Adopt-a-missionary

Many Pastors and church leaders have contact us about "adopting a missionary." We are asking for churches to help us recover from Katrina by pledging to support of our our missionaries for a year in our place. If you are interested, click here for a list of our missionaries.

join us this Sunday

Hello Everyone! The good Lord willing, we are going to have our first worship service (post Katrina) at the church this Sunday (October 2nd) at 10:30! Everyone in N.O. now and everyone within 250 miles is invited to attend! We will sing together because...we need to! We will have communion together because....we need to! As far as the worship, I can play the drums but anyone else who can play anything, and will be there, let me know asap. The Lord has burdened my heart to preach on who HE IS! I'm tired of hearing about Mother Nature and the personification of Katrina. I actually heard one commentator say it was a living "being"! People need to worship the Lord of creation, not the creation. God sent Katrina and Rita because He purposed to and is sovereign! If you can, bring a lunch and some work clothes and we can clean up some after the service. I know it's the Lord's Day but hey, if your ox is in the ditch...and believe me, ours IS! Hope to see you there, if at all possible. Can't wait to hug you! See "ya' all" real soon, again....the Lord willing!

All our love,
Pastor Brad & Julie

a couple of random pieces of information

Here are a couple of random pieces of information you might need to know:

• Last weekend's chainsaw brigade was a success. We had about 10-12 of us each day...a mix of Berean and Community Bible Church people. We pulled up wet carpet, tarped roofs, cut up trees and did some other repairs. We worked on the church property, the Randazzo's, Wofford's, Davis', Saliba's, Guthrie's, Olschner's, Stan Wallace's and my home. I hope to post a couple of pictures in a day or two. I accidentally left my digital camera in Kevin Avery's vehicle.
• Kevin Avery, Chris Burton and I are planning on doing some work on homes this weekend as well. We would love for you to join us. Call me on my cell at 504-975-7570. We will probably arrive in New Orleans sometime Friday. Of course, all that is dependent on what Hurricane Rita does in the next 24 hours...
• We are beginning to schedule work teams starting the first week in October. In order to adequately support them, we really need to acquire two refrigerators and two ovens (without stovetops). If this is something that anyone would like to help us with, that would be appreciated. Call me on my cell and I can give you more details.

Doug

PLEASE READ: we want to hear from you!

We are ready to move forward with our plans to start rebuilding our homes and our families. In order to do that we need to hear from two groups of people: (1) our congregation and (2) churches that want to help.

If you are a member of our congregation...
We want to know your situation. Please let us know what kind of damage you have sustained to your house. Let us know where your family is at....what other needs you have...what your job situation is. We want to provide as much support as possible for you. People are opening their arms and want to help. Let them.

Also, let us know if there is anyone you know who is in need right now. We want to take this opportunity to reach out to our community...and the best place to start is your friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors, etc. This is perhaps an opportunity like none we have ever encountered to reach out and show the love of Christ.

Please email Doug or call him on his cell: 504-975-7570. We want to hear from every family at Berean. Please pass this info along to anyone you are currently in contact with. We want to hear from you within a week if possible.

If you are a church or individual that wants to help...
As we have shared, there are three ways you can help: (1) by providing finanical support, (2) by providing supplies, and/or (3) by providing work teams. Our focus is on rebuilding homes. Most work teams will be laying carpet, floating sheetrock, patching roofs, cutting up large tree limbs, etc. BUT we understand that every church has a little bit of a different personality and passion. We want to work with you...and we are open to anything at this point...so let us know what you are thinking and we will see what we can do.

We are ready to accept work teams as early as next week.

Our goal at this point is to gather some basic information on your work groups so that we can schedule accomdations. We want to know when you want to come...what kind of work you want to do...approximately how big your group will be. Once we have this information, we can begin to access our needs and let you know prior to your arrival exactly what projects we anticipate you doing and what families we anticipate you helping.

Please follow the below links to letters and forms that you will need in order to plan your trip:

Letter for Work Team Leaders

Work Team Information Form (.pdf format) or Work Team Information Form (.doc format)

Work Team Waiver Form

Please fill out the information form and return it to us ASAP. You can email the form to Doug or "snail mail" it to:

Doug Daspit
c/o Community Bible Church
8354 Jefferson Hwy
Baton Rouge, LA 70809

Additionally, if you need more specifics on our financial situation, please read this letter from our Senior Pastor, Brad Davis.

