Mission team serves battered Waveland

By Sue Kratochvil
Cedar Creek UMC
Like other churches in our conference after Hurricane Katrina hit, the folks of Cedar Creek UMC donated cash, took clothing and household items to various collection depots, and helped make the evacuees in our area as “at home” as possible.
We made hygiene kits and flood buckets for United Methodist Committee on Relief. We prayed for everyone who was dealing with the aftermath, and we wished we could do more.
As the first weeks went by, we began to hear of trucks being filled and driven to Mississippi from the greater Bastrop area. The firsthand reports trickling back were of the totality of property damage—and of the desperate and daily needs of people in Waveland. These needs were being directly impacted—by people just like us—by our neighbors.
The Rev. Stan Whites, Cedar Creek pastor, invited two leaders of this endeavor, who are from two different nondenominational churches, to speak to us about their experiences in Wave-land, the needs there and the possibility of our allying with them in doing God’s work on this project. As we listened, it was clear to us that God was at work in a mighty way in Waveland. There was no mistaking his call.
We made plans for the first adult-oriented mission trip in our church’s history. We arrived in Mississippi as Rita gathered force and became a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. We worked and served alongside non-believers, survivors, farmers and Christians of diverse denominations. We unloaded and organized supplies by the truckload. We networked with others to find resources for people, and most important, we listened and cared as people of the area talked about what they had endured. The need to process and share the enormity of what had overtaken them with another person was as daily and constant as the need for water, food and medical help. The need for unconditional love and a glimpse of God was palpable.
When Rita was about to make landfall, it became clear that we would have to evacuate for our own safety. We were able to go to a safe home 90 miles away and return two days later, but the emotional shift that occurred as we became evacuees and not emergency workers was real. We prayed that the people left behind would weather the coming storm safely and that the supplies (and the work that they represented) would not be damaged or ruined. To our great relief, Waveland was spared as Rita went farther west.
We returned home six days after embarking on this mission. We were able to see that God had indeed moved us out of our “comfortable” zones in many ways: We worked with people who didn’t all share our values. We slept on an asphalt parking lot. We were powerless to avert the enormous storm bearing down on us. We worked to be servant helpers in another group’s mission effort, when we might have chosen to do things differently.
And yet, it was so clear that we had never left our true “comfort” zones: No matter where we were nor what the circumstances, God was with us. In the midst of all of our circumstances, there is deep security and safety in the knowledge that it is impossible to be outside that comfort. It is indeed a blessing to heed his call.