Small church in Elon offers big help to Katrina’s displaced
Published: September 12, 2005
Latesha Lindsey stood swaying to the band, clapping her hands and singing along with other churchgoers to the words flashing on the big screen in front of her:
“Your love extends through times of turbulence … you are God.”
The clothes she wore and the shoes on her feet came from the generosity of those worshipping with her.
Run out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, she and much of her extended family ended up here, hundreds of miles away, in the arms of Westside Fellowship. It is a small, nondenominational church of mostly middle-class families meeting in the Elon Elementary School gym.
The family of 13 — ages 5 to 59 — was flown to Raleigh last week on a Federal Emergency Management Agency evacuation plane. They are among nearly a dozen families placed in rental properties throughout North Carolina owned by members of the congregation, and their friends and acquaintances.
“I’ve seen God in these people,” Lindsey would whisper later, after yet another hug and infectious smile from yet another churchgoer who just wanted to make sure everything was fine. “It’s not in how much they’ve done; it’s that they’ve done.”
In just over a week, the Rev. Mike Mitchener’s four-year-old Westside congregation of about 200 has joined with surrounding communities, churches and companies to set up homes of their own for Katrina survivors. Sunday was the first time at worship for many Gulf Coast families who are settling into new places across the nation.
“Jesus said if you give a cold cup of water in my name, you will not lose your reward,” Mitchener said before the family arrived at service in two black Chevy Suburbans that church members were driving. “Jesus was saying if you give a cup of cold water in my name it will not go unnoticed. If he’s keeping up with the cold water, he’s counting cups and mattresses and forks and everything.
“Jesus also said, ‘If you see a need and you have the ability to meet that need and you don’t meet it, then shame on you — that’s the Mike Mitchener paraphrase,” Mitchener said.
This church’s effort came together after a social worker in Raleigh assisting evacuees asked developer Keith Henshaw, a Westside church member from whom she rented a house, whether he had any other properties available. Henshaw asked Mitchener if the church could help with food and household items.
“God intended the local church to be the ‘meeter’ of the needs in the community,” Mitchener said. “The people that you saw on television getting cut out the roofs are the people who are now living among us.”
The effort soon spread through the surrounding communities where churchgoers lived, with many people asking what they could do.
Jeff May, a member who is the chief financial officer for Biscuitville, had a college friend in Tennessee willing to donate 40 pillow-top mattress sets. Biscuitville sent a truck to pick them up.
One of the first families to be placed included a husband, wife and four children who already were struggling before Katrina came ashore two weeks ago.
“Before the storm they didn’t have money to buy a loaf of bread for the children,” said Henshaw, who was up late Saturday helping deliver mattresses. “Last night … they were sleeping on a donated $1,200 pillow-top mattress set.”
Latesha Lindsey’s family was hard for FEMA to place because they wanted to stay together — two adult brothers, a sister and their families, which included Lindsey and her four children. Henshaw offered a spacious, four-bedroom house in Gibsonville with other rooms that could double as bedrooms to the family. When they arrived Wednesday, the place had been stocked from the pantries to the bedroom, with a “Welcome Home” banner outside.
During an outing with Mitchener to Wal-Mart this past week, Lindsey’s family, still wearing IDs from their time in Raleigh, were being stopped by those who wanted to put money in their hands or, as in the case of one stranger, buy them “a buggy of stuff.” On Sunday, the young boys in the family had fresh haircuts, and the girls had bows in their hair.
“The moment we stepped off the bus we got love,” said Dwight “Ike” Williams, who had asked Mitchener if he could say something to the congregation, before choking up during the service and burying his head in his handkerchief.
Williams — who is Lindsey’s uncle — and his wife had been forced into the attic of their New Orleans home while fleeing Katrina’s rising waters.
After walking on his tiptoes and bouncing around in neck-high water to retrieve his wife’s medicine, he took all the tools he could find to punch a hole through the roof.
Rescuers eventually saw him and airlifted the two to a bridge, where they sat until they summoned the strength to walk five miles to a school.
It took them nearly nine hours to get there: Williams has had double-knee replacement surgery. The place was filthy, with people forced to urinate in corners, he said.
Williams and his wife later waded through chest-deep water to get to his brother’s house. Days later, rescuers picked them up and took them to the airport for the trip to North Carolina.
On Sunday, Williams listened to Mitchener say during his sermon that “Katrina has the potential to be the finest hour for the church.”
Williams believes that. He said he never lost his faith.
“God will never abandon you,” he said. “You can’t question these things.”
Right after service, Reyna Scott, of Burlington — whose husband died recently — gave Williams the title and keys to a Toyota station wagon.
Scott is not a member of Westside Fellowship but heard of the family’s plight.
“Aren’t we all supposed to be doing whatever we can to help?” said Scott, a nontraditional student working on a political science degree at UNC-Chapel Hill.
This morning, the youngest of the New Orleans clan will get back to grade school. The church will seek medical care for a family member with throat cancer.
The city of Raleigh is still calling Westside, wanting to know if there’s room for one more evacuee.
“We’re going to run out of resources before we run out of needs,” Mitchener conceded. “That’s the sad part.”
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