Oh, and special thanks to Keith Boyer from Faith Bible Church in Slidell, LA. We were able to use his information as a starting point for all of the above letters and forms. We are all trying to figure this out together!

Thank you all so much. I am genuinely excited right now. I firmly believe that God wants to heal New Orleans and make it a place like it has never been. Pray for revival in our city!

Doug

pictures of our damage

Lawrence and I visited the church facility this morning and took some pictures. We figured you guys might be interested in seeing what kind of damage we have sustained. Overall, it is not nearly as bad as it could be...I guess. We can get our facility to a place where it is usable fairly easily, but we will still have a good bit of work to do. So here is an overview of what we found:

Front Building
When you drive up, the first thing that you notice is that the fence on both sides is pretty badly damaged. Most of it is down. I don't know how much of the fence is actually our property and how much belongs to our neighbors. Here is a small slice of what it looks like:


The trees in the front are in fairly good condition. Here is one small tree that is down (as you can see from the below picture) and some fairly sizeable limbs. Both of the front lightpoles are down:


The gate that leads into the children's play area is damaged, as well as the fence on that side:


As you head over to the back side of the front building, you see some trees down:


It appears that someone tried to break in. A window was broken out with a brick as you see below. Nothing was taken. Clayton took the initiative to cover up the glass last week (yeah, Clayton!).


The major water stain inside is in the corner room in the nursery:


On the outside, you can see how a ton of shingles are missing right above that room. The two "peaks" are the only part of the roof with damage...and they are the only parts that were not part of the major roofing project that occured a couple of months ago.


Back Building
As you move to the back building, you see a couple of trees down there as well:


Some of the siding is torn up pretty badly. You can see the light coming through the holes on the inside below. This is probably the biggest immediate need...to cover up these holes so that water doesn't get into the gym.


On the other side of the building, there is a large piece of rubble that appears to have flown off of one of the next door apartment buildings. You see that big dent in the side of the building? It appears that the rubble hit the building there and then fell into these four AC units, knocking one of them completely over:


In the kitchen, there is some water damage to the ceiling. We could not figure out where this water got in:


Well, that is the "highlights." Needless to say, there is more damage than this. It seems that the first project for the "chainsaw brigade" will be to cut up all of those trees down on the church property. I think I counted six in all.

Keep us in your prayers. I think that we will have the building in good enough condition to start housing work teams before the end of the month. Yeah!

Doug

Planning to REBUILD

Hello Everyone,

We have been thinking about you and praying for you. The Lord is sustaining us all by His grace and He will provide what we need at this trying hour. We look forward to worshipping our great God with you all very soon! It will be a tremendous blessing to get together and share our stories as to how the Lord has watched over and cared for us, His people. There are so many things to tell you about and we are anxious to hear from each one of you as to your whereabouts presently since we seem to be moving around from time to time! Do you feel like the Patriarchs or Moses trekking through the desert sometimes?

I wanted to let you all know that our meeting (Staff & Elders) last Saturday was a good start as far as planning for Berean’s near future. We were able to begin a strategic recovery plan that involves a number of teams. The response has been overwhelming so we really needed to sort of eat the elephant one bite at a time! We divided the teams by focus and decided to use the theme of “rebuilding” for obvious reasons! We hope you will consider on which team you might serve to help us get back on our feet as a faith family.

The teams are as follows…

R (Resources). Supplies and services to help our families and the community get in and get to some semblance of normalcy.

E (Evangelism/Outreach). There are going to be incredible opportunities to share the gospel!

B (Business/Finance). This is really going to be a need because everything is up in the air at this point but once we get all the generous offers from churches coordinated it will be amazing how the Lord is going to provide in the year ahead! We believe our ministry staff, missionaries and mortgage obligations are going to be provided for in ways we know only God could have put together.

U (Undershepherding/Ministry). We will have to do a great deal of counseling, comforting, caring and praying as we depend on the Lord in the months and years ahead. Our ministry staff will need your ministry gifts to be operating in the body at the fullest capacity!

