Our trip down to New Iberia, Louisiana, with the Michigan mobile kitchen, two motor homes, and communications trailer, started with only our schedule in mind. It ended on God’s timetable with many miracles along the way. Like being delayed because of a broken propane tank, but making friends with several people trying to help us. Like being delayed, staying in a motel we hadn’t planned on, and having a man donate $400 to us in the lobby. He said, “I know you folks do good work, just take it.” Or having a wonderful sharing time with the motel clerk about our great God. Or breaking down and being towed to an RV service center whose entire staff was so helpful we ended up taking pictures of everyone before we left. We may have arrived a few days later than we wished, but I think we were right on time in God’s mind.
When we arrived at the warehouse in New Iberia, 60 miles west of New Orleans, we found an old Wal-Mart converted into a warehouse. Think about your local Wal-Mart completely empty—it’s pretty big! The warehouse opened on Tuesday after Labor Day and we arrived on Thursday. It was five percent full, but by the following Tuesday it was over sixty percent full. Semi-trucks filled with all kinds of donated goods roll in an average of five to nine times daily. Some donations are stacked neatly on pallets, others are just piles of things people pushed into a semi. That’s when the sorting, boxing, and inventory happens—including diapers, clothes, cleaning supplies, bedding, canned foods, bottled water, and gas generators. As of September 19, about 30 shipments were made to different shelters and organizations needing supplies.
Some of our team worked in the office and warehouse. In the mobile kitchen, we kept busy providing three meals a day for volunteers and also fed truck drivers and anyone else around at mealtime.
The neatest thing about working in an operation like this is the great people you meet. Your family grows as you meet brothers and sisters in Christ from around the country. Arkansas, California, Idaho, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington were some of the places represented by the volunteers.
A special person working there is Cindy, an Adventist from St. Bernard’s Parish, just east of New Orleans. She and several family members lost homes in the storm. Cindy is staying in New Iberia and came to volunteer. She heard about the warehouse and said she wanted to help others.
I was at the local laundromat and talked with a man who lived through Katrina. He said when the eye of the storm passed and the backwall of the storm hit, the water rose into his house two to three feet in 20 minutes. He was grateful to God all his family is safe.
This is the reason I volunteer in disaster response, having the privilege to talk with people like that and to feel like I helped them in some small way.
LeeAnn Heinert is a Michigan Conference disaster response team member from Kalamazoo, Michigan.
