When the hurricane hit New Orleans on Monday, August 29, the main damage my home experienced was the roof. Shingles were blown up and down our street and some of the underlying tarpaper was torn off. Rain poured in, which did not help the interior of my home. Not a lot of damage, but some. While we were in evacuation, a friend nailed blue plastic tarp over much of our rooftop to protect it from rain. Rain that, fortunately, did not come for two months. But when it did come, it arrived with a vengeance. It tore the thin plastic to shreds. One night last week I was enjoying the sound of the rain outside. “Just like old times,” I thought. Then a sobering thought hit. “Hey–we don’t want rain!” I checked the kitchen and sure enough, streams of water were entering through the ceiling. Margaret and I manned the bucket brigade and laid out towels and mopped up. Fortunately the hard rain was short-lived. Next day, I went looking for a contractor; we need a new roof.

Today, Wednesday, the roofers arrived. A half-dozen were crawling over the housetop all afternoon. The job is supposed to take two days. My insurance company is impressing me with their thoughtfulness. I called them last week with a complaint. “The adjuster was here on October 29. He said we would receive a copy of his recommendations within four weeks, and a check one week later. But we can’t wait. The rain is worsening the situation. I need a roof now. The roofing companies, however, want one-third down and the rest on completion.” The claims person said he had not even received the paperwork from the adjuster. “That’s about par,” he said. Bad news. Then, good news. “I tell you what I can do,” he said. “Back in early September, we sent you a half months’ living expenses. I’m going to send you a check for the rest of September and all of October.” Really? Will it count against the insurance check you’ll be sending later? “Not at all. This is free and clear.” The amount of this preliminary check is two-thirds of what I need to re-roof the house. We can do this now. Breathing easier now. (Today, as I write this, the paperwork arrived from the adjuster. His recommendation is much more generous than what I had expected. Good news is so uplifting!)

I’ve sometimes paid tribute to the wonderful Freddie Arnold in these reports. I don’t know how to refer to him actually. He’s a missionary of the North American Mission Board and the Louisiana Baptist Convention, assigned to us as a church planter, but that does not begin to tell the story. There is nothing this man cannot do. The night after the heavy rain, he stayed with us and noticed the buckets and towels still in place. Next morning early, he was on the rooftop, pulling the scraps of the blue plastic into place, nailing, mending, patching. When it rained later that day, we were high and dry. Freddie flew to Atlanta Wednesday evening for a two day conference at NAMB. They’re assessing the work of the disaster relief units along the Gulf Coast, what they did right, where they could improve. From our viewpoint, these groups have been incredible.

I recommend that readers keep up with the Katrina recovery work at www.namb.net. The latest numbers I saw from that site reports over 12 million meals served by our SBC volunteer groups since the storm hit. Forty-one state conventions have sent disaster relief teams our way, a stupendous number.

At our Wednesday pastors’ meeting in LaPlace, around 50 of us heard from Jeffrey Friend of Michigan and Jeff Box of Mississippi, two displaced pastors trying to decide whether to rebuild or merge or deed the property over to the association for safekeeping. Arkansas director of missions Royce Sweatman challenged the pastors to followup on the work of the hundreds of volunteers who are laboring night and day in our city. “Our cooking crews get up at 3:30 and are hard at work by 4 am. This morning, we cooked twenty thousand chicken breasts that will be served to people all over the city.” The workers start at 4 am and do not stop for a break until six hours later. “We’re preparing the ground for your evangelism,” he said. “Go talk to these people. God is preparing their hearts.”

I told the pastors what seminary president Chuck Kelley has often said. “There has never been a real revival in New Orleans.” He adds, “The churches want to reap where they have not sown.” What we are doing now with our hurricane relief work is sowing seeds of love and righteousness on every hand. But we must go talk to people in order to reap the harvest.

Evangelist Jerry Drace has spent many weeks in New Orleans since the hurricane, often working with the various police forces. He described the shock that went through the NOPD this week at the death of one of their own in a confrontation with a lawbreaker. He told of a suicide of a doctor who had seen his practice destroyed by the floodwaters, and the suicide of a father while trying to clean out his damaged home. “He just snapped,” Jerry said. “They found him hanging from the rafters.” Brother Jerry announced that his group had led over one thousand people to Christ since the storm.

Dr. Scott Cowen dropped in on us. The president of Tulane University serves on the mayor’s Bring Back New Orleans Commission and wanted to talk with our pastors about the school situation in New Orleans. He’s meeting with displaced New Orleanians in Houston, Jackson, everywhere, to update them. We teasingly offered to ordain him so he could be a bonafide member of our group. While he spoke, workers were re-roofing the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of LaPlace, making him difficult to be heard. When I kindly asked them to find somewhere else to work for the next hour so the preachers could meet inside, they agreed and moved to another building. I was surprised, impressed, grateful.

Jeff Anderson and Danny Little of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association passed out information about the Celebration of Hope scheduled for March 11-12, 2006, in the New Orleans Arena. They are providing prayer cards for the churches (“We printed 120,000 of them!”) and gave the dates for counselor training. Every church is going to need to mobilize their leaders to pull this off. David Crosby said, “The Franklin Graham organization will pick up the half million dollar cost of this. It won’t cost us a dime, folks.” He added, “Some of us have been working for ten years to get Franklin Graham here. Katrina did it in three months!”

Just as we were adjourning for lunch, a newcomer spoke up in the rear. “I’ve just flown in from Hawaii,” said Pastor Duane McDaniel. He had arrived with a crew ready to begin working with a local church. “And I’m looking for a church to partner with.” A buzz went across the auditorium, followed by laughter. Everyone wants to partner with a church in the Pacific paradise! I volunteered to check things out there before sending any across the ocean. Before Duane left home, a gentleman came up and poked a check into his shirt pocket. He said, “I want to help some churches win some people to Jesus.” Later, Duane noticed it was for $15,000. That’s serious giving for serious evangelism.

Tuesday, Freddie Arnold met with five members of Suburban Baptist Church in eastern New Orleans. Their church took no floodwaters but was damaged severely by the wind and rainwater, and the neighborhood, of course, was destroyed and now lies vacant. Wednesday afternoon, Pastor Jeff Box called to say he was meeting with two more pastors from that area about merging their ministries.

Three of our churches–the FBC of Marrero, Westwego, and Avondale–are combining to present a single Christmas program on a Sunday afternoon in December. Their members will bring covered dishes to share after their respective morning services, then present a joint program in the afternoon utilizing all three choirs and the three ministers. Darrell Ferrington said, “We expect it to be a forty-five minute program.” Freddie Arnold said, “You have a program with three choirs and three pastors and you’re going to do it in 45 minutes? Sounds like a miracle to me!”

Miracles are occurring all around us. What fun to find oneself in the center.