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2007-10-16 issue:

10 days in Katrina land

Lessons about Mennonite Disaster Service work in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005

by Everett J. Thomas

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Mennonite Disaster Service got some bad press last winter, when Gulf States Mennonite Conference representatives met with denominational leaders in Meridian, Miss. The primary complaint focused on the way MDS decided who it would help after Hurricane Katrina.

But the magnitude of the hurricane and its damage was so great that no one—including the federal government—was geared up for the most helpful response; MDS as well as Mennonite Church USA were unprepared. Since then, both have learned from the situation and made changes that will generate different responses, should such a situation arise again.

After the hurricane, church members called denominational offices in Elkhart, Ind., or Newton, Kan., asking where they could send money to help other Mennonites rebuild. These callers were told to send their contributions to Mennonite Disaster Service. But MDS policies in 2005 stipulated that they help only the poorest of the poor, and most Mennonite sisters and brothers in “Katrina land” did not fit that category. Consequently, Mennonite Church USA has set up a system for receiving funds that will then be directed toward helping other Mennonites.

After I reported the negativity that emerged during last January’s Executive Board meeting, MDS leaders approached me about their side of the story. Specifically, they asked me to take 10 days during my three-month sabbatical and visit their units in some of the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina. This was the deal: MDS would pay for my trip, and I could report on whatever I found. Find a copy of our memo of understanding here.

After spending Aug. 20-30 in Katrina land with complete access to the work MDS is doing there, I discovered that this unprecedented natural disaster has significantly changed the organization. (Click here for more).

Ten days and 978 miles in Mississippi and Louisiana also left me with two questions about MDS in Katrina land:

1. Why rebuild?
People who lost their homes know that many of us in the North wonder about rebuilding communities that sit below sea level. But their answer is simple: This is our home. Several people compared their situations to the May 4 tornado that devastated Greensburg, Kan.
“It’s like anybody’s town that was hit by a tornado,” said Catrina Schrock, project director for the MDS unit in Pass Christian, Miss.

Schrock pointed out that people who live in tornado-prone areas in the Midwest do not move away after a tornado strikes their homes. Instead they rebuild on the same places where their families may have lived for generations.

But many people in Mississippi and Louisiana cannot return to their land because they do not have the resources to rebuild. For example, 93 percent of former residents in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward still have not returned after two years. That’s because there is little there but the foundations on which their houses had been sitting; their homes were washed away when a nearby levee broke. But MDS will build a house for a pastor and his family on the same spot where they lived before.

Another response to the doubts about rebuilding is that New Orleans and many other areas are already rebuilt. New roads and bridges are everywhere. Many commercial and industrial buildings damaged by the storm or the flooding have been repaired. Shiny new roofs stand out less and less as the old gives way to new.

2. What is the relationship between MDS volunteers who clean up or rebuild homes and sharing our faith?
I posed this question to several people. One was the president of the Pass Christian, Miss., Rotary Club. (MDS provides volunteer labor, and the local Rotary Club pays for the material. So far this collaboration has resulted in 11 new homes for low-income residents.)

On Aug. 22, medical doctor D.H. Short helped dedicate the latest house. I asked Short, who is not Mennonite, what he thought of MDS and its volunteers.

“I am absolutely enamored of them,” Short said. “They all have one desire: to help other people.”

But Short was glad that MDS volunteers do not “push their faith” onto the people they help.

“In our situation down here, it would be detrimental [to be evangelistic],” Short said. “Clients might feel like, We have to listen to them because they built us a house.”

Denis Janz, professor at Loyola University and coordinator for the MDS unit in New Orleans, said that MDS project managers explain who Mennonites are when clients ask about them.
“People who are helped ought to know who we are,” said Janz. “But on the other hand, I would hate for us to be too pushy [and say], We’re doing this work so you should buy in (to our faith).”

Mike Wilson, project director for the unit located in Diamond, La., witnesses to his Creole neighbors by staying through the heat of the summer. Even though there were no volunteers in his unit during August to work in the nearby villages and bayous, Wilson got up at 5:30 a.m. to visit with the men—mostly shrimpers and tug boat captains—who gather at the local coffee shop every morning.

“I can’t think of any other place I want to be,” said Wilson, as he motored MDS’ 14-foot flat bottom boat to one of the MDS projects on the Grand Bayou. “This is what I understand God calls us to do.”

Everett J. Thomas is editor of The Mennonite.

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