Katrina response gives Open House Month new meaning

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
Hurricane Katrina gave a whole new meaning to Open House Month in Southwest Texas during September.
As the rains fell and cities flooded in Louisiana, evacuees arrived in Southwest Texas with little more than the clothes they were wearing. Southwest Texas congregations were ready with open hearts, open minds and open doors.
At about noon Sept. 3, city officials called First UMC, Corpus Christi, to ask what help it could provide for the evacuees coming to the city.
As soon as he received the call, the Rev. J. Keith Wyatt, senior pastor, said he hastily assembled staff members, associate pastors, laypeople—“whoever we could catch at noon on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of a holiday weekend”—to decide whether the church could respond. The answer was easy: It could shelter evacuees in the gymnasium.
“The city came out and took a look, said OK, and sent us about 100 people,” Wyatt said.
The church had four hours to get ready, he said.
“Within that time frame, we were fully prepared,” Wyatt said. “We set up 100 cots, got blankets and pillows, health kits, and hygiene kits.”
Church members also began preparing to cook three meals a day and provide transportation to wherever the evacuees would need to go.
A week later—as more than 400 Corpus Christi District United Methodists gathered at First UMC for an annual district celebration—the men, women and children evacuated from New Orleans were still living in the gym down the hall.
Standing in a room with windows overlooking Corpus Christi Bay, Wyatt reminded United Methodists at the celebration that the disaster in New Orleans could very well have happened in Corpus Christi.
In Southwest Texas congregations large and small, United Methodists mobilized to provide whatever relief they could. United Methodists teamed with social service agencies and members of other denominations to coordinate disaster response efforts.
Church members and friends streamed into fellowship halls and gymnasiums with supplies for hygiene kits and flood buckets, then stood shoulder-to-shoulder in assembly lines to package them.
Buses, trucks and even horse trailers delivered supplies to social service agencies as well as to churches that had the capacity to serve as drop-off locations.
Clergy members, Stephen Ministers and laypeople specially trained to provide ministerial support to evacuees provided pastoral care in Red Cross shelters around the clock.
Congregations “adopted” families, paying their living expenses in temporary housing. Church members helped evacuees find jobs and then provided transportation to get people to work.
“The generosity is amazing,” Bishop Joel N. Martinez said. “There’s no other way to put it. And of course that will continue for a while. I appreciate that churches are opening their hearts and their doors.”
Like First UMC, Corpus Christi, Mount Wesley Conference Center in Kerrville; Bethany UMC, San Antonio; and Coker UMC, San Antonio, also provided shelter, but on a smaller scale and through a different channel.
Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas matched those facilities with individuals who needed a place to stay temporarily.
“We had 15 children and nine adults from New Orleans as our guests,” said Patti Zaiontz, Mount Wesley administrator.
They came at a time when Mount Wesley was booked solid for the weekend, she said. After some juggling and rearranging of groups and accommodations, Mount Wesley became their refuge.
“Mount Wesley is a retreat center,” Zaiontz said, “not a shelter. In a retreat setting, our guests have their needs met differently. For instance, they get full hot meals with home-baked goods.”
Zaiontz said she expected the evacuees to stay at Mount Wesley two to three weeks.
“The Mount Wesley staff has really been unbelievable,” she said. “They’ve worked long, hard hours nonstop so everyone can live harmoniously on campus. We usually have lulls in scheduling, but not now.”
Bethany UMC, San Antonio, was nearing completion of a homeless shelter renovation project when Methodist Healthcare Ministries asked the Rev. Jeannie Whitehurst, pastor, if the church could house two evacuees.
“They were rescued from the Convention Center (in New Orleans),” Whitehurst said.
Both were injured as they fled from their home, Whitehurst said. Their wounds were treated at San Antonio’s Methodist Hospital.
“When they were released from the emergency room, they came here,” Whitehurst said.
While staying at the church, both evacuees were offered jobs in the Methodist Hospital system, she said. The church expected to house them until they could move into an apartment.
Renovation of part of the fellowship hall into a homeless shelter had been an ongoing church project, Whitehurst said. Construction was three months ahead of schedule because of work by volunteer teams from other United Methodist congregations in San Antonio.
“When we took the people in,” she said, “we had one bathroom and one shower.”
In what she described as a “six-day blitz,” volunteers organized through Church Connections, a San Antonio ministry of churches helping other churches, completed a second bathroom and shower.
“We could not have been a shelter if Church Connections had not come in this summer,” she said.
Bethany now has five private bedrooms (converted Sunday school classrooms) and a common living area in addition to the showers and bathrooms. Whitehurst said she expects other evacuees will move in because the church has been identified by Methodist Healthcare Ministries as a transition shelter.
Martinez visited evacuees in churches and at Mount Wesley.
“They’re so grateful, so appreciative of the way they’ve been received,” he said. “I had a chance to assure them that we will be there for them as long as they need us.
“I celebrate that as a sign of the breaking forth of God’s kingdom among us in a special way. We are reaching out to welcome all, to serve all, to offer Christ to all. I want to affirm our United Methodist witness. I praise God for that.”
Wyatt relayed a story told by a volunteer working in the shelter at First UMC, Corpus Christi. After spending some time with a young girl, the volunteer told the child that she had to go home.
“The child asked, ‘Oh, the roof didn’t blow off your house?’” Wyatt said. “Then the little girl looked around the church gymnasium and said, ‘I used to have a house…and now I have a new home, and it’s so big, and there are so many people in it.’
“As I think about it,” Wyatt said, “I think we United Methodists not only have a house. We have a home—in Jesus Christ. Our home is so big; we can bring in so many people. We can give thanks to God for that.”