By Connie Davis Bushey
News Editor, Baptist and Reflector
MORRISTOWN — Most people would assume that Don Owen experiences few surprises in ministry. Owen, a semi-retired businessman, has served for 13 years as a Tennessee Baptist Disaster Relief volunteer and in other ministries.
But during the past several years Owen has seen God do some things that are hard to explain and unusual, he said. In fact he resisted them, he admitted.
In about 2011, 18 families in this area lost their homes to fire. During that time a friend called Owen, who is disaster relief director for Nolachucky Baptist Association based here, and asked if he wanted some furniture no longer needed by a Gatlinburg hotel.
Owen hesitated. He didn’t really want to become involved in the used furniture business. But he was aware of an empty auto repair garage and its owner through his many contacts here. Owen has lived here all of his life. The owner agreed to let the Nolachucky Association use it for storage. The space had about 1,500 square feet.
After learning that the hotel was a high end hotel, Owen contacted the hotel owner again and agreed to accept the furniture. He assembled a crew, rented a truck, picked up the furniture, and stored it until it was distributed.
The fire victims were helped, but also other needy people appeared and others started donating appliances and more furniture. Owen soon had to enlist a couple to manage the ministry.
During this time his church, First Baptist Church, Morristown, developed the “Harvest of Israel” ministry. One of its efforts was to collect items to send to needy people in Israel. The former auto repair shop became known as “God’s Warehouse,” and was used to store collected items for people in Israel too.
Then the couple operating God’s Warehouse had to step down. Owen was thankful, he admitted. Surely now the ministry could be shut down, he thought. But God told him “No.” So he enlisted two men to manage it.
About a year after Nolachucky Baptist Association DR began using the former garage, the owners decided to sell it. Again Owen thought he could close the ministry. A few days later a man called him and offered God’s Warehouse 10,000 square feet of free space in his warehouse. Owen agreed, this time less reluctantly as he realized God was at work.
“The warehouse came complete with loading dock, fork lift, office, everything,” said Owen.
The owner “just allows us to use the space that we need,” added Owen.
Recently God’s Warehouse has received perfectly good hotel furnishings from smoke damaged hotels in Sevier County related to the November 2016 fires there. Owen has learned that the first hotel which donated items was one of many high-end hotels in the resort area owned by one man. Also many hotel owners have followed his suit and given their furnishings to God’s Warehouse.
As a result, over the last nine months 13 truck loads of mattresses and box springs and many other needed items coming through God’s Warehouse have been sent to help Louisiana flood victims. A gift of $5,000 from Sevier County Baptist Association, a gift of $13,000 from Knox County Baptist Association disaster relief, and help by volunteers in the associations made the deliveries possible, explained Owen.
He hopes to deliver more mattresses and box springs to the about 30,000 families whose homes were flooded in 2016 because of the great need, he added. Beds in the last load were picked up by families in just 45 minutes and some people who had been waiting for hours went home empty handed, he noted.
Also since 2012, God’s Warehouse volunteers have seen 23 shipping containers sent to Israel to support the Harvest of Israel project. The containers have been filled with items for babies, medical supplies, clothing, and furniture, said Owen, who has visited Israel six times. Containers also have been shipped from God’s Warehouse to Bulgaria to help missionaries out of Morristown serving there.
Today God’s Warehouse rec-
eives supplies from many churches in Tennessee as well as other states. “We can’t take credit for any single thing that is there. God just supplies it,” said Owen.
He is still learning from God, he added. Some time ago he and his team had an idea which seemed good for a way to minister to people by storing food for disasters. But it didn’t seem to be working out. When they finally gave up God developed a similar ministry which required less work.
“Everything that is done here is because of what He’s (God’s) allowed us to do. It’s nothing that we’ve done,” said Owen.