“After I looked 165 people in the eye and had to tell them we couldn’t do anything for them, that their insurance didn’t cover floods… well, it gets to you.”
“I washed my niece’s clothes 5 and 6 times and couldn’t get the smell of the flood out of them. No water damage, just the smell.”
“I knew the UCC disaster relief needed help, so we opened our doors.”
“The downtown jewelry store lost everything. A friend who had her ring there—it’s gone. Someone’s going to find a really nice ring someday. The local library lost its great collection. A nearby church was completely flooded out.”
These are snippets of the stories that the parishioners of Hope UCC shared as they welcomed flood recovery teams to lodge in their church. A somewhat small church in membership, Hope UCC is HUGE in compassion and mission and activity. Greeting us in our makeshift bedroom were inflated air mattresses, one large enough to sleep a family of four, and a huge basket filled to the brim with microwaveable popcorn, Girl Scout cookies, snack packs, nuts, maps and paperbacks. They had arranged that we could shower across the street at the fire station—the absolutely hottest showers imaginable—and shared their kitchen where we cobbled together a few basic meals (5 mothers away from home for a week are disinclined to prepare big meals after putting up sheetrock all day). Truly an extravagant welcome.
We happened to visit the week prior to the big spring church fair, so parishioners were coming and going all week setting up crafts and baking for Saturday. Tuesday, table center pieces and homemade crafts began filling Fellowship Hall. Wednesday, a beef and vegetable soup simmered all day in the kitchen as more crafts appeared. Thursday, an indoor garden of flowering plants appeared. Friday morning at 6 am Lois and Faye arrived to start baking cinnamon rolls and 275 “Pies for Two” (which we soon renamed, pies for one) for their Saturday church fair. Upon returning from work we found every surface covered with cinnamon rolls and pies—peach, raspberry, cherry, banana cream, strawberry rhubarb, pecan, apple, blueberry, mince meat, raisin, raisin?, yes, a pie full of raisins—and I thought I knew the full range of fruit pies being a pie maker’s wife, but raisin was new to me. “P” had been pricked into the peach crust, “R” into the raspberry, “Y” into the strawberry (never did figure out how that came about). The delicious aroma permeated every room in the church and had we been in any other structure, we may have been less likely to show such self-control as we restrained from tasting every pie available.
And this was only one of many annual events Hope UCC congregants prepared—in a few weeks they would be baking and cooking for the local spring town-wide event Hog Wild Days where they manage the food tent and feed hundreds of hunger fair-goers for four consecutive days.
Many new members are joining Hope UCC
from a nearby church that was devastated by the flood. While the flood may have provided an impetus for the individuals and families to find a new church, clearly the vibrancy of the Hope UCC community and its welcoming attitude are the compelling reason for these new congregants to choose Hope.
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