Incarnational Ministry - Trinity Responds to Katrina

We’ve all heard similar Katrina stories:

A mother separated from her husband and young son, returning to her house and discovering that both had drowned.

A man clinging to the gutter and chimney of his house as the 25-foot storm surge washed over him – praying that he could hold his breath long enough to be able to breathe again when the water receded.

A young woman who stayed at her house with her father to ride out the hurricane – he had had surgery and couldn’t be evacuated easily ahead of the hurricane. The tidal surge came into the house, drowning the father. The daughter escaped to another house where she spent the night alone, grieving, frightened, waiting for the hurricane to pass. In the morning, a stranger entered the house and raped her.

But these weren’t stories we read in the newspaper. The Katrina Emergency Response Team heard them from the lips of the people who lived them.

At 7:00 a.m. CDT on August 28, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the central coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Sustained winds were in excess of 145 mph, and the tidal surge ranged from 20 to 32 feet, penetrating deeply into the interior and flooding thousands of homes. Over a thousand people were killed in Louisiana and Missis-sippi, and thousands more were left homeless. The hurricane has been described as being the most destructive to property in the history of the United States.

Within a couple of days, we were discussing with faculty and students the possibility of putting together an emergency response team to go to the Gulf.

Two Trinity alumni, the Rev. Marcia King (MDiv 2003), Assistant Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ocean Springs, MS, and Jeremy Blauvelt (MDiv 2005), newly hired as the Curate at Trinity Episcopal Church, Pass Christian, MS, were directly impacted by the hurricane and became logical contacts. Jeremy and his wife, Jessica, were en route to Pass Christian and were to have moved into a house there. They delayed their arrival because of the hurricane. The house was reduced to splinters and a concrete slab. After spending several weeks living in a tent, they are now living in a trailer and coordinating the relief effort for their church.

While St. John’s did not suffer any damage, Trinity Church in Pass Christian was virtually destroyed. All that remained of the church buildings was the damaged roof of the nave and sanctuary and the supporting columns on the side of the building. The administrative offices and Christian Education rooms were swept away by the wind and the tidal surge.

Back in Western PA, the response from the Trinity community was immediate once the plans were announced. Twenty students and three others from the Trinity community gave up their Reading Week to go, and Sam Jampetro, also a Trinity student, mobilized youth and young adults at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Moon Township, PA, to accompany the Trinity team. Mrs. Lynn Bouterse, Director of Short Term Mission at the South American Missionary Society (USA), was invited to be co-leader and team trainer. Prayer and financial support for the trip came from both inside and outside the U.S.

In the end, 38 people traveled to Ocean Springs, leaving on a chartered bus on the evening of October 13th. They were to work hard for six straight days in the communities of Ocean Springs, D’Iberville, Long Beach, Pass Christian, and Bay St. Louis. The team was housed in the parish hall of St. John’s Church in Ocean Springs. The Rev. Marcia King oriented the group to the reality of what they would be experiencing and confronting the following day when they would be divided up into different work groups dispatched to several locations to assist the hurricane victims.

The work groups responded to the crisis on several levels. First was the removal and clean-up of individual houses and property. One of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress is the inability of people who have gone through a disaster to make any decisions regarding their damaged property and losses. People feel detached and numb as a result of the magnitude of the trauma. The team members were able to gently guide them into more active participation and involvement.

The teams would arrive at a house and begin ripping out rotted and moldy sheetrock and insulation, carpet, linoleum, and cabinets. Any personal possessions found in the debris were separated out to give the owners the opportunity to keep or, sadly, throw away. Just the simple act of coming alongside the victims and helping them begin the physical process of the recovery was invaluable.

Second, there was the simple ministry of prayer and presence. The work groups would begin each day with prayer with the families whom they were serving – and end the day with prayer as well. These times of prayer boosted the morale of many as they worked through their own recovery.

In addition to working with individual families, Trinity students also worked for two full days helping to clean up the property surrounding Trinity Episcopal Church in Pass Christian. As they removed the trash, the students found many articles that had been washed out of the church, including candlesticks, communion vessels, and stoles. Four members of the Trinity team also volunteered as nurses and counselors to survivors in Pass Christian.

The team was reluctant to leave the Mississippi coast at the end of their stay. There is much more work to be done. But we were grateful for the opportunity to obey the call of God to serve, listen, work hard, and be the instruments of calm and healing in that holy place.

The Rev. Canon John A. Macdonald is Assistant Professor of Mission and Evangelism, and Director of the Stanway Institute for World Mission and Evangelism.