A short message left Sunday afternoon on the Facebook page of Abilene Christian University alumnus David M. Vanderpool, M.D., was direct yet confident with a potential disaster looming on the horizon:

“The LiveBeyond team is prepared to act as first responders when Hurricane Matthew makes landfall in Haiti with clean water, food and medical care.”

Matthew, the most powerful tropical Atlantic storm in nearly a decade, is a Category 4 hurricane packing winds of 145 miles per hour. It is expected to drop 25-40 inches of rain when it makes landfall sometime late Monday or early Tuesday.
LiveBeyond – a ministry of Vanderpool (’82) and his wife, Laurie (Stallings ’81) – is no stranger to helping with catastrophic situations. The Stallings family formed Mobile Medical Disaster Relief in 2005 but changed its name to LiveBeyond after responding in 2010 to a major earthquake in Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world. In May 2013, the Vanderpools moved to live and work there full time in a life-changing enterprise providing faith-based humanitarian aid.
The couple was on campus in late August when David was the featured speaker at his alma mater’s Opening Assembly in Moody Coliseum.
The most recent issue of ACU Today magazine explains how Abilene Christian graduates who participated in a Spring Break Campaign in 1990 reunited this past summer in Thomazeau to assist at LiveBeyond: