UM agency chiefs see storm damage, pledge recovery aid

United Methodist News Service
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 the General Commission on Communication. “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 General 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 relief committee staff members, the Louisiana and Mississippi 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 the relief committee would be around to assist with long-term needs. The United Methodist committee is one of the few nongovernmental relief agencies that has experience with displaced people in international situations.
Day said he was pleased to see conference leaders working side by side with the relief committee, a unit of the mission board.
“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 UMC shelter in Jackson, Miss. The church hosted a wedding for Wolf and his wife, Rya, two evacuees who grew up in New Orleans.
Hollon said he was impressed with the “competence and comprehensiveness of the services offered by local congregations” for displaced people.
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 provided Internet access to help people search for lost family members.
The group 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.”
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 conference has organized volunteer-in-mission groups for this stage of response yet.