New view

By Elaine Maust

As Hurricane Katrina approached, Blanca Mackay and her husband, Mario, left New Orleans for Houston, Texas. “We took one of our cars and followed our son and his wife,” Blanca remembered. “We stayed in Houston almost a month. Everything in New Orleans was devastated. There was no electricity. No garbage pickup…”

“Then there was another hurricane,” Blanca said. “Rita was coming over Houston. So, we decided to go home.”

When they arrived in New Orleans, they were astonished to find their property intact. “We were so grateful,” Blanca continued. “We were spared. Only part of the fence, two or three shingles, and some little trees came down. We couldn’t understand. Our next-door neighbors had a lot of issues.”

“We had some friends, people from the church, they lost everything,” Blanca said. “We were able to have two families stay with us in our three-bedroom, two bath home. They were people we knew from church, but we were not close. I didn’t know them that well. But, let me tell you, we became so close to those families. We had to see damage on houses and places all around us, but the communion we had at home during those months with these families was amazing.”

Blanca and Mario were part of Amor Viviente, a congregation in Metairie, Louisiana, located in greater New Orleans. Blanca served on the church staff as secretary.

“Before Katrina, I went to Pennsylvania for a Mennonite Central Committee training. After Katrina, MDS hired me to work with them in New Orleans. At that time groups of Mennonites were contacting our pastor, Karl Bernhard. They wanted to serve in our community. I continued to work through the church but for MDS.”

“What I did,” Blanca continued, “was to contact people, to ask what happened to them, what kind of damages they had, and what help they needed.” Blanca’s role with MDS included coordinating volunteers from other parts of the country, hosting them, and connecting work groups with families that needed to rebuild.

“Everything was so bad,” she said. “So bad.”

“But what was so good about it,” Blanca continued, “was the groups that came. The church accommodated them on the second floor, and they stayed for a week or two weeks. To see the effort of every person that came, to see all those people working together to help people they didn’t even know… I saw that in the heart of humans there is so much good—in  everybody. It was amazing.”

“Every group that came,” Blanca said, They paid their own experiences. They gave their hearts. They didn’t get paid. They came to help. Nothing else. Just to help. I had never seen people working like that before. The damage was horrible, but it was a blessing to see the good in people.”

Blanca also remembered the impact that MDS had on families that needed to rebuild. “When you see what God does with a person,” Blanca said, “that really touches your heart. To see the gratification of the volunteers and to see the happy faces of people because someone is helping them rebuild, it was just glorious to see how God worked in everybody. Everyone who asked the church for help was able to rebuild.”

“It was growing up time in the spiritual side of me,” Blanca added. “I was learning how God touches hearts, seeing people who were not selfish. I think I learned to see my fellow persons differently. Sometimes we tend to judge people on what they look like. You just never know what is in their hearts. After you see what I saw, you realize that of all the marvelous things God made, the best was the human race. There’s a verse that says we are the salt of earth {Matthew 5:15). I think about that verse now and I think yes, we are. We bring flavor to the earth. Many years ago, I couldn’t have understood that.”

Today Blanca and Mario are retired and live in Lafayette, Louisiana, near their son. Blanca said that the families who lived with them after Katrina stay in touch, even coming to visit. For Blanca, those friendships are one of the best gifts of Katrina.

Elaine Maust is a writer, spiritual director and retired pastor.  A transplant from Mississippi, Elaine now lives with her husband, Duane, in Michigan’s Thumb.