The Work: After the Storm (part three)

Earlier this month I helped lead a mission team to Long Beach, Mississippi. A church in South Korea had given the seminary a generous gift to be used specifically for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. This trip was my second since August 29th, and the third for the school. I was asked to write some stories or reflections for the seminary student magazine ("The Witness"). This is the third of three parts of the rough draft I submitted for publication.

There is an old cliché about how seeing something in a picture is nothing like seeing it in person. In April, eight months after Katrina, I was with another team down in the Gulf. This time the 14 of us were in Long Beach, Mississippi. What I saw in New Orleans did not prepare me for this.

It was like an atom bomb had been dropped for 90 miles. Entire neighborhoods completely gone, with only the slab of houses remaining. You can stand in one spot and in 360 degrees see the small remnants of what used to be a city. There are still items such as coffee makers in the surf, and in some places the smell of dead and rotting… something.

Long Beach is just down the road from Gulf Port. This is where Katrina did her worst. Our team worked through Long Beach United Methodist Church, which just happened to be the only major church in the city to still be standing.
A
couple of blocks in from the shore, all that was left of the Baptist church was a slab and a steeple. The Catholic Church still had a roof, but no innards. They had brought in a cornucopia of chairs, a couple of paintings as stained-glass windows, and a makeshift altar. But for the most part they were meeting further inland at a roller-skating rink.

This area was the great equalizer: It looked like a war zone, and so for the first time in modern memory, the United States has a taste of what a Baghdad or a Sri Lanka lives like. And we still have it better here.

This time our team had three days to work. Another team from Asbury had been here over Thanksgiving. We spent our first day clearing limbs and planting trees… a sense of “creation healed” so to speak.

The next day we met a man named Charlie, who has been deaf since childhood. He could speak words that were loud and slurred, and he could read lips and understand gestures. Only one on the team knew some sign language, so for the most part it was his loud voice and ours… that strange, unconscious thought that if someone doesn’t speak the language or cannot hear, then our speaking louder and slower will work a miracle.

Charlie had a dog that was, in a sense, a “hearing” dog. He bought the dog after someone robbed him while he was in the kitchen, but had been unable to hear the intruder. The dog had been lost in the storm, and Charlie’s fence was all blown over. He could not get another dog until the fence was fixed.


A team that had come before us had cemented in the fence posts. It only took half our team two days, but eight months after it had come down, Charlie had a new fence. We celebrated with a meal together, the fence team and a grateful Charlie gathered around the small table of a FEMA trailer eating pizza.

We worked with a women in Long Beach named Marsha. She works with the Methodist Church there, coordinating all of the different teams that come into the city to help. “You don’t understand,” she said as she smiled. “It means so much to finally get that fence done. This destruction and depression are our new normal. It may not seem like much to you, but to get one thing done for one family… it may be the one thing they needed, and it adds up.” One voice, needing one fence… one life in the Kingdom.

Our last day in Long Beach I asked Marsha how long the recovery would take. Her answer was the same as others I had heard: “Five to ten years.” But she was hopeful. As she drove our team from slab to slab of what had been homes of people she knew, she told us their stories. At this point she was their only voice to the outside world.

“The first time I saw someone take a picture, I cringed,” she said through misty eyes. “But then I realized that people need to see this, so they don’t forget to come down here and help us. No one group or organization or even the government will be able to do it all, but bit by bit all this seemingly insignificant work is adding up. And what’s more, all of these church groups coming down are working with people who don’t know Christ, and so that is another great work as well.”
And therein lies the hope for the people of the Gulf Coast destroyed by Katrina, or for that matter all the places in the world destroyed by war, poverty, disease, natural disasters, racism, despots, and so on. There is a mystery in the fact that Jesus told us to be Christ to the world, and at the same time the marginalized and suffering we help are Christ as well. In a way it seems like the Body ministering to the Body. It is overwhelming, but Jesus gave us helpful words:

We are intimately linked in this harvest work. Anyone who accepts what you do accepts me, the One who sent you. Anyone who accepts what I do accepts my Father, who sent me. Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God's messenger. Accepting someone's help is as good as giving someone help. This is a large work I've called you into, but don't be overwhelmed by it. It's best to start small. Give a cool drink of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance.
(Matthew 10 The Message)

For many of us this was our first time to offer a cup of water. And there is still much more of a thirsty world waiting for a call, a sign, a work.

The Sign: After the Storm (part two)

Earlier this month I helped lead a mission team to Long Beach, Mississippi. A church in South Korea had given the seminary a generous gift to be used specifically for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. This trip was my second since August 29th, and the third for the school. I was asked to write some stories or reflections for the seminary student magazine ("The Witness"). This is the second of three parts of the rough draft I submitted for publication.

In the first couple of days after Katrina, way up in Kentucky, I could not really do much good down in Louisiana other than intercede. But prayer is only half of intercession. The other half is action, and I was stuck in sunny Wilmore.

Then a church in South Korea gave Asbury a large gift of money, with the specific intent that it be used for Katrina relief efforts. A grass-roots group formed, and before I knew what had come ashore, there were 11 students skipping classes and loading up cars to head down to Mandeville, Louisiana.

