Before Beth Palmer ran disaster recovery operations for Kerr County, she was Coach Palmer in the Ingram ISD gym. She has spent the past two years watching former students walk into the disaster recovery center at Light on the Hill at Mount Wesley to apply for emergency financial assistance — and greeting her as “Coach Palmer” when they arrive.
“It may be a small amount of money,” Palmer said Monday on The Lead Live’s Nonprofit Week, “and they’re so grateful and they’re like, ‘You don’t understand. This will help us so much.’”
Palmer appeared as the opening guest of Nonprofit Week’s final day to describe an organization that has been in continuous disaster response mode since July 4, 2025 — and is, by her own honest assessment, running a marathon with no finish line in sight.
Light on the Hill at Mount Wesley, located at 610 Methodist Encampment, is the former Mount Wesley retreat center — a property owned by the Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church and managed since 2019 by the Kerrville First United Methodist Church, which established a dedicated 501(c)(3) to sustain the campus’s long tradition of spiritual retreats while adding social services programming. COVID arrived immediately after incorporation, and the organization’s small food pantry went from modest to essential almost overnight. During the height of the pandemic, the drive-thru line for Mustard Seed Ministries — the campus’s ongoing food distribution operation — stretched all the way to Junction Highway.
The floods made everything bigger again.
When the July 4, 2025, flood hit, First United Methodist Church opened as an emergency shelter. Light on the Hill opened as a second shelter the same evening. For the following year, the campus hosted volunteer groups, first responders, deep-water divers, and the disaster feeding organization Mercy Chefs — all free of charge. To make sense of the overwhelming acronym landscape of disaster recovery, Palmer traveled to California with David and Lorie Payne in September 2025 for intensive training with UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief.
“Where is the acronym cheat sheet?” she said, laughing, describing the early days. “I need to know what language you speak of that I do not understand.”
What she learned in California stayed with her.
“It’s a marathon,” she said. “It’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint. And while you’re affected by something, nothing moves fast enough. But we really are moving quickly.”
The organization established a permanent Disaster Case Manager Center on campus — a dedicated space where state and local case managers can train, work collaboratively, and meet directly with affected families. It has become one of the operational anchors of the county’s recovery infrastructure.
When the July 16, 2026, flood hit — the sequel nobody wanted — Kerr County was better organized than it was in 2025. Rebuild Kerr and Kerr Together were already established. But the funding picture was dramatically worse, with less national attention and fewer outside donations flowing in.
Light on the Hill is currently administering an Emergency Financial Assistance Grant funded by the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country. As of Monday, 469 households have received emergency capital. Another 200 are being contacted this week. The funds — used for sheetrock, utility bills, or lost wages from missed hourly work — are prioritized for the most vulnerable residents: the elderly, veterans, and families with small children.
Over 1,000 local homes sustained some level of damage in the July flood. Palmer noted that “minor” on a damage assessment form does not mean minor in a family’s life.
The summer has added its own pressure. With children home from school, household food budgets have spiked — school lunches are gone and grocery costs have risen. Texas heat has driven electricity bills to unmanageable levels for families already stretched thin. Demand for rental assistance, utility help, food, and clothing has remained high through August.
The organization’s most urgent community event is happening Monday, Aug. 31 — the Kerr County Mega Food Pantry, hosted in partnership with the San Antonio Food Bank, from 8 to 10 a.m. at the Light on the Hill campus. The early start is intentional: beating the summer heat. Palmer called San Antonio Food Bank leadership Eric Cooper and Mario Bledo “unsung heroes” of both disasters — the first outside partners to call her directly when both floods hit.
The campus runs on more than 300 unpaid volunteers every month. Palmer described what she has decided constitutes a win.
“We always strived to be a hub of hope in our community,” she said. “And I feel like when we’ve been tested, we have risen to that.”
Kerr County Mega Food Pantry: Monday, Aug. 31, 8-10 a.m., 610 Methodist Encampment. Light on the Hill: lightonthehillmw.org.
Leave a Reply