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‘THE LORD WILL NOT TAKE AWAY HIS PROTECTION’ — PSALMS 37:33
Partners in Prayer and Service
Organization helps displaced residents get back on track
BY SCOTT ROGERS AMERICAN PRESS
Many faith-based groups continue to pray for the hurricane victims, and one
local organization is working to put some legs under those prayers.
Since Hurricane Katrina struck, Partners in Prayer for Schools has been
meeting with displaced residents who are trying to get their lives back on track.
Today, PIPS continues to help them, as well as their own neighbors who were
dislocated by Hurricane Rita.
While PIPS cannot offer money or housing or satisfy other material needs,
there’s one thing PIPS founder Billie Jean Bauer says the group can offer:
hope.
“Sometimes that’s all we can send people out the door with — hope. We have
interviewed so many from Cameron and Creole, and their resilience has just
inspired us,” she said.
Bauer said that when asked about her greatest need, one older Cameron
resident said: “I miss my sewing machine. That’s what I did for relaxation and
enjoyment.”
“Her house was reduced to a slab. We couldn’t give her a house, or even give
her temporary housing, but we had been given a Wal-Mart card to give to a
Cameron family, so we bought her a sewing machine,” Bauer said.
“That was just some small thing that we could do to make her smile.”
That Cameron woman is now in a FEMA trailer, but Bauer said she at least has
something now to ease her mind and forget her troubles for a while.
Whenever someone drops off small items, such as baby clothes, PIPS staff
find someone who needs them. Staff members have cleaned out their homes
and brought small items to give to people who stop by.
Bauer said PIPS wants each person to walk out the door with something in
hand, even if it is just a bag of bathroom necessities.
PIPS’ main mission now is to be a starting point for people who need
assistance. That’s how it began its disaster relief efforts, and it will continue
until the need is met, Bauer said.
“During Katrina we were in the throes of finding temporary housing, shelter, or
pointing them to a shelter — anything that we can do to help the evacuees,”
she said.
After they returned to Lake Charles following Rita, the Bauer’s got a team
together to start doing the same thing for local residents.
“My heart has been set on finding people homes,” Bauer said. “We cannot sit
by and watch neighbors suffer and not do anything.”
Today, PIPS staff will sit down with a family and analyze its financial picture.
Information such as where they live now, what happened to their property, and
how many children they have is recorded and sent to the United Methodist
Community on Relief.
UMCOR has received grant money to assist in long-term recovery efforts. The
information is made accessible to organizations responsible for helping
dislocated families find affordable, permanent homes.
Since Katrina and Rita hit, PIPS has conducted more than 3,000 such
interviews.
“That’s our mission right now: Do the interviews, take the information, identify
people’s needs and then get that information into the data system so housing
projects can help them,” Bauer said.
Those who need emergency help are connected with organizations that can
provide that assistance immediately. Emergency help could be anything that
needs swift attention, such as not being able to pay this month’s electric bill.
Annetta Edwards is one of the many displaced New Orleans residents whom
local organizations have helped since November. She has been given a job as
a PIPS staff member, and her goal now is to help as many people as she can.
“I can relate to a lot of people that walk through that door. Those who feel so
lost, not knowing what the next day will bring,’’ Edwards said.
“They ask me how I am handling all of this. I tell them, ‘I take it one day at a
time.’ That’s all you can do. Turn it over to God and let him handle it.”
Partners in Prayer in Schools is a nonprofit organization formed by Billie Jean
and Dr. Gary Bauer in 1999 following the Columbine school shootings.
The Bauers lost a son as a result of a crime in 1996. Their son, Christopher,
was killed when the vehicle he was riding in was struck by a man fleeing police
in a highspeed chase. This happened just 15 months after Christopher
graduated from high school.
After the Columbine tragedy, the Bauers decided something needed to be
done to stop violence, especially violence by youths.
“I’ve heard that the greatest expression of human love for one person to
another is to pray for them,” Bauer said. “I took that literally and began looking
into how I could cover an entire school by praying for them.”
She got class lists for various schools and began praying for those children.
She joined other adults, many of them parents of those children, and started
prayer groups.
“That’s how I healed and began to recover — by praying for others,” Bauer
said.
For more information on PIPS, call its Lake Charles office at 337-217-0428
