Called To Serve

Our first of what will decidedly be many teams provided relief in flood damaged southern Minnesota, on Saturday, August 24. There were 21 volunteers, most from Woodbury Lutheran, and others who had worked with our Katrina Teams and their families who went to Stocktown, about 2 hours south of the Twin Cities.

We are serving Grace Lutheran Church. The church, with a membership of under 150 and worship attendance of about 50 is the only church in this town of 672. The lower level of the church, which holds the fellowship hall, kitchen and is used for Sunday School, was hit by the recent floods. The parsonage, home for newly ordained and newly installed Pastor Jesse Krusemark and his new bride Liz, also had many feet of water in the lower level.

We spent the day getting to know Pastor Krusemark and the church president Mark Potter, cleaning out the parsonage and stripping parsonage and church basement to the stud walls and bare floor. We also worked in the home of Helen, a very sweet woman we would guess to be in her 80s, who had several inches of thick black mud in her basement and her garage, along with 100 years of family belongings. We threw many wooden items, and are trying to salvage most of her tools and equipment, plus her dishes and glassware. We worked alongside her daughter Margo, who also had significant damage to the lower level of her home and 10 family vehicles (she has 7 sons between ages 10 and 26!).

Those of us who worked with Katrina Hope are struck by the similarities, stories of floating refrigerators and rooms left in utter chaos, the mudouts and gutting homes by ripping sheetrock (perhaps my favorite job; especially in Minnesota where cockroaches are smaller and less prevalent). The haphazard way some homes were rendered uninhabitable and others next door had little damage. And familiar stories of survival, and death. We heard about the people who were plucked off their roof after their house washed away and got hung up on railroad tracks. Had the house continued, it was headed for heavy woods, where it would surely have broken up. We talked to a young man who put his wife and four-year-old son in their car and tried to drive away from their home. As they put life jackets on, he realized he had not grabbed a life jacket for himself, but a rain poncho. It was well after dark when they headed out Highway 23. Suddenly the car ahead of them was carried away by the floodwaters. Two people went to their death in the rushing current. They abandoned their car and were picked up by boats in the area. The family who climbed higher and higher, eventually kicking a hole into the attic to escape the rising water. Even Pastor Krusemark was rescued by boat from his front step. Loss of life was small in this little town, mercifully, but more than 100 homes were damaged, several destroyed.

We have no way of knowing why God saves some and lets others die, why some lose their possessions and others get off easy. We don't know why so many in this little town have to suffer. We only know that our God is a great, loving God who has called us to serve wherever there is need. And so, another journey continues (albeit a much shorter journey than the road to Mississippi!). This one again takes us into a community of strangers, to work side-by-side with homeowners we will come to know as friends.

I can't wait to see what God will work through us this time!