Katrina - from the Motel to the Apartments

So, we committed to coordinating. What do we do now?

The first goal was to get to know the families and get them into the apartments and out of the motel. The majority of the evacuees signed their contracts with the complex within a few days but we realized that they couldn't really move into apartments with no furnishings -- no bed, no chairs, no nothing! The bedding seemed to be the highest priority. We had a lead from our church's newly formed network (see previous post) on some beds that were purchased in bulk and our church was promised an allocation of those beds. To make a long story short, several days went by with no sign of those beds and we made a decision to just move forward on our own.

It was a good thing that we did since the "beds" turned out (a week and a half later) to be futon mattresses with no frames. That would have been a big disappointment. However, we took money that was donated to our church for the relief effort, along with other money we could find, and purchased a bunch of beds (frames, box springs, and mattresses). I don't think that we ever made a spreadsheet so I don't know how many but they had to deliver them with 2 trucks that were full. We bought them on Saturday and determined that if we were going to get help with this it would need to be on a weekend. By the way, the company we bought the beds from is called Sleep Experts, a local family owned business -- thanks guys!

We decided to fast track this and get it done the next day. We talked Sleep Experts into it and asked for a specific time since this would require lots of coordination. Then, we put the word out that Sunday afternoon we needed all hands on deck including the evacuees to let us into the apartments to put the beds down. We made phone calls, sent e-mails, everything to get the word out. We made announcements on the stage in front of the whole church about the afternoon. The other challenging aspect of all this (which I didn't think of until Sunday morning) was the Dallas Cowboys were playing a 3:00 game which was exactly the time we had the mattress delivery! The turnout at the apartment complex though was totally amazing -- there were people from our congregation everywhere I turned!

After buying the mattresses on Saturday, Heather and I also worked hard to ensure that every evacuee family had a church family or Bible study class matched with them since this would be the perfect opportunity to start to build that relationship. We were still down a few church families heading into Sunday morning but our cry from the pulpit was effective and that afternoon we were able to match up everyone to my recollection. We really prayed over the match-ups especially since we did not know the evacuee families that well yet. The Lord answered our prayers in many ways. The vast majority of the families worked very well together and many are still friends to this day and keep in regular contact. In one pairing, both families had twin girls of a similar age. What are the odds of that? Just God.

After getting the mattresses moved in, we really challenged the sponsor families (the church members) to take the lead to get the apartments of their evacuee family furnished enough to move in. We gave them resource lists to find things and allowed the evacuees and our sponsor families to go through all of the donated items that we had in the apartment clubhouse. We had lots of "little things" like bedding, blankets, clothes, shoes, toys, etc. We relied on our network and the network of our sponsor families to find the big items like couches, dining tables, etc.! The amazing thing is that by the end of that week, the majority of the apartments were move-in ready! Can you believe that -- from nothing to fully furnished in one week!

Next Katrina post . . . Evacuation Strategies