Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron.
Go to thepekclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. I'll be taking the next two weeks off,
but you've been hearing me discuss the fundraiser that we're
helping to do. We do it every year with Moments
of Hope Church and you can donate by going to
cityofhopeclt dot org. And I wanted to welcome to the
program the pastor of the Moments of Hope Church, that
is Pastor David Chadwick. Hello, Pastor Chadwick. How are you, Sarah?
Speaker 2: I'm well, Pete. Thank you for letting me have these
minutes with you this afternoon.
Speaker 1: Of course, of course, so first off, how's it going.
How's the campaign going?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're just about at fifty percent of what we
desire to raise. And for those who may not know
I have a weekend show on WBT. Been doing it
now for over twenty five years. It's been a great
gig and a wonderful run. And about five years ago
we decided, with the COVID crisis to try to raise
money around the Christmas time period with a matching gift
from almost I hope to try to feed hungry kids
this year because of the devastation in western North Carolina,
we've tried to focus there on the needs that are
just huge and not going away anytime soon. So Moments
of Hope it's given one hundred thousand dollars matching gift.
Hopefully the listeners of WBT will match that gift and
we can give two hundred thousand dollars, all of the
money going to the people, no administrative costs, to the
needs that are there and again aren't going to go
away anytime soon. And again Pete, we're about fifty percent there.
Speaker 1: And so if people want to donate, they can go
to CITYOFOPECLT dot org. You can read more about all
of the work that you and your church and because
it's a much larger effort than just this one fundraiser, right,
you guys are into and have partnerships with a lot
of other organizations.
Speaker 2: We do, indeed, and what makes this one so unique,
I think is over the last four to five years,
as we've done this fundraiser, we have seven vulnerable underserved
communities in Charlotte that we've identified and they are working
together as a coalition, which is really remarkable because too
often five oh one Seed three's work in redundancy, they
don't talk to one another, but they really are working
together with reading programs, feeding programs, healing programs. But this year,
those different communities identified partners that they have in vulnerable
communities in western North Carolina. So many of them have
been going up there building relationships, and so as they're
meeting people and finding those needs that are often hidden
in the woods in the mountains, people who've lost everything,
we're going in and trying to help them rebuild their lives.
And again, Pete, it's just worse than anything anybody can imagine,
and it's going to last longer than anyone can imagine
as well too. I mean, the government's trying to say
now it's going to cost fifty billion dollars to rebuild
western North Carolina, what's good. Are two hundred thousand going
to do well? It's going to help somebody, It's going
to help different people who are mostly hidden and mostly
not known, but mostly have these great needs that we're
going to be able to meet well.
Speaker 1: And also to that point, I mean the bigger the
projects and like road construction, you know, slope rebuilding on
the side of a mountain that has lost a bunch
of land, you know that's gone down to the river,
Like that's not I mean, obviously that's a big lift
and that may get a lot of the attention, has
a huge impact, but a lot of the the other
work like that's I don't want to say in the gaps,
but I guess it is. You know, these are these
are opportunities where people can make direct impacts on people's
lives and do it for not a lot of money,
not a lot of time, not a lot of effort. Really,
if they just make some donations and you've got an
infrastructure already in place to get to the people that
need it.
Speaker 2: Yes, correct, here's a great idea and a statistic that
would help people get their hands around what this can do.
For fifteen thousand dollars, you can rebuild a front door,
a back door, and a kitchen. And most of our
studies and the people we've talked to, if you can
just rebuild their front door and their back door and
their kitchen, they can move back into their homes. And
that's just a practical amount of money fifteen thousand dollars
that we can give to help people get back into
their homes, escape you know, living in a motel right now,
or in some cases Pete sadly still tends, Yeah, and
get back into their homes and be safe, be secure,
be warm, and be able to feed themselves and their families.
Speaker 1: We have been talking about the problems with the tents
and the temporary struct maures. We've had numerous stories that
we have covered. You know, people that have organized fun
drives get to get RVs and campers and even sheds
and these you know, tiny homes and cabins and building
codes have stood in the way from letting them do that.
