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Staff Reports
Reports of recent Trips and Work by Godspeed Missionary Care
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Staff Missionary Reports
Reports and Experiences of the Godspeed Staff
"...He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be
against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will
live in hostility toward all his brothers..."
Gen 16:12
"You need to see this guy; he is really upset. He hasn't
been able to find eight members of his family."
Red Cross volunteer, Katrina evacuee triage, Columbia, SC
I met Ishmael today.
He laughs and teases with me at first, but then the tears
come. It is not about the hurricane. The small house where he
lived in New Orleans is no longer standing; he has no place
to go back to or any possessions to recover. But his sadness
is from much earlier: two marriages lost to divorce, his only
son killed in a street brawl fifteen years ago. He describes
himself as a prodigal son: leaving his family of strict
upbringing and pursuing nearly fifty years of adversarial,
self-serving, and sometime self-destructive behaviors,
alienating him from his parents and nine sibs. He has not
seen his mother in two years, and has had only casual contact
with one brother. They were all residents of the 9th Ward,
one of the hardest hit regions of New Orleans. He has had no
word of their survival or whereabouts. The only relative
that he knows is safe is a brother serving a life sentence
for murder, a situation unenviable but at least sheltered
and known. Now having weathered the hurricane and a forced
evacuation he is beginning to realize how much he may
have lost, not in material terms, but in opportunity for
reconciliation and restoration. I use my computer to search
the various national databases of known survivors but find
none of the eight names he gives me.
The common factor that identifies the various evacuees I meet
is their individual familiarity with difficult and often
painful circumstances. Some of those circumstances are the
result of illness, some of pure poverty, some of unwise life
choices. None can dictate the priority of need of the moment:
the heroin addict in withdrawal, the methadone client whose
clinic was destroyed, and the chronic schizophrenic who has
had no medication for ten days all present equally as medical
emergences regardless of how they got into their particular
predicament. Some don't want to be here and would have
preferred to stay in devastated familiar places rather than
face displacement into unknown surroundings. And nothing in
life is simple, not since the hurricane, not before:
- the young man who survived the storm and then waded
through chest deep water to get to the Superdome to
await evacuation. It isn't memory of seeing the animal
carcasses and the dead body floating nearby, nor the
revulsion of not knowing what might be in the murky
water that he repeatedly bumped into that is awakening
him at night. It wasn't hunger; he avoided eating for
four days to avoid having to endure the indescribable
stench of the restrooms. What haunts him is recall of
the fear felt in being trapped with thousands of people
in a situation where at times complete lawlessness was
rampant.
- the elderly chronically mentally ill lady who was
evacuated to Columbia purely by "chance" (most did not
know their destination until informed on the airplane).
Her daughter lives here, with whom she soon made
contact. But again, not a simple nor serene circumstance:
she had abandoned the daughter soon after birth, and they
had seen each other only two days in thirty years. The
daughter, in the midst of a personal crisis in her own
life, now struggles with what her responsibility is to
this delusional, difficult woman with whom she shares
only a genetic connection.
- the nearly-psychotic woman who takes me aside to
confide that she is not really a hurricane survivor. She
says she is a battered wife who was beaten by her
husband several days ago in Atlanta. She ran away,
somehow managed to get to Columbia, and sought help at
an emergency shelter. She thought if she told them she
was a hurricane victim it would increase her chances of
receiving help, but now is concerned that she has filled
out federal application forms and may have transgressed
dangerously.
This is not my usual missionary population. These are not
members of a third-world unreached people group. But, these are
folks like the rest of us, in need of care, in need of
compassion, and in need of Jesus. As Ishmael and I talk, we
see that in ways he could have never imagined, he is being
given a fresh start, another chance, a new opportunity. We
don't know if he will have opportunity to reconcile with his
family. But we talked of his ability to reconcile with his
Father in heaven. His last words to me as he walked out
the door: "Thank God!"
Amen.
Godspeed,
Barney, for Karen and the Godspeed team
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