NEW ORLEANS (BP)–For each person affected by Hurricane Katrina, there is a story. And healing comes in the telling.
Members of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary family were ready to listen to the stories of people throughout New Orleans on Aug. 29, the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall.
Disaster relief training offered to the seminary family on that anniversary morning highlighted the importance of showing compassion during a crisis by listening to a person’s story. Ways to identify a person suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder also were relayed in the training.
But perhaps the best preparation for the afternoon of ministry throughout the city came during a time of worship and remembrance in the seminary’s Leavell Chapel. During the service, students were able to experience the healing power of telling their stories with one another and then offering those memories up to God.
“Those who experienced Katrina can testify to God’s providence,” Ken Taylor, professor of missions, said. “Even those who don’t know Him are beginning to see that providence, and they will see it in some of you today.”
Three people told part of their stories to those gathered for the service. Each was different, but every story declared God’s providence, provision and protection. The first person to share his story was Joe McKeever, director of missions for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans.
“Right after we returned from the evacuation late last September, I noticed that in New Orleans at almost every intersection someone had printed up a Scripture verse on these little signs,” McKeever said. “It was Jeremiah 29:11 -– ‘For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not your calamity, plans to give you a future and a hope.’”
To get to the associational office, McKeever drives down Elysian Fields Avenue, a street that for a long time, he said, had little or no activity on it.
“One day I was driving in and the tears were coming,” he said. “I had this conversation with the Lord: ‘Lord, it’s not that Walgreen’s that’s closed, and it’s not the Burger King that’s closed. It’s not this house or that house. It’s just the whole thing, and I don’t know what to do for them.’ And God spoke back to my heart and said, ‘This is not about you. It’s about Me.’
“I can’t tell you how liberating that was,” McKeever said.
The second person who shared his story from the storm was Jay Atkins, an NOBTS student and pastor of the New Orleans-area First Baptist Church of Westwego. He said he usually rode out storms on the second floor of the church’s education building but he had promised his wife he would evacuate for a Category 4 or 5 storm. On Sunday, Aug. 28, early in the morning, Atkins’ wife called him to report that the storm had become a Category 5. Later that day, he and the youth minister of the church evacuated to Eunice, La. But they weren’t there long.
The storm came and the levees broke on Monday, and Atkins and the youth minister came back to New Orleans on Thursday. From the time they entered Orleans Parish that Thursday, God’s provision was evident.
Atkins found a police officer who told him how to get back into the parish by going through the least amount of checkpoints. When they made it to the church, they discovered that the only working telephone in the area was a rarely used phone in the fellowship hall of the church. For the next few hours, Atkins worked to get a call out to anyone who could help.
“I called the North American Mission Board and said, ‘I’m Jay and I’m in New Orleans. If you can get us some food, we can probably feed a lot of people,’” Atkins recounted.
In the end, NAMB sent two mobile kitchens from Georgia, and through those kitchens, thousands of first responders were fed.
“We were able to get the first food to West Jefferson Hospital, to the police, fire and EMS workers, to nursing homes and other neighbors, and to the National Guard people who were in the Superdome,” Atkins said. “It’s amazing what God has done to open doors.”
Byron Townsend’s story, like Atkins’, testified to God’s provision and His protection. Townsend and his wife Cynthia had their first child just days before Hurricane Katrina came ashore. The provision came on Tuesday when Cynthia, their newborn Ethan and Cynthia’s parents were preparing to evacuate from Tulane Lakeside Hospital in Jefferson Parish.
The Townsends’ nurse, Lynette, needed to get to Houston where her family had evacuated before the storm. She asked Townsend for a ride. Townsend liked the idea of having a private nurse ride with his family to Houston.
“Lynette, get in the car!” Townsend recalled as his response.
The family and Lynette evacuated, but Townsend stayed at the hospital to help in whatever way he could. There, he said little concrete information was known about the conditions of the city. Eventually, rumors began spreading that the levees were going to break in Jefferson Parish and flood the area where he was. Tension at the hospital was high.
“I said, ‘Lord, You’ve provided thus far. I know You can get me out of here,’” he said.
Townsend got into his Toyota Camry and made his way to the interstate. But between him and the ramp onto the interstate was a dip in the road where the water was deep, and there in the low place a woman’s car had stalled in the floodwater. As he prayed for strength and wisdom, he was able to push the flooded car out of the way and drive his car through the water and out the other side. Though the water came up over the hood, Townsend made it not only out of the water but all the way to Houston safely.
“I had church in the car,” he recounted.
Immediately following the testimonies, NOBTS professor Preston Nix led students in a time of prayer that started with each student sharing his or her toughest, most painful memory from Katrina. Then, he prompted each person to share the most tremendous thing God did through the storm. Afterward, in prayer, they offered those tough memories and the tremendous memories to God.
Nix said the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina served as a transition. It was a transition for the city of New Orleans from the first, devastating year of recovery to the years-long rebuilding effort. For NOBTS, it served as the launching point for the seminary’s concerted efforts to participate in the rebuilding of the city. As the group went out into the city to gut a neighbor’s house or prayer walk a devastated street, the volunteers were ready to offer God’s comfort and love since that same comfort and love had been extended to them earlier that day.
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