Hurricane Rita spawned tornadoes in Mississippi and Alabama this weekend. We watched the weather news this afternoon and saw warning after warning in Tuscaloosa. We did not take that to mean that God doesn’t like the University of Alabama, despite the fact that we are Auburn fans.
Tornadoes killed at least two people and destroyed homes as they cut a swath across the area.
People from all over the Southeast have lost their homes and livelihoods because of Katrina and Rita, some temporarily, some permanently. I’m afraid the rest of us may be at risk of compassion fatigue, and we can’t let that happen. We have made donations for emergency aid, and some of us have opened our homes. Now it’s time to dig in for the long haul. Charities and direct service agencies are struggling to provide aid for storm evacuees as well as local people. Unfortunately, poverty, illness, and need exist everywhere.
Once the worst of the storms’ aftermath passes, let’s don’t forget the nonprofits that provide assistance every day. May I suggest contributions to agencies like the United Methodist Committee on Relief, which provides immediate and long-term assistance to victims of disaster? Every dollar donated to UMCOR goes directly to relief efforts; the United Methodist Church pays the administrative costs. And the people of UMCOR want to help, not proselytize. They are the hands and feet of Jesus in this world; their efforts speak for themselves.
If you’re not a United Methodist, check out your own faith community’s relief agencies or local nonprofit agencies that do work you can support. There are many people out there quietly taking care of the least among us, and we can help — every day.
The UCC is helping through Church World Service and One Great Hour of Sharing–I wish we had been a bit more on the ground, but considering we have only one teeny congregation in the whole state of Mississippi, there wasn’t much in the way of denominational infrastructure on the ground. Still, like UMCOR, it’s good to know contributions are to the actual efforts, since our annual giving to the UCC provides the administrative structure needed to distribute aid.
I would really like to organize a mission trip for some high school kids to come south and work on something, but I’m not sure how to do that given the distance and travel time. Scheming continues…
I have passed on your idea to our youth director, who is in the process of planning a mission trip for our kids. I told him it would be fun for y’all to do something together, so if you get a strange email from a guy in Birmingham, I put him up to it.