The North/West Lower Michigan Synod is partnered with Lutheran Disaster Response Nationally and is also a member of the Michigan Volunteer Agencies Active in Disaster. This is the agency that works directly with the Michigan State Police, Office of Emergency Management and the County Emergency Managers, to provide assistance when a disaster happens.
The 2025 Ice Storm devastated a vast array of trees in Northern Michigan. A 2026 late winter ice storm added to the damage. In the Spring of 2025, a group of volunteers from St. Thomas, Cheboygan; Grace, East Tawas; Prince of Peace, Rose City; and Christ the King Gladwin; spent a day cleaning up trees and brush in Northern Michigan. These folks joined many other agencies in the massive cleanup. By March 2026 there were still a great number of folks with damage. Folks from the Michigan Volunteer Registry, part of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, proposed to apply for a federal National Civilian Conservation Corp team, part of the AmeriCorps program. The application was approved, and these 7 young adults came to Gaylord Michigan to serve the people of Northern Michigan.
On June 8 – 10, our team from Lutheran Disaster Response Michigan worked with the NCCC team in Otsego County to help clean up ice storm debris. Over those three days we cleaned up the property of 13 residents, wore out a chain saw, and cleared too many trees to even count. The folks that were helped had been struggling for more than a year to get their property back in shape after the storm. Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Rose City paid for the mileage for the daily trips to Otsego County. I especially thank Steve Rota and Mike Smith for their chain saw work and expertise.
Here are some of the stories:
– We cared for an 83-year-old Vietnam veteran and his wife who lived way out in the woods but struggled with getting help for clean-up. He lived so far out in the woods that he told us that when his wife broke her hip it took the ambulance an hour to get there.
– We moved a great deal of brush for a man who had heart surgery after the ice storm and was told by the doctor not to lift anything.
– There was a very beautiful house on Otsego Lake with trees all around. The homeowner said the insurance company paid to fix the roof, but she was on her own to clean up the woods. She spent $20,000 and the company that came only made a dent in the debris.
– We confronted a modest home in a pine forest. The homeowners told us they had already cut 42 downed trees and there was still more to go. They were exhausted. We pitched in and cleaned up the rest of the yard and the woods.
– In a forested subdivision, the team worked for a single mother with autistic child who worked double shifts as a nurse to try and pay for help to clean up her yard.
– On our final day, our last house was a single woman on a small lake with trees down all around. There were many dead branches stuck in the trees, ready to fall down on someone. She has a walkway to a garden that had been blocked for a year. When the day was over, she walked the path with no fear of falling branches.
It was an amazing time to work together with this NCCC team and the volunteers that helped. We made a difference for those people. We were Jesus to folks that said, at first, they thought the phone call that help was coming was a scam. They had tears in their eyes when the trees were cleaned up, the logs stacked, and the hanging branches were cleaned up so they could walk in the yard again. That is a small piece of what Lutheran Disaster Response does to help our neighbors and share the love of Jesus with them.
~ Pastor David Sprang