Fabric of Life
In an effort to continue our support for victims of Katrina in the Mississippi Diocese, a group of sewers, quilters, and crafters is meeting weekly on Wednesdays from Noon until 2:00 p.m. and Sundays after the 10:15 liturgy in the Auxiliary Room. Feel free to bring a light lunch. Questions? Contact Sharon Hettinger at (816) 523-1602 or sharon@standrewkc.org.

A Material Need...
To help the quilt-making effort, if you have yard goods please arrange to drop it off at St. Andrew's by calling Sharon Hettinger at (816) 523-1602. Scraps of more than 4" squares will be accepted. If you have quilt batting or backing material, we will be glad to receive that too. Please, no clothing.

Katrina Relief Mission Trip – March 2006

By Caitlin Krug

Usually when I think Spring Break, I think to myself, “I can’t wait to go to the lake and get a tan!” or “I wonder how many days in a row I can go horseback riding without nearly killing my muscles.” That’s exactly what I was thinking this year, even back in January when Spring Break wasn’t for another two months. Then I learned about how Bishop Miege, my new high school, offers mission trips over Spring Break to places like Mexico, Washington, D.C., and even Alabama and Louisiana. I looked over my list of choices when I picked up the information packet from the Campus Ministry office, trying to decide whether or not I really wanted to go out of town when I had just made so many new friends. Sighing, I decided to go to Louisiana to help with Hurricane Katrina relief. An organization called National Relief Network, or NRN, helped make our mission trip to Louisiana possible.

5:30 a.m. Sunday, March 12 - My alarm goes off, and I stretch and yawn, rolling over and putting the pillow over my head. My mom calls in at me to get up, so I reluctantly pull the covers down and get out of bed. I didn’t even bother to change into my usual attire of jeans and a t-shirt, because for the next 18 hours I would be on a bus with 63 other kids from Miege. You might ask yourself, “Why would she be getting up at 5:30 a.m. and then riding on a bus for 18 hours?” Well, the answer is simple. Okay, so the answer really isn’t all that simple. I was going on a mission trip with my school to St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana. What were we going there for? Hurricane relief. For the next four days, my classmates and I would be living at Camp Premier, set up by FEMA, and working in a neighborhood that had been flooded after the levy broke during the hurricane. To be honest, I was really regretting ever having signed up for the mission trip. I mean, I’m 18 years old, and I’m in high school. I should be having fun in the sun and laughing with all my friends, not going down to Louisiana to clean out houses and deal with the muck and grime left over from the flood. Once I got there, however, my feelings changed to regretting ever feeling regret for signing up in the first place. I was suddenly extremely excited for the adventures to come and the people I would befriend. The first day of work was exhausting. We were assigned work teams of about 11 kids and two adults. Then we were assigned a house to work on. Our job was to clean all the muck out and get all the appliances and furniture out of the house. Then we went in and tore up the carpet and got out the ceiling fans and light fixtures, also breaking out any windows that were already damaged. Once that was done, we went in with hammers and crowbars, literally attacking the walls and ceiling, completely gutting the house. Once we finished one house, we were assigned another. My team’s first house took us about two and a half days to finish. We didn’t completely finish our second house since we only had a day and a half, but we came so close that we were willing to try and convince the bus drivers to let us stay a couple more hours to finish it. They wouldn’t let us, so we reluctantly boarded the bus back to camp, leaving our second house sadly unfinished. We got covered in mud, carried heavy chairs and couches and even lugged refrigerators and freezers, still full of food from before the hurricane, out to the curb to be picked up by whoever was taking care of the rubbish. Then we would tear down the drywall and the ceiling, along with the insulation, which is itchy stuff. Believe me, I know from experience, and it wasn’t pleasant. Neither was the smell that came from the fridges and freezers. The whole experience was emotionally and physically draining. On our last workday, I was talking to an older couple that lived across the street from where my team was working. The husband went back to cleaning their things up, but I continued talking to the wife. I told her about my regretting having signed up at first, but how I now regretted feeling that way. She told me she understood and that it was okay that I didn’t want to come.

