrition company whose products they had carried at their Powershop Gym since 2011.
There were only 60 couples out of about 600,000 people then with Advocare invited to a special training gathering in Dallas. However, about a week before the session started, Pams mother, Carol Perry, passed away. She was a mother to a dozen children, three of them adopted, two of them from India.
She loved children, Greg said of his mother-in-law. And she also loved to share Jesus. If you went out to eat with her, she was going to ask all the servers if they knew Jesus.
Youre going to India
Three days after Carol Perrys funeral, the Sterns went to the Advocare conference. While there, they met Pastor David Farmer and his wife. The Sterns introduced themselves to the couple and the pastor said, I rescue children from sex trafficking.
Shortly after that, Pam asked her husband, Youre going to India, arent you?
Stern believes their crossing paths with the Farmers to be part of Gods providence.
He found in Farmer a best friend to this day. Ive gone on 20 trips overseas (to India) with him. On a trip to India in 2020 to fight sex trafficking of children, with COVID raging, the two men got stuck over there and basically got kicked out of the country. We found it harder and harder to get into the country. Most of the people we were fighting were the government and the police; and they were running the brothels. Weve pretty much been black-flagged out of India to get back in. If I went there right now, theres a 95 percent chance Id be thrown in jail.
Stern estimates that he and Farmer helped rescue about 1,000 boys and girls of all ages: some as young as 5 years old and others in their teens. The youngest one we rescued was 20 days old, he said.
Recently his volunteer efforts hes now on his third trip to the stricken area hit by Helene to help people in need have focused on the mountainous areas of North Carolina and a little piece of Tennessee in the wake of the hurricanes rainfall-triggered flooding. That whole areas totally destroyed, Stern explained. A lot of stuff were doing, theres a lot of different groups were working, with people Ive met, incredible people.
There was work needed in clearing damage caused by fallen trees and in search and rescue. Also, Stern noted, There are lots of people missing. And there is also danger to children from traffickers.
He and Farmer are again teaming up, this time in an organization called Slaves2Freedom: Its website notes, In the Midst of a Crisis Children are Captured. The organization deploys whenever a natural disaster strikes. When hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, cyclones or earthquakes bring destruction to an area we know that traffickers are actively looking for children who may be displaced and seeking help.
Stern noted that while bigger cities in the area received much more attention and notice by the media, the rural areas did not. Its a big city kind of thing. There are people to this day that we cant even get to yet, in the mountains. The roads are washed out, trees across the roads. Were still cutting our way up there.
One group that Stern lauded was SavageFreedoms, composed of active duty and retired military personnel: These guys are legit, theyre helping out doing the right thing. He also cited groups and organizations from all over the United States and Canada pitching in to help where needed.
And when humanitarian help is needed, and wherever its needed, Gregg Stern can be counted on to be there.
Contact John Kubal at [email protected].
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