And it's I always try to tell like, in the
immediate aftermath, it was water, right, people will die without
without water in three days, and then it's food and
it's shelter, and it's like first order problems, right, and
shelter is a first order problem and whatever is stopping
that from occurring needs to get fixed. And you know,
luckily the state legislature has come in and they've they've
peeled away some of those regulatory burdens that have been
blocking it. But people aren't. They don't want to leave
their property because they're getting robbed, right, people will come
through and loot the property, and they want to be
able to work on their house. And so, like you
just said, like I had not heard, and I've been
I mean, I lived up there for eight years and
I've been reading a lot and covering a lot of
it over the last but eighty days, eighty three days,
and I've not heard front door, back door kitchen as
sort of a first order But it makes total sense
now that you say it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll leave it to the Baptist. They're the ones
who did the study and came up with that information
because they're there. Yeah, as a person of faith, that's
who I am. Obviously. It's just great to see all
the churches there not be myopic and coming together and
working together, and many of them are Baptist churches, but
others as well, and they've come up with this very
practical piece of information, and you know, in some cases
they don't have to redo the building codes. The structure
is basically there. Again, what they need is just a
front door back door in their kitchen and they can
get back in and then over time reproduce the necessary
other elements in their house. But this is just a
basic living condition that we can meet with our gifts
to this campaign.
Speaker 1: So what other organizations are you partnered up with up
there in western North Carolina. I'm aware of the Hearts
with Hands organization and obviously Samaritan's Purse. I think Baptists
on Mission is a big one that's doing a lot
of work as well. But I mean all of the
churches it has been amazing and teaming up with like
like far left and progressive types of you know, non
Christian types of organizations. Everybody's just kind of they're all
doing what they have to do. So who are some
of your partners up there? Do you have any names
for us?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, the ones you just mentioned are all ones
that we have been in conversation with and are talking with.
But honestly, Pete, the way we're doing this is a
little bit different on the organizations here in Charlotte, those
seven vulnerable communities with which we've been working over the
last years, they have people there that they know, and
I'm doing it probably more relationship to relationship. For example,
one of our partners just through a huge Christmas party
at J. D. Williams Elementary School Wanna Noah, which is
one of those cities has wiped out. Four hundred kids
were there. They were able to get presents for themselves
and for one of their family members. The administrators, the
teachers who are on the front lines of trauma care
for those kids. We gave them Christmas presents as well,
said you don't worry about it, We're providing that for
you this year. Well, then the next step is, since
we built those relationships with those people, we're going to
go back to them and say, let us know people
in your school who have lost these different things like
their front door, back door kitchen, and we'll step in
and person to person, relationship to relationship will help restore them.
And that helps eliminate a lot of the red tape
and how it allows us to put one hundred percent
of these proceeds into the actual need. So it's a
little bit of both it's with organizations, it's also person
to person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's not just monetary I see on the
website as well, people can actually get involved. So are
there opportunities for people and idea I just see you
got volunteer opportunities. Are you like sending people up there
to actually do the sweat equity, you know, to do
the work themselves or is it is it a preference
for the money so you can hand it off to
the people that are already boots on the ground.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a little bit of both. We've actually sent
over one hundred people up there boots on the ground
with volunteers through Moments of Hope Church, but we've been
mostly working with Samaritan's Purse there. Mart Noonan who's West
Boulevard Ministry on the website, you can see what he's
doing there as well. He's willing to take some people
up there as they may want to go. Also, Josh Meadows,
who does the neighborhood Hope on the east side of
town in the vulnerable community, he's willing to take some
people up there. He's taking about one hundred folks up
there as well, just you know, dealing with basic needs
that people have, so it's they both and but I
would say right now, probably the greatest gift is simply
the funding because a lot of people are still there.
We just got to get the money to them to
supply the needs that people have.
Speaker 1: Right in every dollar moments that people donate, they hear
this interview. Every dollar they donate's going to get matched
by the Moments of Hope Church. Correct.
Speaker 2: Yes, we've given one hundred thousand dollars as a matching
gift to the Charlotte listeners through WBT and other places.
And your gift immediately one dollar becomes two, two becomes four,
one hundred becomes two hundred. Yesterday was so wonderful, Pete.
