Help victims of Hurricane Katrina

I followed through with my intent to give through the A/G benevolence fund. We decided to give $20 and to repeat that as we could.

This week we had a unique opportunity to give. Friends of ours who pastor a menenite church in the area are planning to travel down to work in a church is Mississippi that serves as a red cross station. They will be doing counceling and helping those in the lines as they wait. They invited local churches to help and our church raised $57 (not bad for our people!) and Elaine and I also gave in that offering.

Giving is great, there is a Grace in it.

We gave a dollar to Katrina Relief at the grocery store today. I almost laugh at how small a gift it was, yet it was the first time we supported relief monetarily. It has been a very difficult week financially, living on tips, gifts and fumes in the tank. Still we are blessed beyond all measure. Somehow I need to respond to the blessings we have recieved. I will pop over to the A/G website and set up a donation right now.

We held a special community service Sunday Evening. We thougth the 9/11 rememberance would be a poingiant context to talk about trageties. Of course we focused mainly on the Hurricane, but our thoughts and prayers also went to those trampled on the bridge in Bahgdad.

The crowd was small, but we did collect $384. We have put that into our local fund for helping people with emergencies, with the full expectation that there will be opportunity in the near future to help people affected by the hurricane locally.

Other than planning and participating in that service with the other area pastors, I still haven’t decided how I would directly help those affected. We’ve thought about donating a vehicle, though at the moment being physically involved in some way seems most appealing.

I reaffirmed my commitment to helping by signing The Katrina Pledge
1. I pledge to be personally involved in helping those whose lives have been affected by this natural disaster – by praying for the victims and their families and by offering my time, talents, and resources to relief and recovery ministries that are meeting their needs.

2. I pledge to work for sweeping change of our nation’s priorities. I will press my elected representatives to protect the common good – especially the needs of our poorest families and children – rather than supporting the twin social disasters of tax cuts for the rich and budget cuts that hurt the poor.

I’ve emailed our local redcross chapter to see about helping to provide housing. We are pretty stressed finacially in this area, but our local ministerial group talked last week about how we wanted to do something practical to help. I haven’t heard back from the redcross, but I have forwarded the number to the help line to the group since I couldn’t be at the meeting this morning.

We are having a joint evening service on 9/11 and will probably take up an offering for hurcaine aid.