The New Orleans area was spared from the flooding that occurred last week. None of us are having to gut our houses, our grocery stores and gas stations are open, our cars run, our churches are having services, our jobs are intact and we are at work. But that is not the case 70 miles to our west. There life is not normal. There 40,000 homes were flooded. There people need help. If you would like to volunteer or donate here are some resources:
Volunteer Louisiana – State website with contact information for volunteer and donation opportunities.
Crisis to Love Ministries – A crisis pregnancy center without flood insurance that lost about $450,000 in equipment. You can contact them by calling 225-229-5826 or 225-266-7075 or email life@ctlm.org. The address is:
3813 N. Flannery Rd.
Baton Rouge, LA 70814
Friendship Baptist Church – Former church of one of the NOLA Pax. It flooded and so did the homes of many members.
10011 Comite Dr. Baker, LA 70714
Telephone: (225)261-1412
Community Bible Church in Baton Rouge – Baton Rouge Church organizing relief efforts. If you can help please contact Steve Foster (225) 328-8424 to set up a time and get an assignment.
First Baptist Gonzales This church is coordinating a lot of efforts. There are a group of guys coming from F3Nation to work with them this week. Contact the church at:
(225-647-8575) or fbcgonzales@eatel.net
The Thang
A group of NOLA Pax along with family members met at the Peristyle at 0530 Saturday morning. We divided ourselves into two teams and headed out. My team, let’s call ourselves team #1, headed to Ponchatoula while team two headed to Baton Rouge.
We arrived in Ponchatoula to help one of Shorty’s co-workers who was flooded. When we got there we noticed she and her husband were in the process of selling their home. Fortunately, the buyers still want it. Her house was in relatively good shape. All the furniture and carpet were out and the sheetrock was cut. We just needed to clean up her tile and spray the studs and she was good to go. It didn’t seem like much, but it would have probably taken her most of the day, seeing as she had a 1 year old strapped to her in a Baby Bjorn. Once we finished our cushy air-conditioned job we called Team 2 to see how they were progressing. They were gutting a house for an elderly couple in BR. They had two wheelbarrows, but seemed to be having trouble operating them. We decided we should head that way and see if we could help them figure it out.
We arrived to find a group of much dirtier and sweatier men than ourselves. They were gutting the house floor to ceiling and seemed to have figured out how the wheelbarrows work. This place did not appear to have the air conditioning that Team #1 had become accustomed to, so we quickly asked if there were other places in the area where we could assist. They pointed us to a Crisis Pregnancy Center about 10 minutes away, with the intention that they would join us in about an hour.
At the Crisis Pregnancy Center we found a group of about 7 dedicated people that had been hard at work all week. They had no idea who we were, but they didn’t really care. They needed help and lots of it. The center consists of two buildings, a clinic and an administrative building. The team had dedicated the prior week to getting all of the dry files and equipment out of the building and into storage. Today they were working on getting the wet stuff out. We started by destroying furniture and carrying it out. The girls seemed to enjoy using the sledgehammer, taking out some of the frustrations that come with a life spent with Shorty and Cowbell. We cleared the administration building by the time Team 2 arrived. Then we tackled the clinic, hauling out thousands and thousands of dollars worth of medical equipment. This place lost a lot. Fortunately we were able to clear out both buildings and pull out the carpet.
YHC had to leave early, but the rest of the Pax stayed to make sure the carpet was cleared. It was important to get the carpet out of there and I’m glad they were able to do it.
There were others helping also. Side Effects went solo to help those at his former church, while Griswold spent the latter part of the week and the weekend in Denham Springs helping a friend. He was able to put together a team of friends to help gut a house on Sunday.
Continue to pray for the people of Louisiana and please consider helping in any way that you can.
-Hawg
Great work F3NOLA. Wish I could have sweated and labored next to you my brothers, but someone had to set the work tempo for a bunch of butterbeans in North Baton Rouge.