Elgin church outreach program helps Katrina ravaged areas
New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, the Rev. Jan Kennedy said recently, "still takes your breath away."
Not breathtaking as in "beautiful," of course, but breath-stopping as in "I can't believe nearly three years have passed since Hurricane Katrina, and it still looks this bad."
A lot of the area has been bulldozed, Kennedy said, and you can see blocks of cement pads where houses once stood and tiers of cement steps that once led to friendly front doors.
But the empty lots and empty, rubble-strewn shopping centers represent rebuilding battles yet to be waged. The pastor and eight others from Elgin's First Presbyterian Church were in Louisiana to help repair homes in Slidell, 30 miles from The Big Easy across Lake Pontchartrain.
Katrina shredded Slidell, too. The church volunteers joined with others from Northern Illinois' Blackhawk Presbytery for a weeklong work party to help restore something of what the storm had stolen.
"You go in for a week, and you do a piece of the work," Kennedy said. In this way, 600 homes have been gutted and gussied up by Presbyterian Community Outreach, which coordinated this trip and many others, and Habitat for Humanity. Kennedy spent the week drywalling a house in Chalmette, a N'awlins suburb, while others in the group did roofing and siding, installed doors and windows and - where qualified - performed electrical work.
At the end of the week, volunteers gathered at a completed home for a dedication ceremony with the owner. "She and her daughter had left when the hurricane hit," Kennedy said. "Her husband stayed behind; he did not survive."
The service was moving. "You see a finished house and realize that all of that was done by volunteer crews," the pastor said. Every volunteer who worked on the house over the months signed a Bible that was presented to the family.
The family also received a plaque with the dedication date and a Scripture verse about the stability of a house built upon the rock of Jesus Christ.
The city has at least 15 years of rebuilding ahead, Kennedy surmised. Thousands of former residents are still displaced. "All that fabric of their life is just ripped apart," she said. "They don't see their neighbors. Daughters and grandchildren who lived a block away now live two hours away, and there is just that sense that life has been ripped apart."
But still there is hope. "When you see what has been done and realize that you go down there for one week and do your little piece of it," Kennedy said, "it does make a difference."
Congratulations to: The Rev. Terry Andrews, newly ordained associate minister at New Hope Baptist Church in Elgin.
Andrews has been with the predominantly African-American congregation for about 15 years now, serving as youth minister, Bible class teacher and director of the youth choir. Though his title is new, many of his same responsibilities continue.
Having sensed a "calling or drawing or pulling from God to come up a little higher," he said, Andrews considers the commitment of ordination comparable to the covenant of marriage.
He and his wife, Chiquita, are originally from Mississippi, where he was in the fifth year of a six-year music degree program when the couple decided to move to Elgin. That was 1990, and nine years later Andrews finally finished that degree at Elgin's Judson College.
Minister Andrews was licensed as a pastor in 1997. In addition to his service at the charming white church on Wing Street, he also has worked at the Larkin Center in Elgin for 15 years.
Well-traveled pastor: At Elgin Evangelical Free Church, the kids are breaking in a brand-new youth pastor.
New to them, anyway. Pastor Mark Kato has recently arrived with his family from Wisconsin, where he ministered to youth for four years in Port Washington. The Chicago native began his career at a church in Park Ridge, then served as youth pastor and physical education instructor at a school for missionary children in Niamey, Niger.
At the African school, Kato worked with about 30 kids from eight countries. Among other things, he enjoyed helping them sort through cultural issues and figure out how to adjust when they were returning "home" to the United States, France, Australia or wherever home happened to be.
"It was really awesome," he said. "We had a really good time there."
Elgin Evangelical Free snatched up Kato after he interviewed at another area church but felt it wasn't quite the right fit. A search committee member at the other church recommended Kato to the Elgin congregation, and now everybody's happy.
Kato said it's important to disciple kids in the Christian faith and train them up as leaders with "ownership" of the youth ministry.
"We want teens to learn how God has made them and how he can use them," Kato said. "I try to get out of the way and allow God to use more people than just me."
What's going on at your church or synagogue? Do you have an interesting program, new staff, big plans? Someone who deserves recognition or something a little out of the ordinary? Contact "In the Spirit" at cmchojnacki@yahoo.com.