Covenant News

CBC Team Heads South; Others Help Make a Difference

PASCAGOULA, FL (October 3, 2005) - Over the past four years, the students and faculty of Covenant Bible College-Colorado have traveled to Mexico to build homes for the homeless. Seeing the devastation left behind from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita led to a change in plans for this year.

On Saturday, the entire school followed in the footsteps of Evangelical Covenant churches from the Midwest that recently traveled to Pascagoula, Mississippi. The students and faculty members are scheduled to return on Sunday.

Covenant World Relief has provided $6,000 to support the trip and help purchase materials, says Becky Vetvick, the college's office administrator. Covenant Bible College campuses in Ecuador and Strathmore also took up collections for the trip.

The college learned of the Mississippi church after several churches from the Midwest Conference traveled to Pascagoula last month. Members of a 30-person ecumenical team were able to help at least 21 families, whose previously flooded homes they cleaned.

The team was led by members of Celebration Covenant Church, but included others from eight denominations with churches in four states. Several of the members joined the team as it made its way south. Team members ranged in age from 16-70.

The team was based at Eastlawn United Methodist Church. The church gymnasium became a relief center where people could gather clothing, cleaning supplies, food and water. The Celebration team staffed the area and unloaded incoming trucks.

Their cooks also fed the team's 30 workers in addition to an equal number of other volunteers. They used camping stoves and a generator-powered microwave and small refrigerator. A lot of ready-to-eat food also was consumed.

Eastlawn had been flooded from the storm, however, and the building had to be cleaned before it could be used. Team members cleaned the building and set up generators to provide power and even installed an air conditioning unit in a large room. Some members slept in the room while other chose to sleep outside under tents.

Whether inside or out, reminders of Katrina's devastation were all around. Inside, the church pews had been strewn around and the smell of the receded flood waters still was present. Across the street from the church, a large tree had been uprooted and lay across a house.

Mold in the homes is growing rapidly because of the intense humidity, and the interiors of the residences are filled with sewage mixed with mud, says Cindy Ferguson, who helped spearhead the trip. "The smell inside the homes is just awful," she adds. Workers wore protective gear, including waders and face masks to protect themselves as they cleaned.

Workers developed emotional ties with those they helped, Ferguson says. "It was an immediate bond - you almost started feeling like they were your family."

The elderly in Pascagoula were at a particular disadvantage because they are not strong enough to clean their homes, says Ferguson. Linda Carpenter, a 71-year-old widow, had lived in an apartment in which flood waters rose six feet. "Linda broke down several times" while team members removed furniture and cleaned the apartment, says Fred Richart of Celebration Covenant. Richart was able to preserve an urn filled with her husband's ashes.

The conditions were unpleasant, but the team was glad just to have arrived; their 26-foot rental truck broke down outside Kansas City. They had to rent a vehicle from another company and then transfer all of the items from one truck into another before continuing. Celebration is a five-year-old congregation that does not have its own building, so members are used to packing and unpacking trailers of equipment each Sunday (though none that big), Ferguson says, laughing.

Despite the difficulties and conditions, those who made the trip say they were blessed to have gone and that their lives had been changed. One of the men from Omaha recently had been released from prison. "His wife says he returned home a different man," says Celebration pastor Doug Ferguson.

The crew also enjoyed meeting others who had been determined to get to Pascagoula, says Richart. One of those people was a Jewish woman from Illinois who had become increasingly angry while watching televised reports of an inadequate response to the disaster.

The woman had frightened her cats - which tried to escape the house - because she kept throwing her shoes at the television set as her anger grew, Richart recalls the woman saying. She called her Rabbi, but says he didn't move fast enough for her, so the woman and her husband packed a large trailer behind their pickup and hauled it to Mississippi, where they encountered Eastlawn.

The woman told Richart that friends had pitched in financially and said, "I figured I needed $1,300 in gas to make the 16-hour trip both ways, and guess what? That's just about was I was given before I left."

"The energy and focus of this woman was something to behold," Richart recalls. "She saw the need, she was frustrated by what wasn't happening, and she did something positive - well, she did something positive after she scared her cats."

A local Omaha TV station reported on the trip - that broadcast can be found by visiting Broadcast. The Fergusons can be reached by email at dougferg@att.net.

Covenant Churches that had members participating in the trip included Celebration Covenant Church in Omaha, Nebraska; Community Covenant Church in Omaha; First Covenant Church in Omaha; Community Covenant Church in Kansas City, Missouri; Evangelical Covenant Church in Sloan, Iowa; and Grace Covenant Church in Lakewood, Colorado.

Additional churches that participated financially or with materials included Lanyon Covenant Church in Lanyon, Iowa, and Salem Evangelical Covenant Church in Oakland, Nebraska.

The church raised $24,000, which Doug Ferguson reported was used to purchase, sort, load and transport the following:

• More than 500 donated personal care kits
• Two generators and two pressure washers, lanterns, power chords, hoses, fans
• Two wet/dry vacuums and three chain saws, plus one case of motor oil
• One tub filled with towels, 150 additional towels and washcloths, 14 large boxes of garbage bags, two boxes of vinyl gloves
• One tub of medical supplies, 11 cases of bleach, one case of insect spray, cleaning supplies, work gloves, and bath soap
• 19 empty gasoline cans, 10 filled gasoline cans
• Three crowbars, three pry bars, 10 shovels, 12 squeegees, several five-gallon buckets, and one box of utility knives to cut out carpet
• 35 can openers, more than 1,000 protective masks, Kleenex, diapers
• 21 boxes and tubs of ready to eat food (more than $1,000 worth purchased, plus donated), plus many cases of water
• Clothing for men, women, and children along with toys, games, and preschool kits
• 300 Bibles and 1,000 New Testaments (donated)

Also left behind for future use were 80 gift cards of $50 value each for use at a local store so that individuals can buy sheets, towels, shoes, or whatever they need. These will be disbursed by the program director of the church, Dwane Windham, who is coordinating the relief effort. Another $4,000 was left to help purchase gasoline and diesel fuel for vehicles and generators - and for small cash gifts to individuals who have lost all of their material possessions and are not yet receiving other help.

A Sunday morning donation of $2,000 was given to the host church to aid in their hurricane recovery - all of their first-floor carpet and furnishings were ruined and drywall will need to be replaced.

"With money not yet spent, we will make grants to work groups yet to travel down to the hurricane zone, as we believe that hands-on help is the best kind of help to give," Ferguson says. "We will give first priority to Evangelical Covenant Churches and to churches or work groups who respond the quickest. We want to get those funds to work as quickly as possible on behalf of hurting people."

Ferguson adds that he has appreciated the support of other Covenant churches and Covenant World Relief, which provided money for a generator. "We saw churches and groups already bickering about who was in control or who would get credit in this relief work. I am so grateful that, in the Covenant, we experienced only persons trying to help, wanting to make a difference, and not really caring about who gets the credit."

For more information contact Ferguson at 402-891-7106. To see more photos of the relief group's work at Pascagoula, please see Cleanup.

(Editor's note: the top photo shows 16-year-old Chelsea Ferguson, daughter of pastor Doug and Cyndi Ferguson of Celebration Covenant Church. The center photo shows the circle of prayer that formed after the rental truck broke down en route to Pascagoula. The bottom photo shows an interior room of a home belonging to 71-year-old Linda Carter, a victim of the hurricane and resulting damage. The line on the wall behind her marks the height of flood water at one point in her first-floor apartment.)

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