Sunday of service and services as focus put on people impacted

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - Another busy Sunday in St. Louis for storm recovery, with individuals, groups and churches out to continue making a difference in neighborhoods and communities.

“We’re trying to, in some kind of way, give something back,” said Helen Lane.

A retired school nurse, Lane is here to care. This is her community in North St. Louis.

She said, “Yes, I’ve been in this area for 36 years and it has demolished the area.”

She pointed to Hickey Elementary just down the road.

“As Dr. Borishade said,” Lane said, “it’s not just the schools. It’s the whole community. This is devastating. We, we need help.”

Her home survived, but many of her neighbors’ homes haven’t. She even has family picking up the pieces. That has her wanting to serve the area of Kingsway East and the Greater Ville Neighborhoods.

“Every bit, every bit makes a difference, like this lady, she’s picking up bushes, picking up trees.” Lane said, “Appreciate any donations, any volunteers. Appreciate, and we’re going to keep staying out here until we get hopefully, more and more help.”

Lane on Sunday was in the parking lot of Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church, helping to out donations of water and supplies and cleaning up. It’s one of the locations over this last week where service has been located to reach out to the community. In the shadow of the church, one of the many places of worship with significant damage, which Sunday held service at a new home.

“Realizing that you don’t stop as a result of a physical structure. You don’t have any control over that. Now you have to decide, what is your real identity, and your real identity is keeping the people together.” Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church Pastor Douglass Petty said, “Deciding how you particularly keep a footprint in this community since it’s been here 50-plus years. The goal is to continue to have a relationship with partners that are actually doing some work in this community. That means finance some of the work, much like what we’re seeing.”

He added, “You can resource the community, and that means how do you plug into where the needs are, and although you can’t do everything, but you can be a partner, where things are being done to help the people.”

Pastor Petty said the services will be at First Presbyterian Church in Ferguson. The plan right now, he said, is not to rebuild, saying it would be cost-prohibitive and wants to see the focus on rebuilding people’s homes and lives.

The May 16th tornado has touched of his congregation.

Petty said, “A few of the individuals that live here and we’ve been in , talking about what the needs are and how to go about addressing it. Making sure that people are talking to each other and not being in denial about the reality. This is grieving. You’re literally dealing with grieving, and that’s a loss. Many of these individuals grew up in the church.”

Other churches like The Cure Church in St. Ann not congregating in their worship space this Sunday, but at the corner of Page and Walton to provide for those impacted.

The Cure Church St. Louis Lead Pastor Darnell Hill said, “We can’t sit back and do nothing when our city is hurting, and so we’ve coordinated these efforts to go out and respond to the cry of our city. I think it’s so important to every church, every non-profit, every leader to respond in some type of way.”

The church was providing food, toiletries and other supplies.

Hill said, “Me and my staff, we’re praying and hoping our city leaders, mayor, city aldermen, come up with a plan to help these individuals whose lives have been altered and changed by this devastating storm that we just saw.”

There are also many crews of volunteers out on Sunday, including from AmeriCorps St. Louis, heading back out to the streets to assist with clean-up and long-term recovery.

Ann Hannan with AmeriCorps St. Louis said, “We’re working from a database that is pulling in United Way’s 211 information and mapping those needs across the impacted area, but that does not mean you need to be in that database to get help.”

AmeriCorps will have more opportunities for volunteers May 29 - June 1.

Back at Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church, the mission right now is easy to sum up.

“Continuing to serve. Continuing to serve people,” said Petty.

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