At the moment, the women who created “Compassion Campers” have seen 38 campers sent to that area to provide housing for people who have lost their homes, some still living in tents as winter swings into full gear.

Following an initial trip to North Carolina’s affected areas, Newhart said she reached out to Zimmerman.

“I said, ‘I’ve been doing a bunch of research. Would you be able to walk alongside me and help me raise money to walk this out?'” Newhart said.

“She said, ‘Yeah, I’ll help. I don’t have a lot of experience in that area, but I don’t need to because God is strong where we are weak,'” she added.

Following that conversation, God opened door after door for the women. A conversation with Peter Swift at Camp Susque brought an offer to handle fundraising for the group. Swift connected them with C.H. Waltz Sons Inc., where they were able to buy their first camper.

The problem of who would receive the campers was solved when Heather was scrolling through a post on Facebook when the name of a pastor at a church in that area popped up. A phone call later and they had the names of some people in need of shelter.

“At that point we went back to Peter and he said we needed to have our full story in place,” Newhart said.

While they were trying to compile their story, a conversation at their church, Crossroads Church Muncy, yielded an unexpected blessing.

“I was sharing with a few families what we were thinking about doing and we’re about to launch. Nothing had been up on Facebook yet. We hadn’t had a name for our group yet. Nothing with Camp Susque yet,” Newhart shared.

“We had a family from our church walk up with a folded check and gave us enough money to buy our first camper before we even launched anything,” she said.

The family shared that they just felt compelled to help.

“They just gave freely without any questions, except for, ‘Who do we make the check out to?'” Newhart said.

That was Sunday, Oct. 27. Now, two and a half months later, there have been multiple trips with trailers, supplies, generators and much support from this group of people who are living out their faith.

Zimmerman shared another story of how God has blessed their work.

A friend of hers was performing worship songs at Antlers on the Water and she was given permission to share the Compassion Campers’ plan.

She had gotten up to speak before the music portion of the evening and had told everyone their plan to help those displaced by the hurricane. She had also set up a donation bucket out of her line of sight so she wouldn’t focus on that the whole time.

“I just praised and worshipped God the whole night. If you’re going to do something big, you’re going to do something big,” she said.

When she went home and counted the donations, they had only gotten $176.

“I felt so defeated. I shared with her (Newhart) and she said, we have this urgency — we have got to get a camper. She said, ‘What if I put the money in myself?’ I instantly felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit saying stop her. I texted her. I said, Don’t do it. If you do this, this is like us saying to God, ‘We trusted you, but you didn’t do it in our time so we’re going to take it from here.’ I said we can’t be a stumbling block, like the enemy, to try to stop this. So she said, ‘I won’t,'” Zimmerman said.

“That morning, she called me crying. We had two $5,000 donations that morning when we woke up,” she said.

“Just like that, our prayers were answered,” Newhart said.

In that first week, the two learned how to handle legal paperwork, how to purchase campers and how to coordinate between North Carolina with their notaries and the camper dealers here.

“We learned about generators. We knew nothing about generators,” Zimmerman added.

“We had a lot of folks step up and just walk in faith with us. That first week, a lot of folds just gave generously and had no idea. None of us knew but we just all walked it out together,” Newhart added.

Within 48 hours, God had provided three campers, three generators, paperwork with another state and supplies for the campers.

“It definitely wasn’t us. It was all God, because we’ve been doing this for a couple months and still don’t really know exactly what we’re doing. We just go with whatever He tells us,” Zimmerman said.

One of the amazing things about their journey since last fall is that none of their volunteers seem to be tiring of the work they’re doing. The donations keep coming in — money, supplies and trailers as well as people to make the drive to North Carolina to deliver it all. And all along the way, there have been God-moments where it was obvious only He could have arranged what transpired.

“It’s all been a huge blessing because it’s all been volunteers. Everything’s been through donations. Our drivers — God puts the call on their heart to drive down and donate their time, their fuel. The camper dealers — they come down (in costs) tremendously.”

Zimmerman shared how on their first visit to Rhone’s RV, they were looking at trailers, but the prices were beyond their means.

“Heather was like, ‘We can’t afford this, we don’t even have any money yet.’ He (the owner) came over and he put his hand over the thing and he said, ‘You guys aren’t here to look at the prices, you’re here to look for the needs for the family. This is on our hearts to help, too,'” Zimmerman said.

“It’s just been God from the very beginning,” she added.

Prayer has underpinned their entire journey. Prayers for supplies, volunteers and for the families that will receive the trailers. When they deliver the trailers, they take time to pray with and for those families.

There was a single mom who had lost everything-her car, her job and her home. When they heard about her situation, they realized the immediate need to find her a home.

“So we put out a video asking, ‘Will somebody buy a camper?’ I said to Chrissy we can fundraise, but it’s not going to happen soon enough. We need to see if we can find somebody to just donate a camper. I made the video and I was on my knees praying in my office that day and within 30 minutes of that post being up, she and I got a text from Tyler Rhone saying, ‘Somebody just called me about buying a camper for you,'” Newhart shared.

It turned out after talking to the man who wanted to donate the money for the camper, he had not seen the video, he “just had the call of God on his heart to buy this camper,” Zimmerman said.

“It just shows how fast God moves. When you ask, He’s there,” she said.

Compassion Campers is still collecting funds through Camp Susque to purchase more campers. More information is available on their Facebook page.

“In missions work in general, you don’t know how you’re impacting people or if what you’re doing is going to have an effect on someone else’s life,” Newhart said.

“So even if you don’t feel like you are fit or you’re worthy, God has a plan and he’s gonna walk you through as long as you’re true to Him and you are asking for Him to guide you through that process and you’re not leaning on yourself, but on Him, then everything will work,” she said.