| HOME | e-LERT | e-NEWS | e-HUM | e-PISTLE | e-NNOUNCEMENTS | DOWNLOADS | together | ARCHIVES | SUBSCRIBE |
|
|
 |
|
September 15, 2005 Hurricane Relief UpdateHURRICANE RELIEF DROP SITE AVAILABLE FOR SATURDAY McLAREN MEETINGSaint Luke's United Methodist Church in Indianapolis has agreed to be a drop-off site for hurricane relief supplies to those attending the Saturday, Sept. 17 meeting with Bishop Coyner and Brian McLaren at the church. The drop point will be at the front doors of the church. Items dropped there will be transported to Lawrence United Methodist Church for distribution to Sager Brown or an alternative site used by UMCOR in Louisiana. CHURCHES WANTING TO HOUSE EVACUEE FAMILIES, CALL HOMELAND SECURITYFor those congregations wishing to explore the possibility of housing for Hurricane Katrina evacuee families, please contact the Indiana Department of Homeland Security at 317-233-4487 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Homeland Security is in daily contact with the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, organizations presently caring for evacuees in public shelters. SOUTH INDIANA VOLUNTEERS SEND FOURTH GROUP TO GULFPORTYesterday, the four Volunteer-in-Mission team left Evansville for Gulfport, Mississippi. These volunteers are helping to care for the immediate human needs of evacuees by assisting in meal preparation for the more than 2,000 evacuees being feed from a United Methodist Church in Gulfport. Unusual to this shipment was the donation of 120 dozens of eggs. The Rev. Randy Anderson of Centenary United Methodist Church of Evansville is coordinating volunteer activities of Hoosiers once they arrive in Gulfport. GULFPORT UNITED METHODIST CHURCHES IN NEED OF SCHOOL KITS, SUPPLIESRandy Anderson, pastor of Centenary UMC in Evansville, reports that 19 church buildings and parsonages in Mississippi have either been destroyed or heavily damaged. He just returned from Gulfport. Meanwhile, Carolyn Ellis, South Indiana Conference, said that the Trinity United Methodist Church of Gulfport, Miss. is in need of school kits. Gulfport hopes to have school back in session in three weeks. Please fill a backpack with supplies for one child. Tag the backpack with the appropriate age group, kindergarten/1st grade, elementary, Jr/Sr high. The collection site for school supplies will be Vincennes First UMC, 411 N. 4th St, Vincennes, IN 47591. Contact Pastor John Groves at 812-882-0742, before delivering supplies. Instructions for assembling school kits can be found online at http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/print/kits/. Information about assembling kits is provided in PDF, Web page and Word Document formats. Here are the contents of the school kit. SCHOOL KIT(Updated: 02/26/2005) This UMCOR kit is designed for a variety of ages.
Place items in a back pack. Patterns are available from UMCOR Sager Brown or on our website: http://www.sagerbrown.org. Value: $11 per kit. In a separate envelope, please send a check for at least $1 for each kit to help UMCOR Sager Brown with the costs of processing and shipping kits. Important: Please do not include any religious, political or patriotic notes or emblems in any kit. Thank you for your donations. You are helping to make a difference in people's lives. MISSISSIPPI RECOVERY WILL TAKE YEARSBy Heather Moyer JACKSON, Miss. (Disaster News Service) ? Hurricane Katrina was much bigger than many recovery plans, said one emergency responder. For Jeff Pruett, disaster relief coordinator for the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) in Mississippi that means everybody has had to adapt as they've gone along. "The enormity of this storm has been beyond the plans that most everybody had made, so we've had to expand the plans exponentially," he said. "We've had to help in other areas of ministry that are generally beyond UMCOR's disaster response." Pruett said one example of a plan change is setting up many feeding centers across the hurricane-ravaged areas of the state. But in other ways, he said the response work mirrors how it usually happens post-disaster. UMCOR in Mississippi continues to work closely with the state chapter of Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) to help supply volunteers for shelters. Volunteers are also on the ground assisting with debris removal and putting tarps onto damaged roofs. United Methodist Churches around the state are serving both as shelters and as supply distribution sites. Pruett estimates that they have helped more than 25 semi-trucks full of supplies be distributed to survivors and UMCOR will soon have two warehouses set up for further supply distribution. "We'll also have a call center up and running in a couple of days to help register volunteer teams for long-term response," he said. The main office for UMCOR's recovery in Mississippi will be in Meridian, he added, and three other regional offices will soon be established as well. They are also working with the Marion Edwards Recovery Center Initiative (MERCI) from North Carolina to recruit volunteers. MERCI is a Methodist agency that works in disaster recovery. Numerous other faith-based disaster relief organizations are active in the Mississippi hurricane recovery as well. The need for volunteers will continue for years considering the immense damage the hurricane caused. According to preliminary damage estimates from the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), the storm destroyed more than 1,100 homes and severely damaged another 7,200. Another 60,000 homes suffered minor damage. Those numbers do not include the hardest hit coastal counties of Harrison, Hancock, and Jackson - all of which suffered serious flooding and have yet to be able to report any damages. MEMA also reports that more than 10,000 people are still living in shelters, and those are just the ones operated by the American Red Cross. Pruett has been to some of the hardest hit areas along the Gulf Coast, and he says the damage is shocking. "Nobody has seen this kind of destruction before," he said. Posted September 15, 2005 1:19 PM KOKOMO CHURCHES TAKE LEAD IN KATRINA RECOVERY ACROSS COMMUNITYHere's a note to Bishop Coyner from Kokomo.
