(help)
Churches provide way stations out of hell
by Douglas LeBlanc
Baton Rouge suddenly has become Louisiana’s largest city as survivors of Hurricane Katrina pour out of New Orleans and other devastated cities to the south and east. Many churches in Baton Rouge, including Episcopal congregations affiliated with the Anglican Communion Network, have become visible ministries of mercy.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, an ACN parish a few miles east of downtown Baton Rouge, is in an ideal location to help a particular segment of Katrina’s survivors: needy families who end up at Woman’s Hospital. The hospital is at one of Baton Rouge’s busiest intersections along Airline Highway, a major thoroughfare that takes drivers southeast to New Orleans. St. Luke’s sits behind the hospital, and the two have long been friendly neighbors. Some employees of Woman’s Hospital send their children to St. Luke’s Episcopal Day School.
The Rev. Ernest Saik, associate priest of St. Luke’s, said the church began helping with Katrina relief by welcoming more than 90 children sent to its school from the hospital. Then the church provided shelter for expectant mothers among Katrina’s survivors. It also began caring for parents of babies who require care from the intensive care unity at Woman’s Hospital.
Saik said St. Luke’s has become a way station for more than 50 families since people began fleeing Katrina-related flooding, mostly in New Orleans. Many have moved on from St. Luke’s to join family or friends elsewhere in Baton Rouge. St. Luke’s has helped some families reunite after they were separated in the chaos of evacuating New Orleans.
Some staff of St. Luke’s have a dozen or more guests in their homes.
“This has brought the gospel to our doorstep,” said the Rev. Canon Brien Koehler, rector of St. Luke’s. “Members of this church don’t have to give money to help meet these needs. They can give themselves.”
Nevertheless, some members of St. Luke’s are giving money too. Saik cried as he told of a father writing two $100 checks, which represented what his two children gave from their own resources.
Other members of St. Luke’s cook for Katrina’s survivors. The parish was serving an average of 150 people a week after Katrina. “The feeding ministry will go on for months,” Saik said. He expects the parish will continue welcoming hospital-related evacuees for another two weeks to a month.
One of the survivors at St. Luke’s is Fredericka Collins, whose newborn is in the intensive care unit. She gave birth to a son, whom she’s named Legend, on August 25 at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans. Miss Collins gave birth after only 28 weeks of pregnancy, but she emphasizes the progress Legend has made since their arrival in Baton Rouge.
“He’s doing good, he’s doing fine,” she said quietly. “We came here together on a plane. I thank God that I’m safe, alive, and have food and somewhere to stay.”
She’s concerned that she hasn’t heard from her fiancé, Vincent, since they were separated during her evacuation from Memorial Hospital. She’s also concerned about her sister, Semetria, whom she last spoke to on August 26, before Katrina tore into the Gulf Coast.
Collins believes Katrina’s damage to New Orleans may be a God-ordained judgment on the level of violence in her city. “We had so many killings there every day, for no reason,” she said.
Another guest at St. Luke’s is Bonnie Valero, who’s looking after three sons (ages 10, 7 and 5) while her husband goes back to work on an offshore oil rig. The Valero family lived in Slidell, and she’s not sure whether they’ll have a home when they return.
“One minute you have a home, a job, everything you need. We probably had more than we needed. The next minute, you have none of it.”
Valero said she was thankful for the welcome extended to her by St. Luke’s. “They make you feel comfortable, so that makes you feel better,” she said. “I had a man ask me today if I’d like to come to his house and wash my family’s clothes. Awesome!”
Another ACN parish, Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, meets each week in the chapel of Episcopal High School.
The Rev. Canon D. Joseph Rhodes has helped work groups from other states make their way to Bogalusa, a city northeast of New Orleans. Groups have traveled from Sumter and Charleston, South Carolina, and the Atlanta area to help people in Bogalusa.
Rhodes took in the Rev. Jerry Kramer, rector of Annunciation Episcopal Church in New Orleans, and his family. He also arranged for placing a solar-powered generator — on loan from Solar Light for Africa — at a hurricane-relief station near Bogalusa.
The Rev. Terry Sweeney of Christ Church, Ascension Parish, has been a regular presence at Lamar Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales, just south of Baton Rouge. More than 1,000 survivors of Katrina — most of them from the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans — are at this shelter.
Sweeney, who has affiliated with ACN as an individual priest, has gathered pharmaceuticals, food and water, and baby supplies for the survivors.
“Cash is a big necessity,” Sweeney said when discussing how people can help. “If people send cash, we can buy items locally and help the local economy. The state’s largest city, and all its contributions to the economy — it’s been amputated.”
Sweeney said he has been humbled by the survivors he’s met, including one woman who asked only for his priestly blessing. “People here are grateful and polite and thankful. Thanks just seems to permeate the place. There’s almost a sense of God’s presence right here,” he said.
“When people talk about the signs of the true church, they mention right doctrine, the sacraments duly administered, and church discipline and order,” Sweeney said. “I would add the spirit of compassion to that.”
At St. Alban’s Chapel on the Louisiana State University campus, the Rev. Drew Rollins has paid regular pastoral visits to the Pete Maravich Assembly, where officials set up a critical care unit, and to the LSU Field House, where patients receive medical care for special needs such as diabetes or mental conditions.
Rollins and his congregation have collected clothing, toiletries, and food and water, donated by Episcopalians throughout metropolitan Baton Rouge. The donations have sometimes filled the chapel’s parish hall.
Rollins visits the makeshift medical units more than once a day, stopping frequently to ask volunteers what supplies they need to do their work. Between jotting himself notes about those needs, or calling them back to the chapel’s office, Rollins stops at patients’ beds to hear their stories and to pray for them.
On Tuesday afternoon he spoke with a woman who described the inhumane living conditions she endured at the civic center in New Orleans before arriving at LSU late Monday night.
After that discussion, Rollins said no patient has yet asked him a theological question about why God would allow a catastrophe. Nearly all patients, however, asked why government officials did not act faster to rescue them from their hellish way stations in New Orleans.
Click on the PayPal button to support hurricane relief through the Anglican Communion Network.