Until recently, Vernon Lee had turned a deaf ear toward New Orleans.
“It had been a year or so since I had been down there and I had lost touch,” he said. “Then God laid it on my heart that I needed to be doing something to help those people.”
That was when Lee and others from Etowah Baptist Association fell in love with Miss Beverly, a “great Christian lady” still living in a FEMA trailer in the front yard of her Hurricane Katrina-damaged house.
“She’s been in that FEMA trailer for a year and a half,” said Lee, collegiate and student ministries director for Etowah Association. “Her son is working on the house, but there is still so much to do.”
Every time Miss Beverly would get down, she would ask the Lord to send her someone, and “it never failed that the Baptists would come by,” Lee said. “She stole our heart.”
So Etowah Association, in partnership with Operation NOAH Rebuild, has decided to see Miss Beverly’s project through from start to finish, sending construction teams from its churches week after week in the coming months.
It is the first association to take on a house as an associationwide project and commit to see it through, said Tommy Puckett, Alabama Baptists’ disaster relief director.
“I think that Etowah is establishing a model … for other associations to take a challenge like this on,” he said. “They can demonstrate how … it can work.”
Puckett’s hope is for other associations to follow suit and select their own house project with the help of Gary Walker, Alabama Baptists’ project manager for the rebuilding work in New Orleans’ Zone 6.
“People in New Orleans will see groups coming on a constant basis and rehabbing a house, and they will eventually want to know where these groups are coming from,” Puckett said. “Through that, relationships are built with those … in the community, and (that) will lend itself to more openness to the gospel.”
Gary Cardwell, director of missions for Etowah Association, said his churches want to do their part and hope that other associations “will capture the same ministry vision.”
The initial pull to New Orleans for both Cardwell and Lee was Walker’s work in the area. Walker was pastor of Riverbend Baptist Church, Gadsden, in Etowah Association before taking on full-time construction coordination in Zone 6 last year.
“We felt that if any association needed to get on board with this, we did,” Cardwell said.
So on a vision trip in December, associational leadership strategized with Walker, assigned an Etowah Baptist to coordinate their efforts from home and met with Miss Beverly.
“We surveyed the area, looked at some of the things that needed to be done and are now trying to generate enthusiasm among our churches for teams to go to New Orleans,” said Jack Carter, a member of Southside Baptist Church who will be coordinating Etowah Association teams with Walker from home. “We are praying we can reach a lot of people down there … who don’t know Christ. And we hope that the whole state will get involved.”
For more information on volunteering through Etowah Association, call Carter at 256-442-5498. For more information on starting a church or associational partnership with a house in New Orleans, call Puckett at 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 229.
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