ARDEN — The first Saturday of November was crisp and clear across most of the Carolinas, the type of day when most college students’ minds turn toward football games and outings with friends.

For 28 campus ministry students from across the Diocese of Charlotte, the day had a different focus – helping people in western North Carolina affected by the ravages of Tropical Storm Helene.

The students and six campus ministry staff workers gathered early in the morning on Nov. 2 at a warehouse owned by the Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (ABCCM) that has become a hub for relief supplies.

Officials from the interdenominational ministry bought the facility on Brevard Road in Arden in July and were still determining how to best use it when Helene barreled through in late September – leaving thousands of people homeless in mountain communities from Spruce Pine to Chimney Rock.

They quickly converted the warehouse into a distribution center for supplies and now welcome truckloads of materials daily from around North Carolina and from as far away as Louisiana, Idaho, Ohio, New York, Florida, West Virginia and Maine. The day before the college students came, 17 aid trucks had arrived.

When they showed up that Saturday morning, the college students saw that the inside of the warehouse was stacked from floor to ceiling with everything from bottled water and sleeping bags to canned food, clothes, propane heaters, camp stoves, pet food and cleaning supplies.

Guided by warehouse staff, they immediately went to work. Some labored at the front of the warehouse, loading supplies onto pallets that were then sent out to various community locations. Others worked feverishly in the back of the facility, sorting through boxes and piles of donated clothing.

The idea for a service workday evolved after the Campus Ministry’s annual discipleship retreat scheduled for that weekend was postponed, explained Darien Clark, the diocese’s director of Campus and Young Adult Ministry. The facility where they were going to have their retreat is now housing volunteers and workers who are responding to storm-related needs. Instead, Clark said, they decided it would be a better idea to get involved in the relief efforts – and the students responded.

Students came in from Appalachian State University, Davidson College, North Carolina A&T, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Greensboro, Wake Forest University and Western Carolina University. Joining them were campus ministry leaders from the different schools, including Father Innocent Amasiorah, campus minister at UNC-Charlotte, and Father Moses Njoh, campus minister at UNC-Greensboro.

Although the work was not easy, the students and staff did it with plenty of smiles and laughter, joining in conversation with ABCCM staff members and other volunteers working in the warehouse that day. They moved at a steady pace from morning through the afternoon, only stopping for a quick midday lunch break.

“I’d been wanting to contribute to the storm relief efforts, so I was glad when Campus Ministry reached out to me to do this,” said Catherine Major, a junior economics major at Wake Forest. “It feels good to be helping out, and it’s great to see people who have never met each other before today all working together.”

As they moved through the warehouse, the students passed pallets of donated goods that illustrate the range of charitable organizations that are responding to the continuing relief efforts in western North Carolina. There were boxes from national organizations like Food for the Poor and Lutheran World Relief. A pallet of water and other goods from the neighboring Catholic Diocese of Raleigh bore the slogan, “North Carolina Strong!”

Connor Deitz, a sophomore parks and recreation major at Western Carolina University, knew he wanted to help storm victims after he saw how communities surrounding his college campus were affected.

“I’ve been wanting to help out the community, and just seeing how many people are here today to do this work is a great thing,” he said.

Ignatius Yawlui, a doctoral student in nanotechnology at UNC-Greensboro, spent part of the day sorting through massive bins of donated clothing, separating new and used items for men, women and children into bins to make it easier for recipients to find what they need. Yawlui, whose home country is Nigeria, said being able to help out was a blessing.

“This is exactly what Christ asks us to do.”