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United Methodists respond with outpouring of supplies, funds

Sep. 6, 2005

NOTE: Photographs and related coverage are available at
http://umns.umc.org.

A UMNS Report
By Ciona Rouse*

United Methodists and others have contributed $1.7 million through
online and telephone donations to the United Methodist Committee on
Relief in response to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

The figure, last updated in the early afternoon of Sept. 6, does not
include contributions sent by mail or made through local church
offerings. Roland Fernandes, treasurer of the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries, said contributions by mail will take longer to
process. UMCOR is a unit of the Board of Global Ministries.

Churches across the denomination responded in many ways to the storm,
such as gathering relief supplies and opening shelters. They reacted
quickly to an emergency appeal by Bishop Edward Paup, president of
UMCOR, to deliver or ship health kits, blankets and bottled water to the
agency's Sager Brown Depot in Baldwin, La.

Sager Brown dispatched supplies to relief sites across the Gulf Coast
areas following Hurricane Katrina's Aug. 29 attack, which devastated the
region.

"The situation is desperate," said Gwen E. Redding, director of the
depot, referring to the people trying to get out of New Orleans and
those who left before the storm hit.

"Many people came out thinking they would be gone for two days, but now
they have no idea when they can go home," she said. "They have nothing
but the clothes on their backs; they have used up the money in their
pockets, and even if they have big bank accounts they can't get to
them."

Sager Brown, originally a school for African-American orphans after the
Civil War, stocks such relief supplies as health kits, sewing kits and
flood buckets.

The denomination's Western North Carolina Annual (regional) Conference
sent 2,000 health kits in response to the hurricane, one of many
conferences to send supplies.

United Methodists also were mobilizing work teams. Officials with the
Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference and Memphis Conference announced
plans to dispatch teams to Mississippi, with the Oklahoma group heading
to the Gulf Coast Sept. 7.

Church World Service responds

Church World Service deployed disaster response specialists to
Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas over the Labor Day weekend. The Rev.
John McCullough, a United Methodist, is executive director and CEO of
the humanitarian agency, which partners with UMCOR and draws support
from the denomination as well as other churches.

McCullough, an African American, said Church World Service will
collaborate with African-American churches and policy leaders on behalf
of New Orleans' poor blacks.

"These people's lives are shattered, many have lost family, been
separated from family or children during evacuation," McCullough said.
His organization's assignment, he said, "is helping these people rebuild
their lives, find new homes, recover from the trauma, and know that they
are important, that they are not abandoned."

"They have no idea how long it will be before they can return, if ever,"
he said. "The poor of New Orleans, many of whom simply couldn't afford
to evacuate before the hurricane, had little but their families, their
city, their roots. But we will see them through."

Bishop calls for prayer

Bishop Peter Weaver, president of the United Methodist Council of
Bishops, urged church members to pray for hurricane victims and to
support denomination relief efforts.

"Our biblical forebears saw God creating order out of chaos, where no
life pulsated. We dare to join God in the face of devastation and chaos
to build new churches and their facilities, and do even more than we had
thought or imagined," Weaver said, in a statement on behalf of the
council.

The bishop lamented the loss of historic United Methodist Gulfside
Assembly in Waveland, Miss. The assembly had been undergoing
reconstruction in recent years. Gulfside trustees will meet in October
to discuss next steps.

"We grieve with those who sacrificially dedicated themselves to rebuild
Gulfside and expand its outreach. They had dreams of children, youth,
and adults experiencing God's love so deeply they would give their lives
to Christ, as had happened to hundreds and thousands earlier," said
Weaver, bishop of the church's Boston Area.

Weaver said about 75 pastors in Mississippi and Louisiana had not been
located since the hurricane. Several thousand residents in affected
areas were still missing. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin estimated 10,000
deaths in his city alone.

'Evacuees,' not 'refugees'

Bishop Felton Edwin May challenged the use of the word "refugees" in
many news reports to describe the people forced from their homes in
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

"We do not have refugees in the United States," said May, former bishop
of the Washington (D.C.) Area and currently dean of the Harry R. Kendall
Science and Health Mission Center at Philander Smith College in Little
Rock, Ark. "These persons left their homes because of a horrific
hurricane, not because of war or political persecution. The term
'refugee' is carefully defined in international law and by the United
Nations."

May said he understands why the news media is using the term, because it
is short and the scenes are reminiscent of persons victimized by war.

"Calling these persons refugees is demeaning and undercuts their
humanity. They have been forced from their homes by a terrible storm. I
urge persons of faith, public officials and the news media to use the
accurate term - displaced persons or evacuees - to describe these
persons."

Churches open shelters

United Methodist churches and related organizations around the United
States opened their doors to hurricane evacuees.

In Houston, for example, the Methodist Hospital received more than 300
evacuees from older adult homes and hospitals in the New Orleans area.
St. Paul's United Methodist Church provided meals for the patients'
families, and Methodist Retirement Communities was assisting in
relocation efforts.

The Alabama-West Florida Conference opened up Blue Lake United Methodist
Camp in Andalusia, Ala., to evacuees, and the Arkansas Conference opened
all of its campgrounds, providing 600 beds for use. The North Georgia
Conference hosted three centers for displaced people to replenish
supplies as they find shelter.

For more information on United Methodist hurricane relief efforts, visit
http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/05/faq.cfm. Donations can be made at
www.methodistrelief.org or by phone at (800) 554-8583. Checks should be
written to UMCOR and given at local churches or mailed directly to
UMCOR, P.O. Box 9068, New York, NY 10087-9068; designate Advance No.
982523, "Hurricanes 2005 Global" on the memo line. Checks to support
recovery in a specific region should reflect that.

For information on assembling and shipping health kits or flood buckets,
call UMCOR Sager Brown at (800) 814-8765 or visit umcor.org online.

*Rouse is a freelance writer in Nashville, Tenn.

News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org

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