A city originally of about 200,000 people, Mandeville doubled in size overnight. If you are ever in New Orleans, and you get on the toll way heading north over the now infamous Lake Ponchetrain, about 18 miles later on the other side of the water you will enter Mandeville. And that is exactly what another 200,000 people did a couple of days before August 29th. Just about all of the city’s damage came from the more than 30 tornadoes that touched down there. Giant oak trees literally tore holes in the earth as their roots were pulled out of the ground and deposited on roofs. Almost every street corner was littered with refrigerators that were off for weeks and no one dared to open.

Our small team of 11 had only two days to work. St. Timothy United Methodist Church had been receiving “work orders” from people in the city, mostly single parents and the elderly who could not pay to remove the debris that surrounded their homes. In a sea of fallen trees, our work seemed like such a small sprout. But we were told it was making a difference.

While we were there my wife and I stayed with a family whose husband Chris pastored a very small Methodist church nearby. It was the classic small white church with the tall steeple and the graveyard out front. The church sat in front of a highway that for days after Katrina was a main route for tractor-trailers moving supplies into New Orleans and then back out again.

One day Chris was standing on the front steps of the church waiting for the insurance adjuster to come look at the damage done to the sign on the side of the road. Where the old sign had fallen, Chris had spray painted a sign: “Open for prayer.” Back and forth 18-wheelers flew by, when suddenly on heading towards New Orleans slammed on its breaks and turned into the church drive. An old, wirery man climbed out of the cab and walked over to Chris.
“You the pastor?” the man barked.
“Yes.”
“Here, don’t read this ‘till I’m gone.”

He handed Chris a small, green notepad that had the words “To God” scribbled on the front. The man turned and started to get back into his rig when Chris called out, “What’s your name?”
“Call me Speedy,” he replied, and drove off towards the city.

Chris began to read what was written. Page after page was Speedy’s life confessions: Broken relationships, habitual sins, poor choices, and poorer consequences. Everything Speedy had seen in New Orleans that week had been too much, and the disaster had driven him to confession. At the end of this letter to God he had written, “I hope you can hear me, because I need your help.”

All over the region, with communications down, people made signs to communicate just about everything. At a time when plywood and spray paint were at a premium, Chris immediately went and painted a new sign:


Chris placed the sign next to the highway, facing the direction Speedy would have to return. “I don’t know if he saw it... I hope he saw it… I know he saw it.” His wife Paula enjoyed having the company and being able to share the story. She later echoed what was becoming a familiar refrain: “It may not seem like much, but your being here makes a difference and brings healing.” One voice, on one sign… one life in the Kingdom.

The Call: After the Storm (part one)

Earlier this month I helped lead a mission team to Long Beach, Mississippi. A church in South Korea had given the seminary a generous gift to be used specifically for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. This trip was my second since August 29th, and the third for the school. I was asked to write some stories or reflections for the seminary student magazine ("The Witness"). This is the first of three parts of the rough draft I submitted for publication.

On the beautiful Sunday afternoon of the first weekend after Hurricane Katrina made history, I took my new laptop out on the front porch of my apartment to enjoy both the weather and some new technology. Having just been married a little over three weeks, we were still enjoying new gifts, like patio furniture and wireless internet.

After reading some more headlines about the destruction along the Gulf of Mexico, I browsed over to my school email account, and before long was engaged in the Asbury past-time of scrolling down the “Asbury Community” page, curious to see what old textbooks people were selling and who was looking for what DVDs.

About mid-way down the list a subject line caught my eye: “Help with hurricane search.” I clicked on the message, which read:

“We are desperately seeking some family members and loved ones of those in our local shelter. If you are looking for a way to help this is it... If that family member here knew their loved ones were safe this would alleviate a tremendous amount of worry, anxiety and suffering.”

He went on to give the names of some websites being used as databases and his phone number. At the end of his message were the names of six people and what city in Louisiana they were from. I clicked on the “history” button… a little feature that allows you to see who has read the message. By this time over thirty people had looked at this message.

The man who had sent the message was named Frank, and so I gave him a call. I would later learn that Frank was an Excel (online) student living in Marksville, Louisiana who had a 3-point charge. The churches under his care had become shelters for those fleeing the floods of New Orleans. And in their exodus loved ones had been left behind or unaccounted for.
When Frank answered his phone I heard a tired voice. I told him who I was and asked if anyone had called him yet regarding his email message, and if anyone had been found. “No,” he said, “You’re the first one.”

We talked a little bit more. It was strange to be hearing a voice from someone who was right there in the middle of the crossroad of tragedy and history. I said I would try to look up some of the names, and he said, “Anything anyone can do will help.”

I spent the next 45 minutes looking up names and calling contact numbers. At one point a Red Cross volunteer actually picked up on the other end of the line, and I heard not only her voice, but thousands of voices in the background.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“In the Astrodome in Houston,” she replied.

Another strange moment as I now heard thousands of voices that had also been standing in the middle of that crossroad.

I asked about a couple of names. She said there looked like a match, but then again there were so many similar names. After a few minutes I gave up, said goodbye, and sat for a while looking down at the garden in our front lawn. About an hour later my phone rang, and it was Frank. “I don’t know what you did,” he said, this time his voice sounding a little more alive, “but you and another Asbury student poked around in the right place, and we found one.”

Somehow we had found a mother and her baby daughter who had been separated from their father in the Superdome. The baby had been scheduled to have heart surgery before the hurricane hit, and now both mother and baby were safe in a hospital in Texas.

“You don’t know what this means,” Frank later said. “Even if we find one person that makes a difference.” One voice, on one phone… one life in the Kingdom.