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Terry Wright and a disaster relief team were in La Place, La., helping a sister church recover from Hurricane Katrina when they got the news—another storm was gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico, and headed for their homes in Southeast Texas.
Less than four weeks earlier Hurricane Katrina had pushed ashore in Louisiana, claiming the lives of 1,000 people there and another 200 in Mississippi. Having seen the destruction firsthand and heard the stories of hardship, Wright and the crew from the Golden Triangle Baptist Association did not have to be told twice leave. They hurried home, packed up their families and joined approximately 2 million people fleeing the Category 5 Hurricane Rita barreling toward the Texas-Louisiana coast.
Rita made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane Sept. 24, 2005, and made a beeline up East Texas, spawning some 90 tornados in the southern U.S. But almost as distressing as the storm was the calm afterward. It was too calm. The Southern Baptist Disaster Relief teams that typically roll into town in the wake of a storm did not respond to the needs in East Texas with the usual speed and efficiency. Hurricane Katrina seemed to have claimed another victim.
“The groups were pretty much exhausted because they were coming in from Katrina,” said Wright, pastor of First Baptist Church in Vidor.
The pastor, along with crews from the Golden Triangle Baptist Association, had made two trips to storm-ravaged La Place before being forced to evacuate their own homes. Wright said those trips were as much about helping his neighbor as they were God’s means of preparing his church for Rita’s aftermath. One bit of advice from the Louisiana pastors stuck with him: “You cannot wait on the government to help you. You have to help yourself.”
As God would have it, FBC Vidor would become a conduit of assistance impacting a nine-county area.
The church was without electricity like most of the region but was relatively sound. They began taking in Vidor’s homeless, relief volunteers and Federal Emergency Management Administration officials. But, in the days immediately following the storm, with SBC feeding crews still on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi, a hot meal was hard to find.
So Bettye Leslie stepped up. Her 12-hour-a-week job as coordinator for the FBC Vidor Wednesday evening meals became an 80-hour-a-week endeavor lasting through the New Year. Initially food for the meals came from church members’ freezers.
“We ate pretty good at first,” Wright said, recalling how they enjoyed the bounty of the region supplied by its hunters and shrimpers with defrosting freezers.
As they quickly consumed that supply, help came from their sister congregations to the west. Houston’s First Baptist Church provided a generator to power parts of the church; Second Baptist Church in Houston contributed funds to buy groceries; and from October through Christmas Sagemont Church sent daily deliveries of “anything we needed.”
And, taking heed of his Louisiana brethren’s advice, Wright secured a warehouse where incoming supplies could be received, sorted and delivered across the region. FBC Vidor, located on Interstate 10, was easily accessible by those working and volunteering in the region. Even the Golden Triangle Baptist Association temporarily relocated to the church as their Beaumont offices were in ruins.
As the church became a focal point for those providing assistance it also drew those seeking help. And one group of people caught Wright’s attention—elderly widows who had dropped their homeowners insurance in order to meet more pressing financial demands had no means for making repairs. The women were homeless and would remain that way without help.
Because of God’s providence, a local band of believers were ready to step in. Prior to the storms the Golden Triangle Baptist Association had been in the planning stages of a new construction ministry that would build and repair churches. Those plans were put on hold after Katrina and completely altered after Rita. Nehemiah’s Vision became the ministry that coordinated and deployed teams to the poor, widowed and handicapped whose homes were damaged beyond their means to repair.
The home of Dorothy Howell, a widowed pastor’s wife and FBC Vidor Sunday school teacher, was the first to be repaired.
“I feel so loved,” said the 91-year-old Howell. “If there was ever anything I needed, my church would be there to help me.”
Howell, who lived alone in 2005, had evacuated with her daughter, Petti Barton, to Arkansas. By the time Howell returned, volunteers were already at work on her home. She lived with a neighbor for six months while her house was under repair.
“They were just precious,” she said of one group volunteers from Pennsylvania.
Wright said the work of Nehemiah’s Vision saw not only homes, but lives restored. Some homeowners made professions of faith and others who had fallen away from God and the church returned because of the witness of the 35,000 Christian volunteers who served between 2005-2011.
During this six-year span, the non-profit organization repaired or completely rebuilt 1,200 homes in the wakes of Hurricane Rita and also 2008’s Hurricane Ike, which caused similar devastation across Southeast Texas. Today, the ministry is officially inactive but can be up and running in a matter of hours should the need arise. But, Wright said, “I hope it never has to operate again.”
Although gratified the Golden Triangle Baptist Association and Nehemiah’s Vision worked so diligently to provide relief in the name of Jesus, the most significant and lingering impact of Hurricane Rita for Wright was on the members of his own church.
“Our people served and they sacrificed. They worked on homes of people they never knew. They fed people,” he said.
It had been a generation since the last storm, Hurricane Audrey in 1957, wreaked havoc on the region. Few remained who remembered the aftermath and the necessity for ministry outside the church walls. Perhaps it took another disaster to shake loose from its moorings a church that was comfortable by the shore but desperately needed out on the stormy seas.