HEALTH KITS, HEALTH SUPPLIES TO BE COLLECTED AT SIC UMW ANNUAL MEETINGHealth Kits and Health Kit supplies will be collected at the South Indiana Conference United Methodist Women's Annual Conference Oct 14 -15 at Central United Methodist Church, 300 Mary Street, Evansville. For more information, please contact Vickie Newkirk at 317-861-1525 or Judy Lomax at 812-246-2588. FURNITURE NEEDED BY ORGANIZATION PROVIDING HOUSING FOR EVACUEESHope International, a faith-based organization providing housing for evacuees in Indianapolis, is in great need of furniture. Hope is furnishing empty housing for evacuees. For more information, contact Jean Hewitt at Hope International in Indianapolis at 317-955-0358. NORTH INDIANA CONFERENCE EXPANDS HURRICANE RELIEF SUPPLIES DROP SITESSeveral churches have responded to Hurricane Katrina with church-wide and community efforts to collect and transport semi-trailers of relief supplies to the various places of need. Other churches want to help but have smaller amounts to send and have asked for information on how to go about sending their items. A Conference wide network of drop-off points is being set up to fill that need. At the present time these businesses and churches have opened their hearts and buildings to receive relief supplies. The Conference will be sending a truck to these locations Thursday Sept. 15 or Friday Sept. 16 to pick up current donations. This first pick-up should be primarily Health Kits, baby diapers and new or clean gently used blankets, although other requested items will be accepted. Other pick-up dates with a new list of requested items, including Flood Buckets will be made available in a few days. UPDATED LIST OF DROP-OFF LOCATIONS IN THE NORTH INDIANA CONFERENCEKIRBY RISK BRANCHES in
Chesterton UMC, 434 S. 2nd. St., Chesterton 46304 - 219-926-1478 Salem Chapel UMC, 2802 E ST Rd 4, Laporte 46350 - 219-362-3300 Nappanee UMC, 301 E Market St, Nappanee 46550 - 574-733-4183 Plymouth Trinity UMC, 425 S Michigan St., Plymouth 46563 - 574-936-2519 Huntington Trinity UMC, 530 Guilford St., Huntington 46750 - 260-356-0961 Kokomo St. Luke's UMC, 700 E Southway Blvd., Kokomo 46902 - 765-453-0555 Ft. Wayne Sonrise UMC, 10125 Illinois Rd., Fort Wayne 46804 - 260-469-3700 Gas City First UMC, 213 E South A St., Gas City 46933 - 765-674-3583 Yorktown UMC, 2301 S Broadway, Yorktown 47396 - 765-759-7411 Kendallville Trinity UMC, 229 S State St., Kendallville 46755 - 260-343-0387 Valparaiso First UMC, 103 Franklin St., Valparaiso 46383 219-465-1661 Frankfort St. Matthew's UMC, 1951 Wilshire Dr., Frankfort 46041 - 765-654-5575 Questions may be directed to: Connie Payne, 765-985-2864, e-mail cfpayne@myvine.com Charlie Jones, 765-643-9613, e-mail k9tzj@arrl.net UNION CHAPEL COLLECTS HEALTH KITS, BLANKETS, FLOOD BUCKETSUnion Chapel UMC in Indianapolis collected from churches, schools and the neighborhood: 627 health kits, 19 blankets and 4 flood buckets. Members took the supplies to the Lawrence UMC collection site. DISPLACED PETS NEED HOME FOLLOWING KATRINAFor those interested in helping with displaced pets (pets of people who are evacuees in shelters or motels) from Hurricane Katrina, here's some information: Foster a pet for someone displaced from the storm. In addition to dogs and cats, animal rescue groups also need people to take in all sorts of animals, guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, horses, etc. To fill out an application (and wait for approval) visit: http://katrinafoundpets.com/app.htm. Noah's Wish http://www.noahswish.org is an approved, accredited animal rescue group working in the area involved in all sorts of rescue efforts regarding the hurricane. The biggest need is money, and 75 percent of donations go directly to help animals (the other 25 percent goes to staff and travel expenses). The ASPCA, working in cooperation with other animal agencies, has asked for donations of money or supplies: pet carriers, food bowls, leashes, collars, towels, brushes, cages for pocket pets or rabbits, toys, blankets, etc.. They ask that folks do not send food at this time. For more information, log on to: http://www.aspca.org/ HOW TO HELP THROUGH UMCORAs of Sept. 8, UMCOR had received just more than $2 million in online and telephone contributions for Hurricane Katrina relief. That figure did not include donations made by mail or through offerings given to local churches. Donations to support the United Methodist hurricane response can be made online at www.methodistrelief.org and by phone at 800-554-8583. Checks can be written to UMCOR, designated for "Hurricanes 2005 Global," Advance No. 982523, and left in offering plates or mailed to UMCOR, P.O. Box 9068, New York, NY 10087-9068. Information on health kits and school kits can be found on the UMCOR Web site, http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/print/kits/. Other information on packing and shipping can be found at that site or by calling the Sager Brown Depot at 800-814-8765. For daily updates of what is happening in the South with relief efforts, log on to www.umcor.org. For updates from the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama-West Florida Conferences, log on to For continuous news stories about relief efforts, log on to www.umns.org. Compiled by # # # If you know someone who has yet to sign up for e-HUM, they simply need to send a blank e-mail from their preferred e-mail account to add@inareaumc.org. e-HUM Alert copyright 2005 by Indiana Area United Methodist Communications. |