Somebody gave us ten thousand dollars, Oh my god, Immediately
that becomes twenty thousand dollars. Obviously, another person gave seven
thousand yesterday that became fourteen thousand. So that's what's allowed
us to get to now fifty percent. And a lot
of people during that last week of the year are
looking at ways to not let Uncle Sam get their
dollars but go to something that really is of help
to people, and this is an opportunity for that to
happen before December thirty first.
Speaker 1: Well, and also it is one of the lessons these disasters,
especially of the magnitude that we've seen in western North Carolina,
that they teach is that you know, you are the
first response under your neighbors, your community, your church. These
are the first responders. These are the people that live
there and you live with, and we are the ones
who are going to be able to provide the most
immediate relief. You know, whatever happens with the funding and
the Femius stuff and all of that that's on a delay,
this is the immediate response. And yeah, and it really
has been awesome to see groups like Moments of Ope
Church and you and all of the others that have
that have risen to the need. It's just amazing talking
to people out there. There's there are many people from
all over the country and even from Canada that are
coming down to help them. It's been amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pete, that's a great point. And the bottom line is,
you know, we're almost their neighbors. So many of us
love to go to the mountain area and enjoy them,
especially during the spring and fall time periods. They're our neighbors,
and any know from my religious faith perspective, the Lord
told me to love my neighbor as I love myself,
and then I've as myself, Well, what would I feel
like if I lost everything and everything was washed away
and within an hour or so I would feel hopeless.
I would want people to feel empathy toward me and
to come and help me. And I think that's what
has been created. There's a real empathy in people's hearts.
What if that had been me? What if that had
happened to me? And then if that's my neighbor within
a two hour drive of here, then I'm responsible, at
least at some level for stepping into that space and
caring as best I can.
Speaker 1: It is through tragedies like this that we are called
to serve and I think a lot of people recognize that.
And was it mister Rogers who you know, said look
for the helpers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah.
Speaker 1: That's that's always been so ever since I heard it,
that's what I always try to do. And it has
been really great to see the amount of people that
have risen up to help. So I thank you for
what you're doing and the moments of hope Church is
doing and you guys have done, and I think you've
you know, you're you're pointed in the right direction. I
think so.
Speaker 2: Well, we're trying to be the hands and seat of
the one who created us. And again that question, if
not me, who, And so if anybody's out there listening
right now feels a way of wanting to care. This
is a way go to cityof HOOPECLT dot org. And
you might not be able to go yourself, maybe because
of age or stage of life. But you know what,
when you send your dollars, you're sending yourself those hard
earned dollars that you worked for. When you send your dollars,
you're sending yourself. So this is a way that you
can actually be involved in help.
Speaker 1: Pastor David Chadwick, Moments of Hope Church, thank you very
much for your time, sir, I appreciate it. Merry Christmas
and have a great weekend. And again thanks for doing
this work that you do. We appreciate. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Well. Thank you, Pete. Merry Christmas to you and all
your listeners.
Speaker 1: Thanks sir. That's David Chadwick from Moments of Hope Church.
Again the website City of Hope, CLT dot org. So
if you can make a donation, that would be awesome.
For over a month now, I have been reminding you
to preserve your precious photos and slides, films, and tapes
with Creative Video based in mint Hill. These family heirlooms
hold priceless stories, moments from years past that are irreplaceable.
If you've thought about saving these memories before they fade away,
you are not alone. This is Creative Video's busiest season,
and with the holidays fast approaching, there is no better
time than right now, So you need to hurry. Imagine
the perfect holiday gift. Memories from past family events captured forever.
Creative Video skilled team will professionally transfer your family stories
onto easy to use USB drives or DVDs that won't
deteriorate over time, like the old photos and tapes are
doing right now. Picture it sitting together after a holiday meal,
watching these family favorites, sharing laughs, shedding a few tears,
and telling the stories that make your family uniquely yours.
Get your memories in now and beat the holiday rush.
