It’s 'Mission Accomplished' For These Roto-Rooter Franchise Owners

Travel to aid the needy in far-flung and desperate countries is a meaningful calling for Alabama pumpers David and Deborra Byrd.
It’s 'Mission Accomplished' For These Roto-Rooter Franchise Owners
David and Deborra Byrd (Photos courtesy of David and Deborra Byrd)

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As the owners of a Roto-Rooter franchise in Huntsville, Alabama, David and Deborra Byrd are dedicated to resolving customers’ issues of clogged drains and full septic tanks and grease traps. That urge to help others carries over into their personal lives, where they’re devoted to performing a much larger – and sometimes risky – service for others: missionary work in foreign countries.

Since 1996, the Byrds – who purchased the Roto-Rooter of Huntsville, Madison County, and the Lincoln County franchise in 1991 – have taken more than 40 missionary trips to such far-flung countries as China, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, India, Kenya, Namibia, Moldova, Romania, South Africa and Zimbabwe. They’ve been detained by foreign authorities and have seen unfathomable hardship and tragedy. But undeterred, they continue to make four to five sojourns a year, spreading a message of hope and helping those who need it most.

Why do they do it? “The simple answer is because we feel the call,” says David. “After our first trip, as soon as we got home, there was a yearning in our spirit to return. Once you go and you can taste, touch, feel and experience the needs of those who have no social-support structure, who do not even have soap to wash with or clean water to drink, who have no people to care about them and no faith in a God that cares for them, then your humanity draws you back, again and again.”

THE DESIRE TO HELP

The Byrds’ journey began innocuously enough in 1996 when the couple attended a presentation made by Curtis Silcox, the founder of Good News Today, a global missionary organization. Afterward, David was asked to give Silcox a ride to an airport – a two-hour drive away. As “church kids,” the Byrds were well aware of missions but never dreamed they’d actually go on one. But two hours of talking with Silcox about missionary work planted a seed.

After careful consideration, David agreed to make a mission trip to South Africa later that year. “One trip was all it took to experience a life change,” says Deborra.

She did not accompany him because the couple didn’t think they both could take time away from the business for 15 days. But David was so moved by the experience that they agreed to take future mission trips together.

It certainly isn’t easy to leave work for 15 days at a crack, especially one that has grown so significantly in the last two decades. Former managers of numerous Wal-Mart stores in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, the Byrds started out with 11 franchise employees and offered only plumbing and sewer and drain cleaning services. Nearly 25 years later, the franchise employs 32 people and has branched out into cleaning septic tanks and grease traps, pipeline inspections, backflow testing and trenchless pipe rehabilitation.

WORKING TOOLS

The roster of equipment also expanded dramatically. Today, the franchise owns 20 Ford service trucks; three vacuum trucks outfitted by Ibex Inc. and Transway Systems Inc.; a truck-mounted trailer jetter made by Myers (a Pentair Ltd. company); a trailer-mounted water jetter made by US Jetting; three excavators built by Caterpillar Inc. and Kubota Tractor Corp.; a pipe bursting system made by TRIC Tools Inc.; and a variety of pipeline-inspection camera systems, locators and detection equipment made by RIDGID and Amazing Machinery LLC.

“As in any business, your people make the difference,” says David, explaining how the couple can leave the business for extended periods of time. “We are blessed to have wonderful people who know their jobs, service their customers and respect our company’s philosophy, which is – as stated in our company handbook – to give glory to God in all that is done. Our employees see it as their task to make sure all goes well when we are away so we can leave without worry. And in doing so they contribute to the mission effort. As a result, we’re all blessed.”

Over the years, the Byrds say they’ve been criticized at times for devoting so much effort to people in foreign countries when so many local people also need help. But Deborra points out that the couple also does mission work through their church, the Rock Family Worship Center.

“The church is very involved in domestic and world missions, and we lead mission teams for them, too,” Deborra explains. “But there are many people involved in local missions that don’t have the means or opportunity to commit to foreign travel. So they fulfill their mission (locally) and we do ours globally.”

HAITI TRIP

The Byrds say it’s difficult to pick a most memorable trip, but some definitely stick out more than others. One such trip: a medical mission to Haiti just three weeks after an earthquake devastated the country in 2010.

“It was unforgettable to see the need of the wounded and homeless … to see the supplies that were available to them, then witness the ‘system’ that prevailed, which left rotting food on the docks, medical supplies in trailers and volunteers frustrated and held hostage to demands of mercenaries of every kind,” she says.

“There just is not enough money from any government to improve the conditions there until there is a heartfelt change in the societal structure.”

Then there was a trip to the poverty-stricken shantytowns of South Africa and another to Kenya to work with women saved from slave trafficking. “Our organization was able to provide sewing machines to teach them a trade,” Deborra says. “The material they learned with? Paper bags – and their stitching was so fine it could rival that done by any tailor.” In communities in Romania and Central America, the couple encountered more senseless tragedy: children dying from diarrhea, even though the cure was quite simple – doses of Pepto-Bismol.

APPRECIATING FREEDOM

But the couple has no difficulty citing their most harrowing experience: the time they were arrested for carrying religious literature into a country where the Gospel is considered akin to pornography, she says. (She declined to name the country because she’s afraid the couple’s visa could be revoked, which would prevent them from making future missionary trips there.)

“We were arrested with the ‘evidence,’ which was confiscated,” she recalls. “After the officials yelled at us for some time in their native language, we were released. Through it all, we remained calm and repeatedly answered that we did not understand their questions, and tried to remain oblivious to the circumstances. When they saw their intimidation tactics weren’t working, and with God’s favor, they let us go.”

Despite the obvious risks involved, the couple remains committed to taking more missionary trips. In fact, this past August they traveled to Honduras, where they helped complete a children’s feeding center for two small villages.

“The greatest reward is the blessing of serving others – of withdrawing from your comfort zone to experience the way the other 95 percent of the world lives,” Deborra says. The work also helps them appreciate even more what so many people here take for granted: the freedoms, privileges and standard of living enjoyed by Americans. As David puts it, “It makes us even more grateful for the miracle of being born in the United States of America.”



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