Held Together By Faith, Connected by the Internet
Thousands for lunch and thousands for dinner, it’s not water turned to wine or fish with bread, it’s food donations brought in on carefully scheduled trucks and hot meals prepared over propane.
The members of Christian Life Church in Vinton on West Street, are just getting by like so many of the survivors in and around Lake Charles, Louisiana, following the horrific damage Hurricane Laura left behind.
Similar to the pandemic spurring togetherness across the nation, the storm brought Life Church outside of it’s four walls and into the community, helping neighbors at any cost.
The night after the storm, the sanctuary was a pile of mattresses from the double doors up to the pulpit, and according to Pastor Don, that’s pinpointing the mission of his faith based church.
“The church is supposed to be the hands and feet of the community,” says Pastor Don, head pastor at Life Church, “And that’s what we are out here doing.”
Pastor Don is the leader and organizer of the community’s food pantry, which originated out of his church six years ago. But in order to reach the thousands displaced and hungry in his community now, he had to get connected.
He needed to reach out to his network of pastors on Facebook in order to receive food donations and organize food pick up in his town of Vinton.
The sanctuary has been running on generators for 17 days, and the church is paying out of pocket for the shower trailer parked out back.
“I wondered how much longer we could run like this, it’s not easy on the pockets,” says Pastor Don “That’s when we reached out to ITDRC — we had to organize in a different way in order to keep helping, and we needed the Internet to do that.”
Information Technology Disaster Resource Center techs working out of Lake Charles supported Life Church with WiFi Internet connectivity and computers. The task force also provided radios for volunteers to coordinate, and cell phone charging stations inside the sanctuary.
Many of the families staying inside the church are separated from loved ones, but having the ability to hear a familiar voice during one of the hardest moments in life, is an important step in becoming a survivor.
ITDRC supports organizations providing mass care and dedicated to community recovery, a prime concern that Life Church understands.
Standing in the Storm
Jennifer O’Dell looks away, trying to process what she calls “accepting it piece by piece.” If she thinks about it all at once: the lost home, lost memories, her children far away in another town… she feels like she might float away too.
“I never had such an experience,” O’Dell says.
The night Hurricane Laura made landfall, church members gathered in the sanctuary, with overnight bags and inflated mattresses.
An hour into the storm, the rain soaked through the drop ceiling tiles, bloating them with water, splashing onto the sanctuary carpets.
The 150 mph storm winds sucked the locked doors open. Church members gripped the handles, forcing them closed until they could be bungeed shut, with a piece of wood joining the doors together.
The congregation began to hold hands, praying they would make it through together.
“That night is life altering,” says O’Dell “It was a dark night.”
The walls now keep O’Dell awake at night, in the church that’s become her true sanctuary.
“Sometimes I look at the walls and think they are still moving,” she says “Cause the night of the storm, they were breathing, like we were going to get sucked out.”
Processing a loss so great is not a small trauma, it’s a lifetime of acceptance and faith that things won’t always be this bad.
O’Dell believes 2020 is a year for praying. It’s also a time to remember what’s important and that the things she has lost, no longer fit in that category.
“I’ve learned to love other people, I wasn’t like that but trauma will change you,” O’Dell explains “We were all in that storm and that’s going to be a bond forever.”
O’Dell lost her home that night, and has been staying at the church shelter since — hoping for a FEMA check. She will be the first to tell you, she has no complaints. O’Dell believes she made it through the storm to help those on the other side of disaster.
“You have to get grounded during COVID and hurricanes,” O’Dell says “Peace is not consistent, you’re going to struggle but God has you.”
So every morning, with other members of the congregation, she wakes up, showers with bottled water and helps prepare a thousand hot meals.
A food assembly line has been formed in the back room. Each member plates a side and passes the Styrofoam container to the woman next to her.
This assembly starts at 7 am and ends at midnight, after the preparations for the next morning’s breakfast have been made.
O’Dell has been practicing her post storm morning routine for weeks and she sees no reason to quit while the need remains.
Her bedroom sits where pew five and six are supposed to be. On Sunday, she is up from her inflatable mattress at 6 A.M., setting up chairs and rolling up mattresses.
“I’ll continue to work, hopefully this inspires more community togetherness” O’Dell says “People are waving at each other when they pass on the road!”
Serve and Reach — A Year of Hard Work
“The Internet has changed it for us!” Pastor Don says smiling from behind his desk, deer heads behind him and stacks of books in front of him.
“Because ITDRC had me up with some Internet here at the church, we opened our doors and started doing FEMA applications,” he explained.
Life Church has been operating as a hub for all disaster needs within the community since the storm. Following the connection, the congregation started using the WIFI connection to send out Facebook alerts when hot meals were ready for pickup.
“I can’t quit now, if I quit there’s a whole town that won’t eat,” Pastor Don says.
The community caught on to the new food system, backing up traffic over the bridge and taking over the neighboring parking lots on either side of the church.
Pastor Don, seeing the power of communication, reached out to fellow faith leaders on his personal Facebook, asking for donations and prayers.
Days later, preachers from as far as Houston showed up on the church steps with donations and volunteers.
“We were able to help our community and reach them because of that Internet,” Pastor Don says.
Operations continued to run smoothly, albeit busier than ever. “No matter what you go through, there’s a way out,” Pastor Don says “Sometimes you have to trust God and manage day by day.”
Outside the church doors, volunteers jog up to cars carrying to-go meals and out of town preachers pass out water bottles.
These are the hands and feet of his church body. This is what Pastor Don envisioned for his community, with or without a storm.
“Pastor!” a woman yells from her car “When you doing church again?”
“We’re doing church right now!” he replies.
