As quoted from the Houston Belief:

Julio Cortez Chronicle
With saw in hand, group gives a shoulder to lean on
Billy Graham volunteers offer spiritual, physical help to storm victims
By BARBARA KARKABI Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 19, 2008, 5:46PM

Marilyn Sides
Resources
ASSISTANCE

To get help with home repair from Samaritan's Purse or to visit with a chaplain from the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team, visit one of the three sites that have been set up in Texas:
Calvary Chapel, 3700 FM 528 E., Friendswood
First Baptist Church of Alta Loma, 5400 FM 646 S., Santa Fe
Proctor Baptist Church, 4401 Jimmy Johnson, Port Arthur
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

More than 50 Samaritan's Purse volunteers will be in Texas by Monday. But the group also needs local help. To volunteer:
Go to http://www.samaritanspurse.org
Visit one of the three local sites
SANTA FE — Two chaplains with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team rolled into this battered Galveston County town this week, bringing help, prayers and hugs for Hurricane Ike's victims.
Part of a group of crisis-trained chaplains who have worked in floods and hurricanes across the country, Marilyn and Ken Sides are handing out leather-bound Bibles and seeking to bring people to Jesus — but they're also pitching in on the cleanup and recovery.
"It's about loving people," said Marilyn Sides, a chaplain coordinator. "We are not here to push anything on them. We try to share God's love and listen to their stories."
The couple arrived at First Baptist Church of Alta Loma's parking lot in a Billy Graham van, driving from Charlotte, N.C., in a caravan that included nine volunteers, a small mobile home and a Samaritan's Purse tractor-trailer filled with generators, equipment and tools. The response team and Samaritan's Purse are both part of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association headed by Franklin Graham.
Their first project: helping church members clean their debris-strewn parking lot and removing wet carpet, tree limbs and large chunks of a demolished metal roof. Samaritan's Purse volunteers helped cover the church roof with tarps.
The Sideses' parking-lot ministry continued when an elderly woman drove up and told them three trees had blown down in her backyard.
"We met with her in the parking lot, and we just hugged on her," Marilyn Sides said. "She was a widow, 72, and devastated. A very sweet lady who loved the Lord and prayed for God not to let her house get hurt or damaged. He protected her house, but the trees fell down. We gave her a Bible, prayed with her and tried to assure her of hope in Christ."
They also set her up with Samaritan's Purse volunteers who will remove the trees.
This is the fifth trip the couple have made this year to a storm-ravaged part of the country. Before heading to the Galveston area, they prayed together, asking God to direct them to "those who are really hurting, who are really in need of your help and are crying out for your love."
Marilyn, 59, and Ken, 61, have seen a lot of hurt as volunteers. They met in 2005, after both were sent to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They married two years later. Together they have counseled families that have lost everything. They are familiar with the stages of grief after a trauma, even when the loss appears small.
There's a dazed look of confusion and desperation in people's eyes, sleepless nights, trouble concentrating. Some people forget to eat.
"Sometimes people can't even find their way back home," Marilyn said. "It's tough in the beginning, and we let them know that. But we also tell them things will get better. The sun is going to shine again, and the rainbow will come back out."
It's often hard to understand why disasters strike, but Ken Sides strives to make sure hurricane victims understand that God still loves them.
"He was with them during the storm, he preserved them though the storm, and he will be with them during the recovery," he said. "He will never leave or forsake them. They may have just lost a temporary home, but he will build them an eternal home."
Visitors come in waves to the volunteers. They first see H.B. Green, site director for Samaritan's Purse, who began volunteering 10 years ago. He has plucked people out of trees after plane crashes and helped clean up the Pentagon after Sept. 11.
The Sideses join Green under a white awning placed in front of the team's tractor-trailer, where Ike's victims fill out applications listing their home-repair needs. As they write, they tell stories of battered homes and ripped-up trees.
"Are you doing OK emotionally and spiritually?" Ken Sides asks Pam, a woman from Texas City who requests that her last name not be used.
"I've never asked for help before," she replies, her eyes filling with tears.
Ken Sides and Diane Goodman pray with her. Goodman, a Samaritan's Purse volunteer from North Wilkesboro, N.C., holds Pam's hand and tells her she "should never be ashamed to ask for help. That's why we are here. ... It's OK to be angry; God understands."
Page Brown is also seeking help. His leg was recently amputated, and he can't tackle the leaky roof or clear the 11 trees in his yard. Goodman tells him volunteers will bring a tarp for the roof and get rid of the trees.
Lee Esther Holmes, 70, talks about the food she lost in her freezer and the large trees that fell on her tool shed. But she tells the volunteers she feels blessed that her house escaped damage.
"Esther is a name from the Bible," Goodman tells her. "She was a very brave lady, and you are, too."
As the team cooks hamburgers for dinner Wednesday, a mother and her 8-year-old son stop by looking for something to eat. The Sideses feed them and give the boy his first Bible — one of hundreds the couple brought to Texas.
"Before leaving they accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior," Marilyn Sides says. "We loaded them up with food when they left. But I just felt that she was looking for a blessing both bodily and spiritually."
barbara.karkabi@chron.com.