Holidays time to include survivors

by Steve Smith

Wilted by 100-degree heat and the crush of humanity outside a pro sports arena turned into a Red Cross assistance center, Danielle Taylor yelled loud enough seemingly for all the churches in Dallas to hear her message.

“Churches, open your doors during the holidays,” said Taylor, 24, one of 120,000 evacuees bused from New Orleans to Dallas after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29. “Invite us in. Give us some food, some clothing, but most of all, we need your prayers.”

People may call Hurricanes Katrina and Rita the grinches who stole Christmas. Emotional and psychological losses will hit hard, particularly when survivors no longer can gather around family dinner tables and decorated trees. But United Methodists who are hurricane-relief experts said churches face golden opportunities to open their doors during the holidays to give storm survivors some sense of normalcy, community and ways of giving back after receiving so much.

Encourage participation

“They understand what it is to travel to Bethlehem, to find no room in the inn, to look for medical assistance where there is none,” said Christy Smith, a disaster consultant with the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). “This year’s Christmas pageant could be their gift of a new perspective on the presence of Christ in our midst.”

United Methodist pastors and disaster experts said churches can invite Katrina and Rita survivors to both attend and participate in special Thanksgiving and Christmas worship services, celebratory potluck dinners and family meals in homes. The food fests could include traditional Cajun and New Orleans dishes, as well as the usual turkey and dressing. Worship services might include rituals the survivors knew back home.

Smith suggested that churches could include Katrina and Rita survivors in special worship services in which they write down their emotional, physical and spiritual losses on paper, then burn the lists. The ashes can be used later at Ash Wednesday services.

“From the ashes of loss can come new life and hope,” Smith said.

Kathie Mann is director of missions for the Houston-based Texas Conference, where churches have struggled with providing shelter, food and other necessities to Katrina evacuees and dealing with Rita’s wrath. Mann said congregations are including storm survivors in community events “as they become our neighbors.”

“Churches that have been very inward are inviting them to school programs and football games, taking them shopping and to the doctor, and even driving across the country to connect them with their families,” Mann said. “God has shown His face in every person. We have seen His kindness and goodness in our new neighbors and even in ourselves.”

A week before Christmas Day last year, 20 members of Debi Jensen’s adult singles program at Grace United Methodist Church in Cape Coral, Fla., fixed traditional Hispanic meals for 25 families of undocumented workers from Latin and South America who lost everything when Hurricane Charlie decimated the impoverished barrier island on which the migrants toiled in mango and plum groves.

A dinner at Pine Island United Methodist Church  included more than 400 fathers, mothers and children, who received 65 bags of flour, cornmeal and other staples, and more than 250 presents, Jensen said.

“For 15 to 20 years, (the migrants) worked in the fields, but nobody even knew they were there until Charlie came,” said Jensen, regional case management supervisor with the Florida Conference. “The best response that came from the whole thing was a brand new Hispanic ministry on the island and getting them plugged into the local community.”

However, she warned that churches should not fall into the trap of cutting the Katrina and Rita families loose after the holidays.

“They need help 365 days a year,” Jensen said. “They’ll be a long way from home and family, and this is a golden opportunity for every church on the face of the Earth. We need to recognize that they need to see the face of Jesus every day of their lives.”

Marilyn Swanson, who directs storm recovery for the Florida Conference, said storm-weary churches in that state are identifying Katrina families for help through the Love Thy Neighbor program based in Shreveport, La. She expects the ministry to extend well past the holidays.

Ditto for the Neighbors to Neighbors program in Houston, said the Rev. James Bankston, pastor at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church.

“There will be a lull in everything as we catch our breaths from all the heroic efforts regarding Katrina and the preparation for Rita,” said Bankston, chairman of the Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston, which is providing relief efforts for Katrina and Rita survivors.

“Once the holidays start coming, the seasons will renew people’s interests in helping people who really have been struggling in a new setting. They’ll be taken care of in a good way.”

Meanwhile, United Methodist pastors from New Orleans are joining staffs of Houston churches temporarily to connect with and bring evacuees into the lives of congregations so the storm survivors can feel a new sense of community.

Bankston said many New Orleans evacuees already are consumed with a spirit of giving back after receiving so much.

While visiting evacuees at the Houston Astrodome, a member of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church  received what she thought was a $1 bill from an elderly New Orleans man, who told her to put the money in the church’s offering plate. But the St. Luke’s member discovered she actually held a $100 bill.

“This gentleman had lost everything in Katrina, so she tried to get him to take back the $100 bill, and he said, ‘It is my custom to tithe in the good times and the bad times,’” Bankston said. “Maybe we can learn something from these people rather than they learn from us.”

But in the midst of all of the inviting to dinners, worship services and other events, church leaders cautioned, congregants should look deep inside themselves to discover the real reasons for helping the hurricane survivors.

“Our task as Christians in the faith is to show the love of Jesus, who was about touching and impacting people’s lives,” Jensen said. “If the Holy Spirit tells you buy three toys and a change of clothes, do that, but make sure you did it in the spirit and not out of this overwhelming need to feel better about yourself.”

—Steve Smith, freelance writer, Dallas