wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Presbyterians in Gulf area wonder where friends,

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8892 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05468
Sept. 9, 2005

The sheep that are lost

Presbyterians in Gulf area wonder where friends, parishioners are

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Ford Deith is trying to find the roughly 300 parishioners who
worship at Parkway Presbyterian Church in Metairie, LA, on the outskirts of
New Orleans.

	So far, he's found about 40, and he figures they've heard from about
40 others since Hurricane Katrina roared through on Aug. 29.

	Cell phones only connect sporadically, but text messaging,
inexplicably, seems to work. That's how the youth group connects. Internet
access is available in some places, but not all. Regular phone lines are
fuzzy. And just about everyone is out of place - in someone's spare bedroom
or in a hotel in a different town with a different phone number.

	"About all I can say is, I don't know where my people are," says the
Rev. Tom Oler, who has been working at the South Louisiana Presbytery office
in Baton Rouge because he can't stay at his house in Metairie and there's a
tree on the roof of his church.

	Twice he's driven into the old neighborhood for quick inspections,
but what was once a one-hour trip now takes six. Traffic lights are out. Only
one lane is open, and it's clogged with troops. It all adds up to slow.

	Oler's clerk of session is in Houston, his treasurer in Baton Rouge.
A member of his session is headed for Louisville, but right now is still in
north Louisiana. The director of the preschool is rumored to be in
Mississippi, but Oler can't reach her by phone.

	Everyone else is who knows where.

	Oler's not sure how to find an elderly member who rode out Katrina,
staying on her second floor. Is she with the son who is a policeman? Or the
one who's a reserve officer? And where are they?

	"Our congregation isn't likely to be the folks you saw on television,
sitting on the roofs of their houses," says Deith, who has powered up a
Parkway Presbytery blog in hopes of finding the missing. For the moment he's
in a friend's spare bedroom in Houston with his wireless laptop and
photographs of his kids that his hurricane-wary wife grabbed as they headed
out the door.

	"As far as the safety of people, we're in good shape," he says,
surmising that his house and his law office are probably messy but largely
intact. "But nobody's life is going to be the same."

	He's talking about exodus. Who has left never to return? Who's
starting over somewhere new? Who would like to get back but can't? Who's got
no job, no house, no security? Who's waiting for authorities to certify that
the city is safe ... and in the meantime, where are they? How long will it
take to find everybody.

	Janie Shahan talks while packing her things in her house in Kenner,
another town on the fringe of New Orleans. She'll comply with the evacuation
order that goes into effect tonight and will be enforced by National Guard
troops bivouacked at the middle school two blocks downs and two blocks over.

	"I heard from one friend in Texas," she says over a scratchy phone
line. "Judy Zabala, she's in Baton Rouge, but I'm not sure where. The Pruitts
are in Kentucky with their daughter, Lee. I don't know where the others are
at the moment."

	She says the Shahans got back into town Monday at midnight, having
waited out the storm in Texas, and then, when it was clear there wasn't going
to be a quick fix, in Kentucky.

	She heard through the grapevine that one member of the choir died in
a hospice the day before Katrina hit. She worried all week whether he'd been
evacuated, and now she isn't sure how to find his family. "He was a good
friend," she says, choking back tears.

	Shahan isn't staying put. She's setting out tonight for Henderson,
KY, with her husband, who returned home to Kenner this week to repair the
house's damaged roof. With the phone lines out, she's talked to him all week
by walkie-talkie.

	Suzie Springler, the church's education director, has been
text-messaging teens all week. She's living in a hotel-casino in Tunica, MS -
at $40 a night, the hurricane rate. She plans to move to Clinton, MS, for at
least at few months. She logged onto Presbyterian Disaster Assistance's Web
site and found a rental house where her ailing, 75-year-old father can be
close to a Veteran's Hospital and her 12-year-old daughter can be close to a
good school.

	What's more, the rent is free - a hurricane discount. She has given
the keys to her father's River Ridge house to a relief worker, who will make
himself at home until the family returns, whenever that is.

	"We've tried to stay as connected as possible," she says, adding
that, if nothing else, the storm drove home the lesson that we're all our
brothers' keepers. Today, when she went to fill a prescription, a drugstore
clerk spontaneously took her hands and said, "May the peace of Christ enter
this person."	     

	It made it her cry, and the tears felt good.

	Back in New Orleans, Betsy Molaison is tearing up soggy,
mold-infested carpet and waiting for State Farm to call. The house is a mess,
but salvageable. Three inches of water and a damaged roof aren't so bad,
considering what others have lost.

	She's spending the night with friends in Baton Rouge and checking her
email for messages from friends. She works for the Navy Department, and she's
being transferred temporarily to Pensacola, FL, because the Navy facility in
Orleans Parish is wrecked.

	She's heard that a friend and fellow congregant died.

	"All this time, I've been thinking about him," she says, "wondering
if his wife was with him at the hospital. ... That's been difficult."

	Molaison says, "People will rebuild. Tourism will come back. ...
We'll make things bigger, better, stronger."

	But right now, things are tough.

	"You know, when you go back into the neighborhood, many landmarks
that you 
don't think about being there are gone," says Oler. "It just doesn't look
like the same place. I understand that our folks are pretty much dispersed
all over the United States - some in Arizona, some Florida. Some are up in
Illinois, others Kentucky. Making contact is very difficult. ... It is a very
frustrating situation."

To subscribe or unsubscribe, please send an email to
pcusanews-subscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org or
pcusanews-unsubscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org

To contact the owner of the list, please send an email to
pcusanews-request@halak.pcusa.org