Louisiana churches received no major damage.

The church buildings of the two Church of the Brethren congregations in southern Louisiana--Lake Charles Community Church of the Brethren and Roanoke Church of the Brethren--were not significantly damaged by Hurricane Rita, report denominational and district staff from conversations with leaders of the congregations.

Lake Charles deacon Cornell Thomas told the Emergency Response office late last week that the church suffered no major damage, said Brethren Disaster Response coordinator Jane Yount. But members of Lake Charles church have not been able to return home yet, said A. Joan Lowry, executive minister for Southern Plains District. "They are scattered all over," she said.

Lake Charles residents have not tried to return home because the town still does not have power, Lowry said. Generators provided by the General Board's Emergency Response/Service Ministries were to have arrived on Tuesday this week. Lowry said that Myron Jones, lead pastor at Lake Charles, had sent an e-mail to all members to contact the district in case of needs. All of those she has heard from are "ok, sort of," she said, given the difficulties of an evacuation.

"I feel very much at a loss up here" in the district office in Oklahoma, Lowry said, as she expressed her concern for the Lake Charles members and the fact that not much can be done until people return home. "They will need to do a lot of cleaning up when they return," she said, envisioning families coming home to spoiled food in refrigerators and freezers, and to find areas of their houses to be rotted. She also shared that two small communities south of Lake Charles were completely destroyed, and she does not know if any Brethren lived there.

Members of Roanoke (La.) Church of the Brethren "said that they were doing well," Lowry added. Power has been restored in Roanoke, Yount said.

Emergency Response director Roy Winter is scheduled to visit Louisiana and Alabama next week to do further assessment of how the Church of the Brethren can help, Yount said.

For more information about the Emergency Response/Service Ministries work related to the Gulf Coast hurricanes, see www.brethren.org/genbd/ersm/NewsUpdates.htm.

Source: 10/06/2005 Newsline Special Report
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