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A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
6:00 P.M. EST June 9, 2011
United Methodist Bishop Peter Weaver (left) views tornado damage in
Monson, Mass., with fellow United Methodists and town officials Lori
Stacy (center) and Debi Mahar. UMNS photos by Alexx Wood, New England
Conference.
View in Photo Gallery
At 4 a.m. Tuesday, six days after a rare violent tornado skipped
through the small town of Monson, Mass., the stove in the kitchen at Monson-Glendale United Methodist Church was fired up.
During the next two and a half hours, a small group of volunteers
produced 120 breakfast sandwiches for firefighters and members of the
National Guard to eat and to distribute to the tornado survivors they
were assisting.
When a town resident walked into the church in a bit of a daze, just
because the door was open, a church member greeted him by name and
asked him if he wanted coffee or a sandwich.
For the Rev. Joseph Chamberland, pastor of First United Methodist Church
in neighboring Stafford Springs, Conn., the scene at the Monson church
served as a literal example of the denomination’s “Open Hearts, Open
Doors, Open Minds” philosophy.
He felt “blessed” to be volunteering with a congregation that has
such a deep connection to its community. “The Methodist Church there is
small but mighty,” he declared.
Both Monson and Springfield, Mass., about 24 miles to the west,
sustained major damage June 1 when three tornados struck 19 communities
in the state, leaving three dead and dozens injured. The United
Methodist New England Annual (regional) Conference began an immediate
response, assisted by an initial $10,000 grant from the United
Methodist Committee on Relief, which is collecting donations for this year’s spring storms.
“The connection was immediately there for us,” said Bishop Peter
Weaver, noting the conference previously received an UMCOR grant to
respond to flooding in Vermont during the last eight weeks.
The New England Conference
has trained emergency-response teams to help clear damage and assist
residents. Additional help, including volunteer work teams, is being
organized through the district office and the conference’s Volunteers
In Mission program.
Joplin-like scenes
Weaver preached at the Monson church on Sunday and visited
tornado-damaged neighborhoods both there and in Springfield, which
looked similar to news reports he had seen from Missouri.
“In both Springfield and in Monson, you had the same kind of scenes that you saw in Joplin, where houses were totally leveled,” the bishop said. “In one case in Monson, a house was totally turned upside down.”
Of the three churches along Main Street in Monson, only the United
Methodist church escaped significant damage from the tornado, which
devastated much of this town of 8,500, leaving many of its municipal
buildings unusable.
Gretchen Neggers, the town administrator for the past 20 years, is
an active member of Monson-Glendale United Methodist, along with Lori
Stacy, town finance director, and Debi Mahar, director of the senior
center. When Neggers saw the devastation, she said, “my soul was
chilled at what my town was facing.”
But she is grateful for the support of Monson’s congregations.
“There’s been incredible cooperation between all the churches in town,
many of which sustained heavy damage themselves, and the town itself,”
she said.
Churches are temporarily filling the gaps for destroyed or
compromised municipal buildings. The senior center’s Meals on Wheels
program, for example, now operates out of the Monson-Glendale kitchen.
“They (seniors) would be hungry if it weren’t for the United Methodist
church opening its kitchen,” she added.
Led by the Congregational church, the churches also have taken on
the task of coordinating volunteers and supplies. “We’ve been very
overwhelmed by the level of donations and the volume of people who want
to help,” Neggers explained.
Some of the 100-member Monson-Glendale congregation, which usually
draws about 50 to Sunday worship, are dealing with tornado damage to
their homes. But the response of church members has been “absolutely
incredible” in the eyes of their part-time pastor, the Rev. Carol
Stine.
“We got organized, and they’ve just taken over,” she said. “They’ve
cooked and prepared about 2,000 meals. They’ve collected clothes and
food and toys and dishes.”
Volunteers from Trinity United Methodist Church in Springfield, Mass., clear storm damage at a home that was hit by the tornado.
View in Photo Gallery
The town knows it can come to the church when food is needed, Stine
said. Volunteers there made breakfast sandwiches on Wednesday as well
as Tuesday and, upon request, cooked a dinner for police officers,
firefighters and the National Guard on Tuesday evening. Some folks who
stopped by the church around the same time looking for food walked away
with 40 hot chicken dinners.
Neighborhoods flattened in Springfield
In Springfield, Trinity and Wesley United Methodist churches escaped
tornado damage, but a tree went through the roof of the former First
United Methodist Church building in West Springfield, said the Rev.
Heidi Chamberland, the Connecticut/Western Massachusetts District
superintendent.
The building is vacant and up for sale because the congregation
merged with another church. “That area of West Spring on Main Street
was also significantly damaged,” she reported.
As in Monson, neighborhoods are gone and businesses demolished. “The
challenge is going to be the long haul,” Chamberland said. “A lot of
folks are still kind of in shock.”
Trinity Church,
which has about 275 in worship on Sundays, immediately began
organizing a response. Trinity’s pastors, the Rev. John Mueller and the
Rev. Sue Frost, looked at their membership list and contacted people
living in areas hit by the tornado. “A lot of times we couldn’t contact
them by phone because the power has been down,” Mueller said.
Pastors and church members have gone into the affected
neighborhoods, such as nearby East Forest Park, inquiring after the
needs of residents and “praying with them and listening to them.”
Volunteer teams have returned to cut down trees, remove debris, put up
plywood and pass out sandwiches.
The impact on the city has been significant. “Sections of blocks
downtown are being torn down,” he said. “Individual homes are being
torn down.”
One church member is the vice president of Square One, an early
childhood education organization, whose office building already was
condemned and razed. Another active church member, the superintendent
of schools, is dealing with several severely damaged elementary
schools. “He knows that the church is ready to help out in any way,”
Mueller added.
Emotional impact
And then there are the emotional stories of people whose lives have been changed by the tornados:
- A young family in Monson who found their 2-year-old daughter’s
baptismal certificate and candle in their nearly destroyed home and
decided to light the candle to celebrate God’s grace in the wake of
disaster.
- A 93-year-old Springfield man whose damaged home burned when
power resumed after the tornado, but was “full of the spirit of the
Lord” and prayed with the bishop in the midst of the rubble.
- A young couple, affiliated with the Trinity congregation, who
“couldn’t believe how their church family was reaching out and caring
for them.”
- An outpouring of letters and cards from children in Massachusetts and elsewhere received by Neggers for the children of Monson.
For members of Joseph Chamberland’s congregation, who have worked on
hurricane recovery in Louisiana, it was important to hear these
stories and be present physically and in prayer for the nearby Monson
community, where some of them live.
On Monday night, members cooked about 300 meals at the Stafford
Springs church and transported the hot food in thermal containers to
Monson. Volunteers arrived again the next morning to clear brush with
chainsaws, work at the response center and help prepare those breakfast
sandwiches.
“It’s just a real blessing to do what sort of comes naturally to us,” Chamberland said.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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