wfn.org | [UMNS-ALL-NEWS] UMNS# 505-Church leaders witness United Methodist

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Church leaders witness United Methodist relief work

Sep. 13, 2005

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

A UMNS Report
By Ciona Rouse*

Three United Methodist agency executives were moved as they saw
firsthand the effects of Hurricane Katrina on parts of Louisiana and
Mississippi.

"The churches of Louisiana and Mississippi have carried out remarkable
humanitarian service under the most difficult conditions imaginable,"
said the Rev. Larry Hollon, top staff executive of United Methodist
Communications. "Many volunteers have themselves lost their homes and
possessions, yet they are in the front line helping others who have been
evacuated from New Orleans and the gulf shore."

Hollon, the Rev. Randy Day, top executive of the United Methodist Board
of Global Ministries, and the Rev. Paul Dirdak, executive director of
the United Methodist Committee on Relief, toured the Gulf Coast area
Sept. 7-11. They met with the bishops of Louisiana and Mississippi,
visited shelters and viewed the damage wreaked by Hurricane Katrina and
resulting floods on area churches.

Working with UMCOR staff, the conferences devised plans for responding
to the disaster that left hundreds of thousands displaced and killed an
unknown number of people. Day, Hollon and Dirdak observed the
conferences' work and asked about assistance the denomination could
provide.

Dirdak assured the conferences that UMCOR would be around to assist with
long-term needs. UMCOR is one of the few non-governmental relief
agencies that has experience with displaced people in international
situations, he said.

Day said he was pleased to see conference leaders working side by side
with UMCOR, a unit of the Board of Global Ministries. "In addition to
UMCOR, all of the units of the Board of Global Ministries will work with
our local churches and institutions as they rebuild their lives and
communities across these three states," he said.

The church leaders visited shelters run by United Methodist
congregations, as well as churches hit hard by the hurricane. They met
people such as Isidore Wolf at the Galloway United Methodist Church
shelter in Jackson, Miss. The church hosted a wedding for Wolf and his
wife, Rya, two evacuees who grew up in New Orleans.

The couple had planned to marry in December and had bought a wedding
gown and a ring and begun payment on a banquet hall. All was lost in the
storm. They asked the church to help them get married and expected the
Rev. Ross Olivier to arrange a small ceremony for them to say their
vows.

"They gave us a whole wedding," Wolf said. "They made us feel like we
had family here."

Hollon was impressed with the "competence and comprehensiveness of the
services offered by local congregations" for displaced people. The
churches offered feeding stations, medical and social services, and
pastoral care, he noted. Some churches helped find apartments and jobs
for displaced families, bought uniforms for students enrolled in school
and even provided Internet access to help people search for lost family
members.

"While one cannot overstate the depth and breadth of loss, what
displaced people have found is not abandonment as many feared, but
community," Hollon said.

The agency executives heard stories from two retired Louisiana pastors,
the Rev. Carol Cotton Winn and the Rev. John Winn, who could not locate
their son who lived in New Orleans.

They met Kevin Porter, a lifetime member of Hartzell-Mt. Zion United
Methodist Church in Slidell, La., as he first surveyed the flood damage
in the church his grandfather built.

"I can't believe this. This hurts," said Porter, looking at the
scattered, muddy remains of the sanctuary that was once under more than
five feet of water.

The group also visited the grounds of the denomination's historic
Gulfside Assembly in Waveland, Miss. The assembly, like much of
Waveland, was wiped away by the storm.

"Not only were New Orleans, neighboring towns and the towns of
Mississippi heart-wrenching to observe, (but) it was also particularly
painful to walk through the historic grounds of Gulfside Assembly and
not see one building standing," Day said.

Day said that he was "very hopeful and confident that we, as a whole
church, will rebuild Gulfside Assembly."

He reflected on the scenes and faces of poverty the media has shown
since Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi on Aug. 29.

"I have no doubt that Katrina was the worst natural disaster in the
United States in a century, yet this devastating hurricane did not cause
poverty in New Orleans and areas of Mississippi, which we observed," Day
said.

"Rather, Katrina attracted cameras and intense coverage of the other
America - the one about which rich America has been in denial for
decades.

"As I've said repeatedly in the past three years, poverty kills. It will
continue to kill Katrina victims and millions of others who were nowhere
near the storm. I believe the United Methodist Church must make stronger
efforts than ever to eliminate racism and all of its evils."

The Louisiana Conference established a storm center to match the
offerings of help it has received with requests for help from affected
areas. The storm center, housed at the conference center in Baton Rouge,
can be reached toll free at (888) 239-5286, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday
through Friday.

Long-term recovery will include rebuilding, but neither the Louisiana
nor Mississippi conferences have organized volunteer-in-mission groups
for this stage of response yet.

The Rev. Tom Hazelwood, UMCOR director of U.S. disaster response, cited
five ways people can help: give monetary donations to UMCOR, give
appropriate physical donations such as flood buckets or school kits,
pray for all affected people and relief workers, invite corporations to
contribute to UMCOR, and contact Volunteer-in-Missions and join or form
a work team.

Donations to support the United Methodist response to the Hurricane
Katrina tragedy can be made online at www.methodistrelief.org and by
phone at (800) 554-8583. Checks can be written to UMCOR, designated for
"Hurricanes 2005 Global," Advance No. 982523, and left in church
offering plates or mailed directly to UMCOR, P.O. Box 9068, New York, NY
10087-9068.

*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

----------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this group, go to UMCom.org, log in to your account,
click on the My Resources link and select the Leave option on the list(s)
from which you wish to unsubscribe. If you have problems or questions, please
write to websupport@umcom.org.

Powered by United Methodist Communications http://www.UMCom.org