ARABI – God was with them in the midst of 14 feet of floodwaters, and He’s going to be with them as they serve Him anew in St. Bernard Parish, Cindy and Craig Ratliff say.
By Keith Manuel
Regional Reporter
ARABI – God was with them in the midst of 14 feet of
floodwaters, and He’s going to be with them as they serve Him anew in
St. Bernard Parish, Cindy and Craig Ratliff say.
The retelling of their “hurricane story,” and of the
destruction and rebirth of the church they served, First Baptist Church
of Arabi, fit together in this summer’s season of rebuilding.
Cindy’s day on Monday, Aug. 29, started at 5 a.m. At 8:10 a.m. she got
up from the couch to see what Hurricane Katrina was doing to her
neighborhood, and stepped into water an inch deep in her living room.
Two hours later, Cindy and Craig were standing in
two inches of water, but this time the couple were on their
second-floor balcony developing a plan to escape. Very soon, the water
would be thigh deep and at its maximum would reach a height of 14 feet.
Craig had served as youth minister
for two and a half years at First Arabi before the hurricane struck. A
few months after the disaster, 93 members of the New Orleans-area
church met in Northeast Louisiana to worship and ultimately vote to
disband the congregation. Although the details still are not complete,
the desire of the congregation is that the insurance settlement be used
in St. Bernard parish to further the work of the kingdom of God.
Craig inflated the two-ringed, vinyl-bottomed
kiddy pool he’d used for a youth event to float his wife, himself
and a backpack filled with granola bars and water to the church a few
blocks away. They didn’t get far before realizing the danger they were
in because of the gasoline seeping out of the tanks of a submerged
convenience store and swirling around them.
While pondering which direction to turn in, the couple heard a voice call out: “Do you have any water?”
They hand-paddled over to toss a bottle of water,
but when Craig and Cindy got to the window of a man they later learned
was Bill, he disappeared inside his second-story apartment. Then,
before the couple could protest, Bill threw a large backpack in the
small, already overcrowded pool, and climbed in.
The congregation
of First Arabi decided to elect a board of directors either to oversee
a merger with other churches from the St. Bernard area or to find some
means to start a new work. At present, the directors are using legal
advisers to guide them into a merger with Celebration Church, a
cell-driven church on the opposite side of New Orleans that wants to
create a satellite campus in St. Bernard Parish.
“It is now after noon and the storm, though not
completely gone, has died down enough to allow us to move more in the
open,” Cindy later recounted on the church’s website. Craig, Cindy and
their new friend Bill knew they couldn’t stay against the building
where they had been huddling for protection. They paddled upstream
using their hands, before allowing the fast-moving current to carry
them to a flat rooftop across the street.
Exhausted from their struggle and from the lack of
sleep the night before, Craig and Bill fell asleep on the rooftop after
getting to safety. Cindy sat in a chair the men had found for her, and
began to pray.
Inside the
sanctuary of First Arabi is an overturned piano, hymnals that are
swollen to twice their size, guest cards that wilt toward the
mud-covered carpet, and walls in shades of red, black and blue – the
colors of the mold that grows on them. The healing process for the few
members who drive by their former beautiful building includes the
bulldozers and excavators that are now demolishing the shell of a
building.
On top of the roof, Cindy continued to pray until
she heard the roar of a boat motor. The operator said he would be back
in a few minutes to pick them up.
He never did.
The rooftop survivors would see several more boats
that didn’t stop, and then another operator indicating he would return
soon to get them, but he too never returned. Finally, a boat stopped
and gave the three a ride to the local high school, where conditions
were terrible.
The shelter rules allowed the 150-plus animals brought by more than 300 people to roam freely.
No water or food was available to anyone.
No one could leave because the water was too deep.
The restroom was a bucket in a dark closet. When the
bucket was full, someone would push the full bucket to the back of the
closet and find another bucket to use.
The smells were acrid. People talked all through the
night. Dogs barked. It was one of the longest nights of Craig and
Cindy’s lives.
Before the storm,
First Arabi was a church in transition. Pastor David Howard had led the
church to begin reaching out to their African-American neighbors. The
church had studied the purpose-driven model of Rick Warren as evidenced
by banners hanging in the windows of the ruined sanctuary, reminding
the congregation of God’s purposes for their church: worship,
fellowship, discipleship, ministry and missions. Craig and Cindy were
leading the youth group to embrace that model of ministry too.
Local officials moved the people in the high school
to a warehouse on Tuesday after the hurricane. At this site, the
Ratliffs received food and water. They slept on wooden palettes.
Restrooms were more sanitary than the high school, but not by much. The
warehouse would be their home until Friday.
Shortly after lunch on Friday, soldiers instructed
the people in the warehouse to pack their bags. The group was loaded on
a ferry to cross the river and eventually placed on 20 buses to take
them to safety. The evacuees smelled so bad that the soldiers guarding
the group resorted to smearing a salve under their own noses that is
normally used to cover-up the odor of dead bodies.
More drama: The police wanted the buses; the
military said they couldn’t have them. Two hours later, the military
won, only to be stopped at the edge of Kenner by what looked to Craig
and Cindy like the city’s entire police department. Three hours later,
the military won again, and the casualties were on their way – like it
or not – to Dallas.
The Ratliffs didn’t like it. During a rest break in
Shreveport, they happened on the last remaining room in a motel, and
left the group of evacuees.
The first thing Craig and Cindy did was take baths
and get out of the wet, rancid clothing they’d been wearing since
leaving their home on Monday. They threw away all the possessions that
remained from their harrowing trip. For Craig the hardest thing to
discard was his Bible, now mold-covered. Craig and Cindy managed to
save a couple of forms of identification, their wedding rings and their
lives.
First Arabi’s
website describes its intention to merge with Celebration. The plan for
the new ministry, if all continues to go well, is coming together. The
new satellite church is preparing to bring in counselors to help the
people of St. Bernard parish deal with their loss. They want to set a
goal of helping 20 local families gut their homes every week. The
church wants to give away staple items and cleaning supplies.
Ministries for children are planned.
Craig and Cindy have been planning too. Craig is
currently working as a campus police officer at New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary. Cindy found employment with Children’s Hospital
as a nursing administrative assistant. Perhaps the best plan being
discussed for the church and the Ratliffs is to allow Craig to become
the onsite pastor for the proposed new church in Arabi, under
Celebration’s Dennis Watson.
“People ask, ‘How long will you be in St. Bernard?’
I tell them as long as God wants me,” Craig said. “But if you ask my
wife, she will tell you, ‘probably for the next 50 or 60 years.’”