Linda Wolf was washing dishes at her kitchen sink when she held up a fork and began to cry. Thinking of neighbors who had lost their homes in the Eaton Fire, she thought, “Fire survivors don’t even have a fork.”
Linda and Kim Aasland co-lead an Epicentre Church spiritual support group for fire survivors. Linda went to Kim with an idea: a crockpot could make meal preparation easier for people living in trailers and small rentals. Linda started a GoFundMe campaign and collaborated with the Thom Wolf Institute of Global Studies, Epicentre Church, and Fully Alive Community Health. Epicentre provided crockpots and volunteers for home visits, while Fully Alive provided crockpot recipe books.
At the same time, unbeknownst to Linda, fire survivor Carolyn Park was living in displaced housing and thinking about how much she missed her crockpot. Carolyn prayed for one and sensed God telling her not to buy it because He would give her one. When she later saw the Crockpot Home Visit flyer, she recognized it as the answer she had been waiting for. Receiving the crockpot reminded her that God saw her, cared for her, and had not forgotten her.
About 20 volunteers went out in groups of two or three to deliver 70 crockpots to survivors in their temporary homes. They asked how people were doing, listened to their experiences, offered resources, and prayed with those who welcomed prayer.
For Kim, Epicentre’s Fire Response Coordinator, the decision to deliver the gifts was personal. She is an Eaton Fire survivor herself and knows what it feels like to wait in line for assistance while feeling like a number. She wanted to flip that experience: instead of placing another task on people already carrying the demands of recovery, the volunteers would do the traveling and bring help to their doors. A home visit also made room to recognize each survivor as a person, hear how they were doing, and respond to needs beyond a crockpot.
One recipient called it an “Amazing visit, so thankful, thank you.” Feedback from another visit noted that the survivor liked to cook because it relieved stress and appreciated not having to wait in line. Another person said he “Loved that he was properly recognized.”
On one visit, a survivor had forgotten the volunteers were coming and was driving away as they arrived. Kim called out his name, and he stopped. He later told her that being remembered by name meant more to him than the crockpot itself. As they talked, he shared how difficult recovery had been after losing his mother and aunt to cancer just months before the fire, and how deeply he longed to rebuild a family home.
The giveaway is part of Epicentre Church’s ongoing Eaton Fire response, which includes practical assistance, community gatherings, and continued relationships with fire-impacted households.
