It’s a beautiful thing to have a guiding hand when it comes to sorting through the aftermath of loss, and it’s no secret that many Texas Panhandle residents lost it all in the historic Smokehouse Creek Fire. Several wonderful businesses, organizations and city entities that have worked tirelessly together to pool and distribute resources to those who need it most, and this hasn’t gone unseen or unmatched by the one who sees all.
God sees the working hands of the Panhandle and hasn’t allowed his own to remain idle. While it would be impossible to track all the miracles He has worked through the hands of his people and churches, Pastor Mike Sublett of Hi-Land Christian church has brought attention to one series of works to The Pampa News.
When the members of Rockdale Christian Church in Rockdale, Texas heard about the Smokehouse Creek Fire, they decided they wanted to donate funds directly to families affected. After deciding to designate a generous $10,000 of their church’s funds, preacher Harry Stevenson needed to find families to send the money to as they are not local to the Panhandle area.
“We thought that if we were under the same circumstances that we could use and appreciate the help and prayers. God has blessed us finanially, and so we decided to share some of that,” Stevenson shared. “We wanted to do it through one of our churches in hopes that it would reach our congregation through the church. So, I went through the directory of ministry and picked this church (Hi-Land Christian Church) to call.”
Preacher Mike Sublett of Hi-Land Christian felt blessed to be entrusted with the task of finding families that could use the funds the most.
“It’s just amazing how it all came together. When Mr. Stevenson out of Rockdale called us, we didn’t have anybody in our church that had been directly impacted by the fires, and so we started asking around. One of our members, Judy, was put in contact with a young couple out of Miami who had lost everything. The husband had been out fighting fires when their house burned down,” Sublett said.
Hadley and Maddie Thompson of Miami are the young couple that received $5,000 of the $10,000 donation, which was presented to them Wednesday, April 3.
In addition to the Thompsons, God placed another family on the heart of the church through a series of acquaintances.
“Then around that same time, we were also told about the Monden family out of Stinnett who had also lost everything in the midst of the husband receiving treatments for cancer,” Sublett shared. “And so then we knew where God wanted the other half of the money to go.”
“On May 23, 2023, my husband was diagnosed with AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia). Our lives completely changed that day, and he was admitted into the hospital the very next day because it was so aggressive. The next step after that was to get him a bone marrow transplant, which he had on October 31 in Oklahoma City,” Marcella Monden shared of husband RL Monden’s condition over the last year leading up to the fire.
“We had to stay in Oklahoma for 100 days post-transplant, and we did that. They finally let us come home (to Stinnett) February 7, but we’re still traveling back and forth between Amarillo and Oklahoma City every other week for his treatments.”
It was between treatments that the Monden’s home burned down in late February. “We were only home for two weeks before it all burned,” Monden said after spending most of last year outside of the comfort of her own home for the sake of her husband’s health.
Marcella expressed her gratitude to God and the church for the resources given to her and her husband to rebuild.
“We are more than beyond grateful and appreciative for the donation that’s going to help us with our rebuild. We really just can’t thank them enough. We’re staying strong in our faith and God has been good to us.”
