What started as a dream in Jack Travelstead’s heart became a reality after he had made several mission trips to Haiti. After Illinois experienced many floods, in 1993, he saw the great need and responded to what God put in his heart on how to help those in need. He had visited UMCOR Sager-Brown in Baldwin, LA and sought to pattern a disaster response location after the UMCOR location in the heart of the Midwest.

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Jack was a district superintendent with the United Methodist Church that was asked by Governor Jim Edgar to help respond to The Great Flood of 1993. The United Methodist Churches along the Mississippi River that were close but not affected were called upon to respond. But there was not a central disaster location to organize any type of response. That was the official start of the cultivation of Jack’s dream. Good things sometimes require bad things to happen first, as we see from stories in the Bible.

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So, Jack went to work on raising funds after the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church voted at the June 1999 annual conference to allow him to proceed with forming a non-profit to respond to disasters (natural and man-made) as long as there was not any indebtedness. There was a grant of $100,000 from the IGRC that had been raised for Project Schoolroom which was voted to be granted to this project. Also, a grant from UMCOR of $50,000 helped establish the location that Midwest Mission now sets on.

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Jack had remarked multiple times that we are keeping the dream alive that started in his heart and felt that it was all part of God’s divine plan. God is always working for the good of His people and for the good of the world. And Jack loved seeing the fruits of his dream happening in his lifetime at Midwest Mission helping those all around the world and

even around the corner.

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And it continues today, over 24 years later.