“After all,” she said, “You’re young, and you want to have fun, not work on other people’s houses all week.” I nodded and smiled. After talking for a little while longer I said I needed to get back to work, and she nodded and looked away for a moment. Just as I turned to go, she said, “Wait a minute, honey. I want to say something else to you before you go.” I turned back around to face her. She was beginning to cry, automatically making me tear up. Then she smiled and said, “You have no idea how much we all appreciate what you’re doing for us. Your group is the most devoted and hardest working group I have yet to see, and I’m sure no one will match up to your determination. God bless you and all you’re doing. He will surely bless you in the future just for what you are doing now.” With that she began crying, as did I. She gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and said, “Oh, just go get back to work. They need your help, too.” I smiled, a few tears rolled down my cheeks, and I went back to work. It’s people like her that really make a person feel good about what they’re doing. That one moment when she told me God would bless me in the future for what I was doing right then was the one moment when I realized what I want to do with my future. I want to help people, directly or indirectly, in any way that I can. We never realize how lucky we are until a disaster hits us. These people are grateful if they even find a piece of clothing in the mess that Katrina left. What we saw on the news, read in the papers or heard on the radio was no match for what I saw when I got there. These people need help, and I believe that one of you can help them, whether you go down there yourself or send money to help the relief efforts. Do what you can to help, and God will surely bless you in the future.

Hurricane Relief Update – October 18, 2005

Thanks to the generosity of a number of St. Andrew’s parishioners, we were able to send an additional $3,000.00 to the Diocese of Mississippi for the renting of portable showers at the Long Beach center for diocesan hurricane recovery.

Our parish coordinator, Sue Hendon, has been named coordinator for the Diocese of West Missouri consolidated task group for recovery assistance. At this time, our ministry is primarily to the Diocese of Mississippi. The Diocese of Louisiana has specifically asked that personnel and material not be sent until they are more organized and can be more present in New Orleans.

Sue was in Long Beach for a week of relief effort in late September. She has gathered a great deal of information and has made contact with personnel in the Diocese of Mississippi who are organizing various aspects of recovery. With a letter from Bishop Howe, and a presentation that he and I made together at the recent clergy conference, we are now receiving names of representatives from parishes in the Diocese of West Missouri.

The goal is to create a single commission that will be able to respond to specific needs that the Diocese of Mississippi indicates as it continues to clean up and rebuild. The commission will have subgroups that will provide personnel, material, financial resources and other needs requested.

At length, when the gulf coast region has gained some stability, we will be asked to adopt one or more parish churches for the process of rebuilding the specific infrastructure of the parish church. The main concern of the Diocese of Mississippi, at present, is to get the region in good enough shape to bring residents back into the area and help them rebuild their homes and lives. To that end, the parishes in the region are providing focused attention.

A meeting is being planned in early November for the newly organized Hurricane Relief Commission. You may contact Sue Hendon at suehendon@kc.rr.com.

Please come back to this site for the latest updates.

Faithfully,
Fr. Frederick Mann
Rector

Update – September 21, 2005

Late yesterday afternoon, I received a call from The Rev. Janet Ott, a priest in the Diocese of Mississippi who is in charge of personnel for the Coast Episcopal School Station in Long Beach.  She expressed the joy of receiving the generators and informed us that they have been fully deployed and work wonderfully. 

They will be out of power and without water for a period of up to 8 more weeks but the generators are providing power and the US Navy and local fire departments are providing large tankers filled with water at the various stations (in the military, these large water tanker trucks are called "water buffaloes").
 
NEW IMMEDIATE NEED:  Janet informs us that they have rigged two shower stalls in the Coast Episcopal School building for use.  There are several hundred volunteer relief workers in the area, and large "tent cities" have been set up for lodging and food.  THERE ARE NO SHOWERS BEYOND THE TWO IN THE BUILDING.  The work is hot, dirty and sweaty and workers are trying to clean up with hoses attached to the tankers.
 
