Desperation

Had a great meeting with Matt Cobb, the chaplain at Mercy Hospital and Jason Lantz of the Red Cross. It looks as though next Sunday, we will have a "Katrina Backyard Barbecue" at our City Park. The hospital is lining up many restaurants in the area to donate food. I think a small portion of the 70 families we have processed will be there. My guess is more than half has already headed back. We also discussed proceeding on a family-to-family program, a sort of "neighbors helping neighbors" kind of thing.

We had a desperate new intake yesterday afternoon. I wish I would have been in the office to serve as their case manager. A young couple and a baby arrived. Their apartment was destroyed in Mississippi. The young man had recently left the army so he and his partner did not have Gulf Coast driver's licenses. The only thing they had to prove where they lived was a letter from Trent Lot, thanking him for his service in Iraq. He was driving here to reenlist. They were given a Red Cross debit card in Mississippi that was not properly coded and did not work to help them purchase gas. The case manager working with them took all the ID they had to photocopy it and misplaced the originals, so everyone in the office was in a tizzy trying to find them. Betsy found them in the room where they were meeting, placed inside some papers. The case manager was struggling at the end of the day. It was well past 4:00 pm and they were in the same small room I mentioned in an earlier entry that gets quite stuffy and hot.

I had an awful cramp in my leg shortly before 4:00 am and spent the rest of the time this morning fretting about this fine young man and his family. I don’t believe he had to reenlist. We could have found a place for him to stay and work here. He didn’t know that. Everyone in the office really liked the young couple. I’m going to call them on Monday. I want to make sure they are doing ok and to let him know that Betsy and I will be happy to be a contact for his wife and child when he returns to Iraq.