Visit create a Video dot Com to learn more. That's
Create a Video dot Com. Kirk said that that dismissal
of Frank the caller was the nicest dismissal of a
dumbass I have ever heard. Well, it is Christmas, you know, so,
Dennis says, I am sure going to miss spending my
three hours each day being entertained by you. No, met Oh,
it's a whamaclown. Now I'm here to amuse you. Is
that what? No, No, matter where you go over the
next two weeks, I hope you have a ton of fun.
As long as there's not a Mecklenburg County Sheriff's car
in your rear view mirror, you should be fine. That's
that's probably true. I'm gonna try my best not to
break anything for the next sixteen days. Merry Christmas, Happy
New Year, and hurry back. Yes, sir, well, I cannot
bend the space time continuum, so I will be back
at the normal rate of a day times two weeks.
So that's it. So just next week and the week after.
And look, you're gonna be doing other stuff too, you know,
you got Christmas plans, New Year's whatever. So I'm actually
I'm actually just gonna be doing a lot of stuff.
I've got days. I have filled my days with like
lots of things to do that I have to get
done that I haven't been able to get done. Yeah,
that's what I'll be doing. It's not a honeydee list.
It's a me do list. It's like I got a
do list and it's it is very, very lengthy. So
it makes me not like to take vacation days. This
is why I don't take time off. It's because my
days off are filled with stuff that I've been putting
off because I didn't want to do it in the
first place. So then I take the day off, I
do all this crummy stuff and I'm like, man, I
hate taking days off. So that's why I don't take
days off. That's why I have so many at the
end of the year. All right. So Swanna Noah residents
add Christmas cheer to overturned truck. After almost three months
of staring at hurricane debris, folks in Swana Noah have
decided to add some Christmas spirit to one particular overturned
container truck on the side of US seventy. By the way,
if you don't know where Swanaoah is, if you take
I forty, which by the way, if you're coming from
the Charlotte area, it's best to take three twenty one
to forty. I know some people like taking it seventy four.
It's ten miles shorter. Trust me, I made the trip
for like five years back and forth every week. I
can tell you ten miles shorter, but it takes you
more time. Now, if you want to stop and you
got errands to run, you want to get some food,
that sort of stuff, then seventy four is going to
be a better option because you've got way more stuff
going through Shelby and all that area. But if you're
looking to make time three twenty one to forty, well,
when you're going up forty, you know how it gets
all windy and twisty as you go up the Intercontinental Divide.
That's what that is. As you're going up the twisty part. Well,
Swannaoah is right on the right hand side there. You
know Old Fort. You've seen the signs for well, well,
the sign fell down. Never mind, there was a big
sign there for the Old Fort like business park, which
was weird because then the sign kind of like halfway
collapsed and they had cows walking all around it. So
that was But anyway, it's right near Old Fort. I
did not realize this, it is neither. It's not a
town though, so it's not like in court or Yeah,
it has no city council, and so this is a
problem anyway. So Lindsey Banks writes about this for the
Charlotte Ledger in the Mountain Updates newsletter. They don't know
who set up the display, and they don't know where
the power is coming from or who's providing it. I
should say, it's all still a mystery. She says. It
started as a strand of multicolored lights strung up on
the underside of the truck because it's turned over on
its side, so you can see like the axle and
all of the underneath of the truck, and so somebody
strung up some lights on that thing. It hasn't been
moved since Hurricane Helene. And now the display has grown
to include a couple of spiral Christmas trees, a blow
up Christmas gnome, a couple of candy canes are hung
up on there, and the lights stay on twenty four
to seven. So it's the Bunkop County area of Swanaoah.
It's not a town or a city, so I guess
it's not incorporated, so it does not have any elected
group of officials that you could go ask. So everybody's
asking who is supposed to clean up all of this
debris and who's supposed to clean this up. That's one
of the reasons why Swananoah still hasn't had the kind
of work done. There's no local government there. Those driving
to and from work and school or running errands have
had to look at the scattered reminders of Helene every
day since September twenty seventh, including clothing and toys, caked
and mud mangled vehicles, uprooted trees and branches, scraps of
wood and metal, and all sorts of other building materials.
