Dozens gathered Monday in Waynesville, North Carolina, to praise God for our first home built since Hurricane Helene. The new owners are the aging parents of Billy Graham's former nurse.
In the same front yard where Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters tore through their quiet western North Carolina neighborhood, Benny and Keeva Messer stood on June 2 praising God for a brand-new home built in Jesus’ Name, from the foundation below to the shingles above.
Scores of volunteers, Samaritan’s Purse staff, friends, and family gathered to celebrate the Messers’ new home.
“Today we are going to celebrate and rejoice,” said Luther Harrison, vice president of North American Ministries with Samaritan’s Purse, addressing those gathered at Monday’s dedication. Among the crowd were Messer’s family, friends, and a group of Samaritan’s Purse volunteers. “This is not what the volunteers have done, or the staff, or what our donors have provided—this is what God has done.”
Before they received keys to their home and took their first look inside, Benny and Keeva were presented with a special Billy Graham Training Center Bible and a scrapbook filled with photos of the volunteers who helped build their home.
The Messers were reminded of God’s love as He graciously provided them with a new home built by God’s people.
They also received an invoice stamped with bold red letters that read PAID IN FULL, reminding the Messers that the gift of their new home was given to them without charge and that the debt for our sins was paid through the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross.
“We’re home again,” Benny said. “They tore my house down on my daughter’s birthday—December 11. Today is June 2. Who would have ever thought they could build a house that quick from the ground up?
“One thing I like about Samaritan’s Purse is that they pray with you when you come, and they pray with you when you leave,” he continued. “They let their light shine.”
Luther Harrison, vice president of North American Ministries at Samaritan’s Purse, offered words of blessing and encouragement as the Messers prepared to see their new home.
Keeva was left in awe.
“I never dreamed of ever having a new home,” she said, “I just don’t know what to say … words cannot explain because I am full of joy and love and happiness.”
Volunteers Building in Jesus’ Name
Starting in January, Samaritan’s Purse volunteers from around the country came to Waynesville to help build the Messers’ house—including a group of college students from the University of Connecticut on their spring break. All shared God’s love with the Messers in the wake of the historic hurricane.
The Messers were welcomed home by volunteers, friends, family, and Samaritan’s Purse staff after being displaced for months after Hurricane Helene.
“We’re here to serve Christ and to serve people for Him,” said Elizabeth Bailie, a volunteer from Blairsville, Georgia. She and her husband helped prepare the foundation in February, returned in May to serve again, and made the trip a third time to see the Messers move into their home.
“They are awesome,” she said of Benny and Keeva.
Samaritan’s Purse has come alongside hurting families and communities since Hurricane Helene struck last September. After our initial clean up response, we helped homeowners in multiple counties in western North Carolina and east Tennessee get back on their feet, replacing vehicles, providing campers for winter shelter, and supplying other essentials for suffering families. Now, we praise God for the opportunity through our long-term rebuild program to make repairs to damaged homes and provide new homes (both stick-built and mobile) for families displaced by the storm.
Before entering their new home, the Messers received prayer and a Billy Graham Training Center Bible with signatures from the team on the inside cover.
“We are in this for the long haul. We are not leaving,” Harrison said. “God brought this storm into our neighborhood and we are going to help our neighbors and minister to them in a big way.”
The Bible Will Stay on the Table
Gathered with their children, grandchildren, siblings, and a number of longtime friends, Benny and Keeva gasped at each turn as they walked through their new home for the first time. Benny was drawn to his recliner, and Keeva to the dishwasher.
“I’ve never had a dishwasher,” she said. She then opened the freezer to see an ice-maker. “I’ve never had one of these either!”
For nearly 50 years, the Messers have lived at this same property in Waynesville where they raised a family faithful to the Word of God and sought to permeate their community with the hope of Jesus Christ.
“Understanding who the Messers are is not even in what they say, it’s in the spirit in which they walk,” said Shane Facemyer, the senior pastor at Mount Moriah Wesleyan Church who attended the event to celebrate with the Messers. “The sincerity; the sweetness—it’s the anointing that God’s put on these people and His love just exudes from them.”
Helene was only one of the storms the Messer family has faced over the last several months. Both Keeva and Benny have endured cancer diagnoses during the rebuild process and in the years before. Keeva was told she would never be cancer-free.
Keeva Messer is also celebrating a reprieve from years of cancer. Three physicians recently found her to be cancer-free.
The uncertainties about their health became opportunities for volunteers to bless them each time they visited the construction site. They gathered around the couple often to pray over them for healing and for God to work a miracle. Then just last month, three different doctors observed the impossible: Keeva was cancer-free for the first time in years.
“God’s been so kind and He’s still on the throne for sure,” Keeva said through tears as she sat by her husband.
As family and friends began to leave, she added: “The Bible will stay on the table, so that everyone knows about who we serve.”
God’s Legacy Intertwined with the Graham Family
When the flood waters started to rise that late September day, Benny called his daughter Amy—a nurse who has taken care of the Messers as they age. This new home, she says, comes at the perfect time for her ailing parents. The house is equipped with an easy access ramp in the back and a handicap-accessible bathroom for their convenience.
Amy is the Messers’ daughter who served as nurse to Billy and Ruth Graham in their final years.
“We are overwhelmed and very blessed that the Lord worked through Samaritan’s Purse to be able to have my parents back in their home,” Amy said. “I don’t have to worry about them falling, or tripping, or anything. Praise God.”
Amy knew of the work of Samaritan’s Purse long before she helped her parents apply for a new home through our rebuild program. For 15 years, she served as nurse to the Rev. Billy Graham and his wife, Ruth Bell Graham, until the famed evangelist’s passing in 2018.
“It was an honor every day I went in,” Amy said, “I didn’t call it work. I was just going to my other home. We were family and he treated us like family and loved on us and prayed for us.”
Through her work with the Grahams, Amy also met Don Wilton, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and his wife, Karyn. Wilton served as pastor to Billy Graham at the evangelist’s Montreat residence and spoke at the June 2 dedication of Amy’s parents’ home (watch the video at top for more).
In recent days, as our teams completed work on the Messer’s home, Edward Graham, Samaritan’s Purse COO and grandson of Billy Graham, recounted the blessing of Amy’s service to his family.
“Amy was so sweet and gracious with my grandparents when they were aging. She loved them like they were her own parents,” said Edward Graham, the grandson of Billy Graham and current COO for Samaritan’s Purse. “Now that her parents, who both recently survived cancer, lost their home and entire belongings to Hurricane Helene, Samaritan’s Purse has built them a new one. Like many others in western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, we want them to know they are not forsaken.”
During her time with Billy Graham, Amy says her faith was strengthened, and now as his oldest son, Franklin Graham, leads Samaritan’s Purse as its president, she is confident that all that has happened—even the hurricane’s fury and devastation—is within God’s sovereign plan.
“The night before Franklin Graham called me on the phone to tell me that he was going to help my parents, I had a conversation with my parents about foreclosing on this property, but my dad kept the faith,” she said, recounting Franklin Graham’s encouragement in that conversation. “He said, ‘We’ll see what God has in store.’
“Now look at what God has done through Samaritan’s Purse and all the volunteers that have come across the country for this.”
We praise God for the Messer family and for their new home. Please pray for the work of Samaritan’s Purse as many more homes are being built and will soon be dedicated to our Lord Jesus Christ over the coming months and years.
“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock” (Matthew 7:24-25).
It was a day of celebration among generations.
