Buddies, Zoe and Emma arriving.
Readings:
2 Samuel 12, 1-14, The verses of this reading are expanded because of the excellence of the story, King David and Bathsheba.
Psalm 32, Lord, forgive the wrong I have done.
Galatians 2, 16-21, If justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
Luke 7, 36-8, 3, She stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Another beautiful reading.
14 seconds over Little Axe, OK, outside Norman, tore this car apart. Little Axe was hit the day before Moore, a middle class suburb of OK City.
Relief Work
in OK City
This morning I would like to talk with you about the trip I made to OK
City a week ago. Three aspects, the time
and the geography of the tornadoes, gratitude, and the three teams.
You might not know it, but three tornadoes hit the area. The third and second were E5’s, the kind with
winds over 250 miles per hour. The third
was also the tornado with the diameter of about 2 & a half miles. 20 people were killed, including the 3
professional tornado watchers, but it mostly roamed the countryside, not living
areas.
Maybe unrecognizable, a pick up, upside down, door and window gone, trailer on top, OU lawn chair I set up.
The middle tornado was the Moore tornado, Moore being a suburb of OK
City. You drive north on I-35. On the right you see devastation—of houses
like in Plano or Richardson. On the left
you see devastation–of a large strip shopping complex like Collin Creek
Mall.
Where is the little boy who practiced hoops on this basket? Little Axe, where the first of the 3 big tornadoes hit, is rural and comparatively poor with unpaved, dirt roads. This debris has been bulldozed to the edge of the road, where it will be picked up.
The first tornado, a day or two before Moore, hit Little Axe, a small
village of maybe 50 houses. 35 were
destroyed. I would conjecture the
majority of the residences were portables, trailer homes. This tornado spent 14 seconds on the ground
and you will see the result.
Many of the 50 or so homes in Little Axe were trailer homes which were mounted on these I beams. The wind twisted the beams like spaghetti. These were long trailer homes with beautiful scenery around them.
We were sent to Little Axe because it had been neglected and forgotten
after Moore. Moore was urban and middle
class. Little Axe was rural and
relatively poor. The roads were not paved,
just gravel and dirt. Moore sucked up
all the press coverage and attention. We
were sent to redress this neglect.
Debris piles being removed. 35 houses were swept away.
Secondly, the gratitude. The
first thing I noticed, after the shock of seeing Moore from I-35 as I drove
north, was the gratitude of people. We
wore our Bona Responds brown T shirts as we visited stores like Home
Depot. Customers and staff all thanked
us for coming to help out. At the Stihl
outlet where we went to buy chain saw parts, the staff comes out with Stihl T
shirts for all of us. Jim gave them Bona
Responds T shirts. It was humbling. See the two types of T shirts.
Bona Responds team. Besides Jim and Jerry, two professors from St. Bonaventure, an OU chemistry professor and graduate of St. B. joined us with his daughter, Rose.
Thirdly, the teams. Obviously, we
were the team from St. Bonaventure, the Catholic university. Besides Jim, who is a finance professor,
there was Jerry, a chemistry professor.
The second team was Israeli. The
first morning I’m standing outside our barracks style quarters at this generic
church. I hear these kids talking a language
I don’t recognize. I look more closely
at them and see the obvious Israeli blue & white flag on their white T
shirts. I ask them who they are and what
are they doing. They say they have come
from Israel to help. I am stunned.
Less than half of the Israeli team. These kids actually flew in to work relief in OK. They were living with us in the same complex of barracks. I heard them speaking a language I did not know one morning and asked, "Who are you guys?" The shirts have the Israeli flag.
A footnote on these kids. When I
am driving to our site in Little Axe later that morning, the two girls in my
Prius see the Israeli kids and are all excited because they had worked together
at another site. Guess where: New York
after Sandy. They were like old friends
meeting.
The third group was a group of, get this, Muslim kids. Marvelous young people. Acting and looking just like us except they
were dark, the guys I talked with said they were from St. Louis.
The Israeli trailer of equipment. It says "Jewish Response to Disaster." Our kids had worked with the Israeli kids in NY after Sandy. They were old friends.
Both the Muslim and the Israeli groups obviously have organizations behind them on the ground in the U.S.
They both had more equipment than we.
Like, the Muslims had a generator with which they ran a saw that cut I
beams.
In fact, during the afternoon I worked a lot with the Muslims. They were cutting up I beams and I and some
others were carrying 6-9 foot sections up out of a valley to the edge of the
road where we had 3 piles, metal, wood, and trash.
While the Israelis were a delightful surprise for me, the biggest surprise came with the 3rd team, "Muslims for Humanity," as it says on the truck door. Meet Dwight, with whom I worked sawing the I beams into 9 foot sections so they could be taken over to the metals pile on the edge of the road. Humbling to work with these kids.
At one point I trip over some debris on the ground and fall. Fortunately for sports in my early years I
learned how to fall. Not hurt at all,
just rolling into ground. Guess who the
first person to reach out to me was: not one of those Catholic kids, not even
an Israeli, a Muslim. The others were not near anyway. They did not even know I fell. Check the pictures of
the teams and equipment.
This open area once was a home. In the background is a tornado shelter. 13 people and a dog saved their lives a second or two before the tornado swept down on them by jumping into this shelter. Imagine opening the door of the shelter and looking where your house once stood.
I told you all how proud I am to be part of you, of this little community
which is so generous and makes such a positive difference. You
people not only helped the people of Little Axe, but you helped these kids from
St. Bonaventure have a marvelous ecumenical and international experience.
Thanks.
