Eight Days of Hope (EDOH) is a ministry, and Steve Tybor came up with the idea after seeing the devastation that Hurricane Katrina did to Mississippi and other states. Tybor, who was living in Tupelo, Mississippi, remembers a phone call with his father 72 hours after the storm hit.
“I think it would be great if you and I could find a couple buddies and maybe help somebody out, maybe help them rebuild their home, maybe a widow an elderly couple, maybe a single mom. But you find two or three guys, I'll find two or three guys, and we'll meet in Mississippi and drive down and just see what the Lord leads us," Steve recalls what his father said.
What began with a few individuals turned into multiple trips with many people, all of them volunteers who, over the course of eight days, helped families rebuild their homes for free.
"That one trip that was meant to help out one family now has seen 63,000 volunteers travel the country to help 12,000 families rebuild their homes. We had a plan. God had a much bigger plan,” says Tybor.
Today, EDOH has responded to over 100 natural disasters including floods, tornadoes, and fires. Meanwhile, some of the victims helped by Eight Days of Hope have turned around and helped other disaster victims.
And now, the ministry has four different divisions of outreach.
"We have an arm that goes right away, like in Harvey, where we took 2000 volunteers and were there for ten weeks mucking out homes and drying them out so mold would not set in. We have a rebuilding arm, and that arm now it's been on 20 different eight day outreaches. We now have a mass feeding arm, and then we have an arm where we use our skilled volunteers to build safe places for women and children rescued from trafficking," explains Tybor.
He recounted that the biggest project for the rebuilding arm was Hurricane Harvey in Houston. They took 4,692 people from 50 states, and 11 countries and helped 808 families rebuild their homes in two back-to-back eight-day trips.
American Family Association, the parent organization of American Family News (AFN), has been a financial partner of EDOH. With only several people and $1,200 in the bank for the first trip, Tybor shared with Tim Wildman and his father Don their plans for the Gulf Coast and their financial accountability.
“I told him the plan and that we had a vice president from a local bank that would be heavily involved. He said 'Well, we trust you, we believe in you, and we want to give you this check for one hundred.' I thought 'Oh my gosh, we now have $1300.’ I went to the parking lot, I opened up the envelope, and there was a check for $100,000," Tybor says.
American Family Radio (AFR), a division of American Family Association, has since helped raise awareness for EDOH.
"Don did bless us with seed money. That made a huge difference for those families, but if he only knew today that, now, there's four arms of the ministry that has done closing in on $100 million of work – I think that was a pretty good return on investment," comments Tybor.
