Considering the calling that took Charity Gardner from her home in Birmingham in the first place, it’s no surprise she considers herself to have been in the right place at the right time in life when Hurricane Katrina raged through New Orleans Aug. 29.
Gardner, a graduate of Samford University in Birmingham, moved into the Baptist Friendship House, a transitional shelter for homeless women and children in the heart of New Orleans, when she began pursuing a master’s degree at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 2003. She moved to the center as a semester missionary through the North American Mission Board.
Though the staff of Friendship House evacuated for Katrina, they were quick to return to New Orleans. Despite the hazards of being in what quickly went from the “Big Easy” to a ghost town, the people there were people they had grown to love. The dejected of the New Orleans area — those are the very ones to whom Gardner said she is drawn.
“You can walk around the French Quarter with Charity and hear her call out the names of the homeless people. She knows them all by name,” said Robin Keels, Woman’s Missionary Union consultant for the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board.
The center got power in early January for the first time since Katrina struck, with the staff having worked for four months in the dark to minister in any way they could to those returning to what was left of their homes.
“I’m fighting feelings of hopelessness. What was week after week is now month after month,” said Kay Bennett, director of Friendship House. Yet despite her words, Bennett’s actions prove she and her staff are far from having lost hope.
Gardner and Bennett, along with Karina America, assistant director of the center, are determined to do what they can for “their people.” The center is currently housing volunteers, running a distribution site of donated goods and keeping a running list of the requests for teams to gut out homes.
“I guess we’ll take it one day at a time, one house at a time, and it’ll get back to the way it used to be,” Bennett said.
Volunteers work for days at a time, wearing plastic protective suits duct taped to their clothes, as well as helmets, boots and respirator masks, clearing out everything in mold-infested homes. The city is still scarred with the horror that took place. The word “help” is painted across rooftops; water still runs in the streets in the Lower Ninth Ward; house after house has a hole in the roof where individuals fought to reach safety.
Despite it all, Gardner has a calm, go-with-the-flow attitude, waking up each morning with a seemingly never-ending task at hand. She lives on the second floor of the shelter, sleeps on a bunk bed and shares a living room with whoever happens to be at the shelter with her. And in the midst of Gardner’s disaster relief efforts, she finds time to study for her classes.
Gardner acknowledged that it’s only by the grace of God that she is able to continue. As she rode around town, enduring its heart-wrenching sights, she noticed a chicken restaurant that has reopened — a small sign of normalcy. Gardner smiled, rejoiced with the rest of the staff and got right back to work.
Share with others: