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Expanding ‘God’s work’
By KATHRYN HARRIS
News Staff Writer
The plan started out simply enough.
The Rev. Ray Wilke of Grace Lutheran Church in Norfolk told his friend, Clayton Andrews, about his mission trip to Latvia. He told Andrews about the many destitute people in the povertystricken country who begged Wilke to do something to help them.
“He…kind of put his tongue in his cheek and he said, ‘I kind of told them I would.’ Then he stood there biting his lip, ” said Andrews, a longtime Norfolk businessman. “That’s how the Orphan Grain Train was organized.”
Andrews said he finds it difficult to believe that the organization has grown so much in the 13 years since that first conversation with Wilke, who serves as president of Orphan Grain Train.
Andrews was one of several people who spoke Tuesday afternoon at a groundbreaking ceremony for the organization’s new international office at the corner of Sixth Street and Phillip Avenue.
The Orphan Grain Train is a Norfolk-based international charity that provides humanitarian relief in disaster situations around the world.
Since its creation in 1992, the charity has grown to include 15 regional satellite divisions across the United States. It has shipped more than 900 semi-trailer loads of humanitarian goods worldwide and expects the 1,000th shipment to occur this year.
Continuous growth of the organization has made the additional headquarters space necessary.
Construction of the new facility is scheduled to begin in early April. The office building will serve the administrative needs of the 15 regional divisions of Orphan Grain Train nationwide. The new 9,300-square foot facility will provide the organization with more work space, meeting space and room for growth.
The new facility will replace the need for the office on South Fifth Street that the Orphan Grain Train currently rents.
“One thing I’ve learned is that if you do what God wants you to do, things just happen,” Andrews said of the development of Orphan Grain Train.
For example, Andrews said, the organization just happened to be sending a shipment of humanitarian aid to Bangalore, India, in December. He believes it was by God’s will that it arrived one day after the tsunami disaster.
“We didn’t know what we were doing, but isn’t it strange how they got where they belonged at the right time?” he asked.
The Rev. Russell Sommerfeld, a Norfolk native who serves as Nebraska District president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, said he felt humbled to be in the presence of those involved with the Orphan Grain Train who carry out the “work of Christian compassion in demonstrating the very love of God in the lives of people.”
Sommerfeld said that in his work as a minister, he often reflects on the story of how the Samaritan helped the wounded man he found left for dead.
“So many others had passed him by and not come to care for him,” he said.
Sommerfeld said he’s reminded of that story when he thinks of the many people throughout the world who give of themselves to care with the compassion of Jesus Christ.
“Thanks be to God that the Orphan Grain Train is His work,” Sommerfeld said. “And we are but His instruments.”