ELCA News Blog
October 3, 2007
Group from ELCA's Waldorf College helps with flood relief
by Frank Imhoff, ELCA News Service
A group of 16 students and 10 staff, family members and friends of Waldorf College, Forest City, Iowa, traveled to Rushford, Minn., Sept. 22, responding to a call from Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR) to help with flood relief, according to a college news release. Five weeks earlier Rushford received 17 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. Rushford was flooded when dikes built on Rush Creek four years earlier were unable to hold back the rain and that which had fallen upstream.
The Rushford City Mill, owned by the Hoiland family, was one of the first businesses in Rushford. The building is listed on the National Register of Historical Places. Eric Hoiland lives at the wheat mill, which houses part of his family business. Hoiland lost his business, home and all personal possessions in the flooding. "We were really able to put a face on the disaster when we helped Eric," said the Rev. Charlene Rachuy Cox, campus minister, Waldorf College. "Eric was just an average person who in a few hours had his whole life destroyed. He told us that even the clothes he was wearing on Saturday had been donated," she said.
The Waldorf group helped clean approximately 18 inches of mud and debris from the mill's basement. LDR estimated the cleaning project would take two days, but the Waldorf group completed the project in less than a day. "I am always amazed at how, when you put Waldorf students on a project, they give it everything they've got," Cox said. "They shoveled the mud in the buckets, hauled it out, dumped it and came right back in to get another bucket full. They worked just like a machine." She added, "Their spirit was unbelievable." Waldorf is one of 28 colleges and universities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Lutheran Disaster Response is a ministry of the ELCA and Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org http://www.elca.org/news ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog