When New York Governor Cuomo’s Pause directive started on March 22, my kids were on Spring Break. I worked from home, went for walks with my kids and wife in Central Park, and enjoyed home-cooked family dinners every night. One week later, just at the time when I was feeling the need to be a part of the solution to the COVID-19 pandemic, I got an email from my friend who said he was going to help build a hospital ward in Central Park to serve overflow COVID-19 patients from Mount Sinai Hospital. An international disaster relief organization from North Carolina called Samaritan’s Purse had arrived in NYC to take on this bold and creative solution to NYC’s hospital bed shortage. I didn’t have to ask any further questions. I was in. I was going to do what I could to help save my fellow New Yorkers from COVID-19.
I spent the next two weeks moving soil from one pile to another, smoothing foundations, laying tarps, erecting tents, building beds, learning carpentry and upholstery, building tables, and making friends with people with whom I never thought I would come face to face (well actually mask to mask).
After showing up at the work site the first day, I found out that Samaritan’s Purse was founded by the American Baptist Minister Bob Pierce in 1970 and is now led by Franklin Graham, the son of the prominent evangelical Christian figure Billy Graham. Many people on social media and in the press, including friends and peers of mine, declared that volunteers at the field hospital site were required to sign a pledge stating that they support the organization’s anti-gay agenda. No one asked me to sign anything until about a week into my service, when they put a power tool into my hands (which I had no business using but that’s for another post) and wanted me to sign a liability release. There indeed was a paragraph about Samaritan’s Purse’s religious beliefs, which included things I did not agree with. I crossed out the paragraph and signed the release. They accepted my edited release form with gratitude and grace and gave me back the power tools to finish building the hospital.
Passover began during the second week of my volunteer experience, and I spent a few hours talking about the Jewish religion with my fellow volunteers, evangelical Christians who came up from Samaritan Purse’s home-base in North Carolina. One volunteer told me that his bucket list included never coming to NYC. But when he heard what was happening in the fields of Central Park, he got on a plane and came to NYC without missing a beat.
In this time of human crisis, with a common enemy of a non-discriminatory virus, I see everyone as an ally. My two weeks this past April were some of the most purposeful of my life. I want to share the lessons I learned with everyone - not what I learned about someone’s religious beliefs, but what I learned about people willing to drop everything to help fellow human beings. If this virus teaches us anything, I hope it is that we need to put people first and our personal beliefs second.
I believe the world will be better because of this united effort to control our common enemy. We all need to fight together or millions will die. We need to stick together, or next time it will be worse.