As Hurricane Isaac makes landfall along the Gulf Coast near the 7 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, there's been a lot to remember by way of Katrina' impact and ramifications upon New Orleans, disaster preparedness and response, and more.
Katrina also had a dramatic impact upon our start to helping 6th Avenue Church of God fulfill their global mission of "Touching the World for Christ"...
To help 6th Ave accomplish their mission, we encouraged the development of what we called missional partnerships with a church or set of churches on each continent. To begin with, we started with my mom's home country of Guyana. In June of 2005, we met the national leaders, Colin and Carla Edghill, who were visiting the USA during the North American Convention of the Church of God. The Edghills invited us to go to Guyana to meet pastors and churches in September 2005--that would be require quite a leap of faith to make that happen in such a short window of time, but we prayed and agreed to make the attempt.
In addition to Keli and I making the effort, a young newlywed in 6th Ave, Alison Miller, was equally excited and eager to participate in international service. She immediately volunteered to go, but there were plenty of reasons why she shouldn't. As a newlywed, the finances were not all settled, she was a full time student and had just started a new job as an assistant in a law firm--her mother had reminded her of all these things, not to discourage her, but to help her realize she needed to start planning out her decisions rather than just leap. Discouraged by reality, but still determined, Alison asked her teachers, and they said it would be a good experience and gave her permission to miss classes. A bit encouraged, she went to ask the lawyers she worked for--they said, "Sounds interesting. Maybe this bonus check will help," handing her share of a company bonus that covered her airfare cost!
She was all the more eager to go after this--now we all needed to secure our passports and get some vaccinations. Keli and I received our passports quickly, but not Alison; we had all worked on this and made the applications together, printing all the forms, paying all the fees, and filing with the county seat to send our documentations to the regional passport office--in New Orleans.
1 week before we were to leave, Alison got a call from the New Orleans office. As her paperwork was being processed, there was a problem because her recent marriage led to a name change that was not consistent on all her documentation; so, they needed a copy of the marriage license. Not only was our time short before the trip, but Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on the city. The paperwork was expedited that day, and we watched with Alison as the news reported Katrina making landfall devastatingly early.
Less than 1 week from our trip, a non-refundable airline ticket and no passport while all her documentation was sloshing around in a New Orleans government office, it looked like Alison's desire for international mission had been washed out like a New Orleans levy.
I won't rewrite every amazing detail here, but here's the gist of what happened:
Alison's husband had a coworker tell him that it was too bad we weren't closer to Miami because he heard of people just walking into the Miami office and right out with their passports. Our scheduled flight had a 4 hour layover in Miami, so we prayed that we would be able to arrive there, leave the airport get a passport and back to board the connecting flight to Guyana within 4 hours!
This was an insane prayer--and the events that led from that prayer to the risk of running out the airport and the disappointment before breakthrough at the passport office are hard to believe, but true nonetheless: read the full account at the the original blog post or 6th Avenue's Mission Guyana page for the whole story (if it seems familiar to you ChoG-ers, it was also published in One Voice).
That first, amazing step by Alison created a testimony that inspired the 6th Avenue Church in their pursuit of international missions. Within the next year, other young adults would make the trip to Guyana, inspired by Alison's testimony--among them, new 3W Teammate Zach Langford.
Alison was honored as one of 6th Avenue's "Mighty Warriors"prior to our transition out of that ministry: she didn't let a little thing like Hurricane Katrina get in the way of global, Kingdom impact.
And that first trip with Alison gave us the momentum to continue creating partnerships, which led to interaction with our predecessors Franco and Bea Santonocito who invited us to prayerfully be their replacements with the CCF, and led to the 3W team placement.
There you have it--from Katrina to Cairo--hard to believe it's been 7 years!
Katrina also had a dramatic impact upon our start to helping 6th Avenue Church of God fulfill their global mission of "Touching the World for Christ"...
To help 6th Ave accomplish their mission, we encouraged the development of what we called missional partnerships with a church or set of churches on each continent. To begin with, we started with my mom's home country of Guyana. In June of 2005, we met the national leaders, Colin and Carla Edghill, who were visiting the USA during the North American Convention of the Church of God. The Edghills invited us to go to Guyana to meet pastors and churches in September 2005--that would be require quite a leap of faith to make that happen in such a short window of time, but we prayed and agreed to make the attempt.
In addition to Keli and I making the effort, a young newlywed in 6th Ave, Alison Miller, was equally excited and eager to participate in international service. She immediately volunteered to go, but there were plenty of reasons why she shouldn't. As a newlywed, the finances were not all settled, she was a full time student and had just started a new job as an assistant in a law firm--her mother had reminded her of all these things, not to discourage her, but to help her realize she needed to start planning out her decisions rather than just leap. Discouraged by reality, but still determined, Alison asked her teachers, and they said it would be a good experience and gave her permission to miss classes. A bit encouraged, she went to ask the lawyers she worked for--they said, "Sounds interesting. Maybe this bonus check will help," handing her share of a company bonus that covered her airfare cost!
She was all the more eager to go after this--now we all needed to secure our passports and get some vaccinations. Keli and I received our passports quickly, but not Alison; we had all worked on this and made the applications together, printing all the forms, paying all the fees, and filing with the county seat to send our documentations to the regional passport office--in New Orleans.
1 week before we were to leave, Alison got a call from the New Orleans office. As her paperwork was being processed, there was a problem because her recent marriage led to a name change that was not consistent on all her documentation; so, they needed a copy of the marriage license. Not only was our time short before the trip, but Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on the city. The paperwork was expedited that day, and we watched with Alison as the news reported Katrina making landfall devastatingly early.
Less than 1 week from our trip, a non-refundable airline ticket and no passport while all her documentation was sloshing around in a New Orleans government office, it looked like Alison's desire for international mission had been washed out like a New Orleans levy.
I won't rewrite every amazing detail here, but here's the gist of what happened:
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| Alison in Georgetown, Guyana with her miraculous passport (2005). Alison & her husband Grant now have 3 kids and are still active in ministry at 6th Avenue Church. |
This was an insane prayer--and the events that led from that prayer to the risk of running out the airport and the disappointment before breakthrough at the passport office are hard to believe, but true nonetheless: read the full account at the the original blog post or 6th Avenue's Mission Guyana page for the whole story (if it seems familiar to you ChoG-ers, it was also published in One Voice).
That first, amazing step by Alison created a testimony that inspired the 6th Avenue Church in their pursuit of international missions. Within the next year, other young adults would make the trip to Guyana, inspired by Alison's testimony--among them, new 3W Teammate Zach Langford.
Alison was honored as one of 6th Avenue's "Mighty Warriors"prior to our transition out of that ministry: she didn't let a little thing like Hurricane Katrina get in the way of global, Kingdom impact.
And that first trip with Alison gave us the momentum to continue creating partnerships, which led to interaction with our predecessors Franco and Bea Santonocito who invited us to prayerfully be their replacements with the CCF, and led to the 3W team placement.
There you have it--from Katrina to Cairo--hard to believe it's been 7 years!
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