NEW ORLEANS – Painting a wall inside a school may seem like a small task to some, but for Larry Miguez, the job is a major victory in post-Katrina New Orleans.
By Brian Blackwell
Staff writer
NEW ORLEANS – Painting a wall inside a school may
seem like a small task to some, but for Larry Miguez, the job is a
major victory in post-Katrina New Orleans.
With so many tasks to accomplish and so few hours in
a day, helping rebuild the city can seem overwhelming at times.
“We try to sleep between 3 and 8 a.m.,” Miguez,
director of the Rachel Sims Mission and Carver Baptist Center, joked.
“Besides that, we answer close to 150 phone calls a day.
“We don’t feel like we get much done unless we have
finished mudding out a home or putting the last nail onto the boards of
a home,” he added. “The missionaries here are tired. There aren’t
enough hours in one day.”
But Miguez and his staff at the two centers are not alone.
Since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, four Southern Baptist
Convention centers – Rachel Sims Mission, Carver Center, Brantley
Baptist Mission and Baptist Friendship House – are ministering
with a new mission.
Among other ministry efforts, all of the centers are
housing disaster relief teams. The Rachel Sims Mission is booked
through the end of the year while the other three have available space
on a week-to-week basis.
“We’re offering a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name and expressing God’s love,” Miguez said.
Before the storm, Rachel Sims Mission and Carver
Center ministered to neighborhood children, teens, young adults and
senior adults. Now, the center staff is coordinating and providing
refreshments for Vacation Bible Schools in churches throughout the
Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans.
Miguez’s staff also are providing counseling for
storm victims, sprucing up businesses and homes and meeting the needs
of area churches such as delivering pianos, fax machines and
refrigerators that are donated by other congregations.
“We are meeting physical, emotional and spiritual
needs,” Miguez said. “We can offer Jesus as a means of everlasting
hope.”
For its part, Brantley Mission Center has reshifted
their focus from a shelter for homeless men to a 250-bed dorm for
disaster relief teams.
“We’re doing a number of things differently, but our
primary task is retooling our ministry to allow volunteer groups to
allow them to sleep in our facilities,” Tobey Pitman, director of the
Brantley Center, said. “In one sense, things have changed radically,
but in another they haven’t.
“While we aren’t serving as a homeless shelter, we
are serving as a ministry to folks coming into the city to do disaster
relief work,” he continued. “We’re like a Baptist bed and breakfast,
trying to meet the needs of volunteers coming through our doors.”
The number of groups sleeping in the center varies
from week-to-week. One night the center may be empty while the next it
is filled to capacity.
Meanwhile, on the edge of New Orleans’ French
Quarter, the Baptist Friendship House has temporarily stopped its
ministry as a shelter for battered women and children. They now house
disaster relief teams from the Oklahoma Baptist Convention.
Of the 42 girls who participated in the Project Hope
program that helps teen girls develop life skills, Bennett has seen two
of them. And she has seen only one woman who participated in their
weekly Bible study at the center.
And seeing those women gives Bennett hope for the
ministry’s future. By September, they hope to restart their ministry to
women in the area.
“Seeing those women gives us a little sense of
normalcy,” Bennett said. “We get excited when a gas station or fast
food place opens up.
“Our community is looking like a ghost town and when
it opens up it makes it easier for people to come back and it meets
your needs.”