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BATON ROUGE, La.?An army of SBTC volunteers, many of them rookie Disaster Relief workers, have prepared and served more than 300,000 meals in points between Baton Rouge and New Orleans since the week of Hurricane Katrina.
In partnership with the Texas Salvation Army, the SBTC plans to send rotating 60-member teams to Baton Rouge over the coming months on a weekly basis. In addition, SBTC chainsaw units are helping in outlying areas. The SBTC’s mud-out units and Texas Baptist Builders may be activated in the coming months on the damaged campus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
The Texas Salvation Army’s (TSA) 53-foot mobile feeding kitchen with a convoy of 20 TSA canteen units and about 60 SBTC Disaster Relief volunteers was one of the first units into Baton Rouge, having waited out the storm in Beaumont, Texas Aug. 29.
Expecting to offer 25,000 meals per day, the TSA mobile kitchen unit fed 35,000 people the first full day of operation. Led by SBTC Disaster Relief Director Bill Davenport, the group soon moved toward New Orleans where holed-up residents of the French Quarter received their first meals after the storm subsided. Others moved into suburbs like Kenner where the staff of two hospitals arrived late Thursday for a meal.
Meanwhile, back in Texas, Southern Baptist churches that had no previous experience in Disaster Relief were pleading for the training that is necessary to serve in Red Cross and Salvation Army units. On Saturday following the storm, the 60 Texans registered for training swelled to 163, packing an SBTC conference room.
Though traditionally many DR volunteers are retired, this early group included an architect, meter reader, well driller, physical therapist, secretaries and many more?most of them under the age of 50 with no previous experience in Southern Baptist missions work.
Thirty of that group agreed to head out the next day to Baton Rouge, joining 30 more already assigned from existing SBTC units.
Among the first-timers was Ben White, who trained Sept. 4 and boarded a truck Sept. 5 in a caravan of six from Prestonwood Baptist Church who headed for Baton Rouge. White is an 82-year-old World War II veteran and retired engineer who in decades past led construction projects such as the Alfred P. Murrah federal building and the upper portions of Texas Stadium.
On Sept. 8, White rolled out of his cot at 3:30 a.m. with most of the other volunteers and headed for the command center 15 minutes away to begin preparing for another day of serving the displaced.
Others included Randy and Denette Sellers, also of Prestonwood, who showed up for training unsure of what they were getting into. Less then 24 hours later they too had volunteered and were headed for Baton Rouge.
Kelly Kendrick, a member of Galloway Avenue Baptist Church, another first-timer, went despite struggling health. While there, he received a voice mail telling him he had been moved up on a list of prospective liver transplant recipients because of his medical condition.
A nurse from the Austin area brought her teenage daughter, whom she homeschools.
The first groups into Baton Rouge slept on the floor at the crowded local Salvation Army church where they shared one shower.
Later in the week, Parkview Baptist Church in Baton Rouge provided an annex building with cots, blankets and pillows for the SBTC contingent. Volunteers from the church even collected laundry and returned it clean for the weary workers.
On one occasion a local chef treated them to jambalaya.
As a lifelong resident of Louisiana until a little over 10 years ago, SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards seized the opportunity to encourage churches to take in evacuees or assist with their transition.
“My seminary is damaged and under water. Many of my pastor friends and their congregations are scattered by the hurricane. Even more disturbing are thousands upon thousands who are homeless, destitute and lacking the basics in human hygiene,” he said.
He praised the thousands of Disaster Relief volunteers trained by SBTC who are on the front lines in Louisiana and Texas me
