A Community In Crisis Published Aug 21, 2020 0:000:035:18 Austin Spooner and the team at Veritas - Cedar Rapids utilized the communication tools in Rock to minister to a community in crisis. “Last Monday, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the surrounding communities were hit with a derecho. A derecho is a widespread, long-lived, and fast-moving type of violent storm known for straight-line winds. During this storm, wind gusts reached as high as 112 miles per hour and over 200,000 people lost power. Now, a week later over 25,000 still do not have power.” The team updated their Rock-powered external website with a disaster relief banner to help connect with those who may have found an internet connection. “You would not believe how many times we said we were so thankful our website was migrated to Rock, " Austin shared. Using SMS text messaging features in Rock, the staff reached out to their members and began recruiting volunteers to help with disaster relief. Within 24 hours, there were over 100 volunteers, ready to serve their neighbors. “Because Veritas uses a tool like Rock, we were able to respond quickly to meet the needs in our church and in the community."