a word from Johnny

February 26 Week of Compassion update
WOC Director Visits Hurricane Area

Dear Friends,

How interesting, perplexing, satisfying, disheartening, energizing...to have spent this week traveling across the Gulf South, visiting communities, churches, pastors, mission stations and hurricane related recovery partners - all while so many of our congregations are in the midst of their 2007 Week of Compassion observances and celebrations. What a multitude of emotions!

It is disheartening to see still so much destruction and so little recovery progress in community after community across Mississippi and Louisiana. It is maddening to see casinos and high-rise luxury condominiums well underway, even completed and occupied, while thousands upon thousands of homeowners have yet to receive their fair insurance settlements. It is perplexing to drive down I-59 from Hattiesburg to New Orleans and see acres and acres of farmland packed fencerow to fencerow with FEMA trailers and then visit with a displaced couple living in the dining room of the still-to-be-repaired home of their grandkids.

And yet, how energizing to visit, for example, First Christian Church, Slidell, LA, and their pastor, Susan Lassalle - a church we might have lost after Katrina but that now is growing, working together, reaching out to the community, hosting work groups week after week, looking to the future with hope and excitement. How encouraging to stop and chat with work groups from all across the church (this week I ran into Disciples from OK, MO, OH, IL, TX and IN) that are repairing homes, building churches, making lasting friendships, enriching the lives of work team members, and even bringing new life to their congregations back home! How deeply satisfying to visit with a director of a local long-term recovery partner, struggling to meet payroll and to pay for the ever rising costs of materials, yet vowing she won't close shop until the last unmet need is met.

Our theme this year is "Who is my neighbor?" I met a lot of our neighbors this week. Some of our neighbors, still in the ditch, needing "oil and wine." Some at "the inn," longing to go home. I met some of our neighbors who have traveled long distances and work hard from dawn to dusk to bind wounds. I met others who are working every day to make the road from Jericho to Jerusalem a little safer so folk won't keep getting knocked down and beaten up. And I keep meeting folk like you all across our church who give their denaris and dollars to Week of Compassion so we Disciples can continue to be neighbors in Mississippi and Louisiana, in Mozamibue and Nicaragua, in Darfur and Indonesia - wherever there are people, God's people, whose needs lay a claim on our compassion.