Small church does big thing in Rita relief

CENTER, Texas?For more than a week after Hurricane Rita approached the Texas Gulf Coast, Hillcrest Baptist Church in the small East Texas town of Center had been home to nearly 200 evacuees, many of whom had special physical needs.

Inside the dimly-lit church auditorium, several children were sprawled out on the carpet near the altar, working on a jigsaw puzzle. Their grandmother, a diabetes sufferer, rested in a pew at the back of the auditorium. Another person slept on a mattress between the pews and worship center entrance.

Two days before Hurricane Rita hit, the Red Cross had designated the church, about 30 miles south of Marshall near the Louisiana border, as a special needs shelter for Shelby County, the church’s pastor, Gordon Vaughn, said. Soon, about 75-80 evacuees arrived in three buses from the Texas Gulf Coast.

Others?citizens who fled the storm and spotted the church along State Highway 59 as they drove north?found shelter also.

“We started with about 225 (evacuees) ? with absolutely no medical facilities or team or anything,” Vaughn told the TEXAN Sept. 29 as he stood in the parking lot of the church amid a whirlwind of activity.

A handful of officers from the United States Health Service (USHS) were there, interviewing evacuees to assess their medical needs.

The church averages about 130 on Sunday mornings, Vaughn said. A Southern Baptist Disaster Relief feeding unit from Ohio that was working at the First Baptist Church of Center provided one meal a day, Vaughn said.

More provision came from the community and church members, who helped provide food and identified local medical providers. Several of the evacuees with restaurant experience helped man the church kitchen.

“The Lord blessed us with several folks who are caterers,” Vaughn said. “If it hadn’t have been for them, we’d have been stuck.

“One of the major problems is getting medical attention and medication for people. We thank the Lord we didn’t lose any patients.”

The evacuees included nine babies, Vaughn said. Several evacuees had adult onset diabetes, three people were on breathing machines, two were heart bypass patients, two were on kidney dialysis and another was a cancer sufferer who had fled Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and was evacuated again from the Texas gulf for Rita, Vaughn stated.

“It’s been a learning experience.”

One man, a 21-year-old with Down syndrome, eagerly donned an orange security vest as many in the group gathered outside between the church auditorium and the fellowship hall to talk with USHS officials.

Despite the urgency of relief work, “We haven’t missed a church service,” Vaughn noted. “We have a devotion time every morning. It’s optional, not everybody attends. But we’ve had at least five professions of faith that I know of ? people who have been saved because of the ministry.”

One of them, a woman from Beaumont who arrived in Center with her teenage daughter, told the TEXAN the Lord had been calling her for a long time but she had been running.

During her week at the church, she sensed the Lord asking her to provide what she termed a “children’s church” for the kids there. With construction paper and some craft supplies, the kids made pictures they proudly displayed.