The diocese can rent large, 12 stall shower units...enough for 120 shower stalls for $10,000.00 for the 8 week period.  They have to have the money up front for these to be shipped in.  The urgent request to us is to provide those funds to meet that need.  Janet was hesitant to ask, since it is a large sum of money, but was so overwhelmed by our initial effort that she felt we might be able to help. 
 
Please contact me (frfred@standrewkc.org) if you willing to help mount the effort to meet this need.  We need to respond quickly.
 
In additional news, Sue Hendon, our coordinator for the Task Group, arrived in Jackson on Monday and is currently in Long Beach.  She called this afternoon to report that she is currently working with a group that is building temporary storage areas for lumber and other supplies that are beginning to arrive.  She has met with persons organizing partnerships with parishes hurt or destroyed by Katrina.  They are still a couple of weeks from entering that phase of rebuilding.  They continue to work on cleanup and regaining basic services, transportation and storage for supplies. 
 
 
Blessings,
 
Fr. Fred Mann

September 13, 2005

The initial request from the Diocese of Mississippi for our help has met with blessing beyond measure! On Tuesday, 13 September, we shipped twenty-three (23) generators to Mississippi. Each of these units is the 5500 watt variety, and we added heavy-duty utility extension cords to maximize their flexibility. They are mounted on wheels for easy mobility. This represents a total expenditure of $18,507.00 for generators, extra cords and shipping.

Six of these units went to Jackson, MS for deployment with work teams. The remaining seventeen units were sent to Coastal Episcopal School in Long Beach, MS. Bishop Duncan Gray has created a “forward diocesan post” in this very hard hit coastal community in the only building that remains standing and sturdy enough to house makeshift offices and work stations.

The seventeen units will be spread out along the coast at work stations being created by the diocese to provide food, administrative support for relief efforts, building materials and clean-up materials to assist in the restoration process. There will be a total of eighteen such work stations within the next week.

We thank the people of St. Andrew’s, Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral, Resurrection (Blue Springs), Mary Magdalene, St. Paul’s and the diocesan office for the wonderfully generous contributions that have made this assistance possible!

We are just beginning. We are continuing to build a Task Group to oversee ongoing projects to provide aid. This will include volunteers to travel to various sites, further material and adopting at least one parish within the Diocese of Mississippi that has been either destroyed or damaged beyond effective use. We will walk with that parish through the process of rebuilding and re-establishing ministries within their community.

Sue Hendon, parishioner at St. Andrew’s, is coordinating the Task Group that will work with the personnel of the Diocese of Mississippi in this phase of providing assistance. She can be reached by email at suehendon@kc.rr.com, or by phone through the parish office (816-523-1602).

Funds for ongoing relief partnership can be made either through St. Andrew’s or the Diocese of West Missouri. Please mark those gifts specifically for “Hurricane Relief.” We are keeping close records so that we can share with you how these funds are being used in our partnership with the Diocese of Mississippi.

This tragedy has displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The destruction and damage is the greatest in America’s modern history. It will take many months to get some sense of normality back into the Gulf Coast region. It will take years to complete the rebuilding. Meantime, those displaced need our support through prayer and action.

May God richly bless our outreach and the lives of those who have been displaced in this tragedy.

In Christ’s Love,

Fr. Frederick Mann, Rector

Holy God, source of life, lover of souls, out of the depths we call to you; in the face of incomprehensible anguish and sorrow, we lift the cries of our distress and implore you to show mercy upon those who are suffering from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. We pray for those who have died and for their loved ones who grieve, asking you to hold them in the arms of your love; we pray for those who have been injured in body, mind or spirit and ask you to heal them; we pray for those who are homeless and wandering, for families torn asunder and ask you to shelter them. Strengthen the hands and hearts of those who assist in relief efforts and grant us all firm resolve to stand with our neighbors who are in need, to love them and to offer our generous support of them in this their time of trouble; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen

Litany in Response to Natural Disaster
(PDF File – 72K)

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