The crumbs of Helene's devastation have been piled up on
the sides of roads and the Swananoah River bank for months,
and this particular box truck with the floodwaters left near
that the floodwaters left near Beacon Village in Swannanoah has
become sort of a landmark this holiday season. Whoever is
the creator, whoever is supplying the power is unknown. There's
a photographer named Ray Castillo Junior has been capturing images
of the aftermath of Helene on the Facebook and he
took a photo of the box truck with all of
the lights on it. Lindsay Banks says she tried to
call nearby businesses, and the theory is that it maybe
was set up by the woman whose house used to
be behind where the truck ended up, but the house
was destroyed, so they got a number for the woman,
and Lindsay Banks called that woman, but the inbox was
not even set up, so she couldn't even leave a message.
Just down the road, in the parking lot of Athens Pizza,
which is still closed, a massive evergreen tree has been
decorated with fifteen hundred feet of lights by friends and
neighbors of Swana Noah That's a local group. A Facebook
post calls the tree a beacon of hope for the
community and assigned to all who drive by on I
forty that Swanna Noah's spirit remains strong. So if you
are driving up there and you see that Christmas tree
from I forty, that's what you're looking at. Bank says,
my mother has lived in the area her whole life
and drives by that truck every day. She told me
the day that it's hauled away will be a symbolic one,
not because people have grown attached to the Christmas display,
but because it'll be a big step in the area's recovery.
When that truck vanishes, so will a little of the sadness. Finally,
somebody has come to clean up Helene's mess. All right, hey,
real quick, if you would like to get your product
or service in front of about ten thousand people multiple
times a day, send me an email at Pete at
the Pete calendarshow dot com and ask me about advertising.
It's super affordable, it's baked into this podcast forever, and
podcasts have a higher conversion rate than other social media platforms,
making it the best bang for your buck. Send me
a message Pete at Thepete calendarshow dot com and I
can show you how it works. Run the numbers with
you again. That's Pete at the peteclendershow dot com. Let
me jump over here and let's talk to Alan real quick.
Hello Alan, Welcome to the shoe Pete.
Speaker 3: How are you?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 1: I'm good? What's up good?
Speaker 3: I just want to give me a happy Christmas story
ver Swanna noah, okay okay o, says Shriners here in
Charlotte as Sam several times of supplies up there because
we know that they're hard hit at not getting the assertions.
But this Saturday morning at nine o'clock at the fire
station bringing in loads of toys to give back to
the children. That's water no nice. Plus we're also hitting Burnsville, Bakersville,
Mars Hill, and Delle Rio, Tennessee. They're all in the
same shape.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There, I was going to say, you're picking the
worst hit areas.
Speaker 3: It sounds like, well, that's where we've been in the
supplies and yeah, we've received toys from Vermont, Atlanta and
all over the United States, plus locally, so we've got
about forty thousand dollars worth of toys we're taking that bear.
Speaker 1: That's great, Alan, thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it.
Thanks for serving the community and for doing that project
with your Shriners Club. That's awesome.
Speaker 3: Thank you, and appreciate being able to tell you back.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Speaker 3: Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: All right, take care. That's great. There's a ton of
toy drives that have been going on which have been fantastic.
It's gonna be tough. This is gonna be a very
difficult Christmas for a lot of people. There was an
anonymous secret Santa. Did you see this story? CBS news
reporter Steve Hartman followed a secret Santa around Avery County
where he was passing out one hundred dollars bills. I
don't know if he had security, but the WBTV story
there a CBS affiliate. The county was one of dozens
across western North Carolina that sustained major damage due to
Hurricane Helene. Cameras captured the beardless and far from overweight.
Why would you say overweight there? Like, come on, far
from portly? Right, exactly, far from portly? What did you
think I was gonna say, far from ob No, far
from fat Santa? All right, So it's a thinbeardless Anta.
He's walking around house to house, business to business, giving
out cash. Sometimes it was to random strangers. Sometimes it
was to people that he knew that had a need,
and he said, that's the gift. Each year, this businessman
gives away one hundred thousand dollars one hundred dollars bills.
God bless him. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
the show without your support. And the support of the
businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like,
please support them too and tell them you heard it here.
You can also become a patron at my Patreon page
or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so
much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.