I (Intercession). A team committed to prayer and intercession for the church families, the community, and the great city of New Orleans!

L (Links/ Communications) We hope to stay in touch and keep you informed in every way possible so this team will be invaluable as it already has been during our hiatus from the city.

D (Discipleship/Direction). The Lord has called the church to make disciples, so as we are providing physical relief and aid we will be focused on our discipleship task. We certainly are going to be a different church so we are going to be doing a great deal of future planning and vision casting. Well, that’s the summary of our first meeting “after the storm”. Where can you plug in so that we can do the best job of rebuilding for the glory of the Lord?

From Texas,Pastor Brad

Chainsaw Brigade...more info

We have firmed up some more details concerning the Chainsaw Brigade this Friday & Saturday. Here are some details:

• According to Ray Nagin's press confernce about an hour ago, we won't need work permits. The dry parts of Orleans will be open like Jefferson for people to come in and work on their property in the next day or two. If you haven't come home yet, this would be a great chance to see your house for the first time with a whole bunch of friends who want to help you clean up!
• We will meet at 7am in the parking lot of Community Bible Church in Baton Rouge. We will squeeze into as little number of vehicles as possible. This will be on both mornings...although...
• If you can come both days, we would like as many people as possible to spend the night in Algiers. Sounds like most houses already have power. We'll find a place to put you up. Just bring clothes, toiletries, etc.
• If you can only come one day...that's great! We'll make sure that you get out of New Orleans before the curfew is in effect.
• At a minimum, be sure to bring some work gloves. Bring a chainsaw if you have one. If you don't...that's okay. We should have more than enough stuff for you to do between moving wood and tarping roofs. Speaking of tarping roofs, some tarps would be helpful as well...
• Don't worry about food. It will be taken care of.
• Please RSVP to Doug ASAP. You can call at 504-975-7570 or email at dcdaspit@cox.net or just post a comment on the bottom of this message! We need to know how many people so that we can get the right amount of food.
• If you know there is a tree in your yard or that your roof needs to be tarped, contact Doug or comment. He can be sure you are on the list.

Thanks!

Chainsaw Brigade

I don't know about you, but I am chomping at the bit to begin restoring our homes. We want take the first steps towards normalcy...so this weekend on Friday and Saturday (September 16& 17) we are organizing a chainsaw brigade to starting cutting up the fallen trees in people's lawns. We also plan on tarping roofs while we are there.

We are going to try to get as many people together from the Baton Rouge area to join us so that we go as many houses as possible. If you can come, bring whatever supplies you can get your hands on. We will try to locate as much supplies as possible here in Baton Rouge. We will provide more details later this week, but I can tell you that we will meet here in Baton Rouge, drive into the city for the day and then come back around nightfall. We are not planning on spending Friday night in New Orleans.

If you are evacuated to another city and want to join us for the weekend in Baton Rouge. Let me know, I will be happy to find a place for you to stay in Baton Rouge for a couple of nights.

Please contact me (at 504-975-7570) to let me know if you can join us.

Doug

tithes & offering

Hello fellow Bereans spread all over creation! Some of you have been asking how you can continue to give your tithes and offerings to the Lord through the church. We contacted our new and very helpful banker in Baton Rouge and he said that the new “Berean Hurricane Relief Fund” and our regular giving operating fund are one and the same, at least for now. We have already posted the information for you to give in one of three ways, so if you need the account number or electronic funds transfer (EFT) routing number, please contact me or Pastor Doug and we will get you set up promptly!

Julie and I plan to continue to give regularly to the Lord’s work in obedience to His command and we hope you all will join us in faithful stewardship, if you are able and have any income at this point of course! We are working on those who will be in need and hope to help in whatever ways the Lord directs us to do so in the near future. The Lord has blessed us and we are alive, (although we are still awaiting word on others we know and love) and it therefore behooves us to honor Him with the first fruits of His manifold provisions. God bless us all!

Pastor Brad

News on the Chuch Facility

I just got off of the phone with Chris Burton, our children's pastor. He was inside of the church building. There is no damage to our building. Not only that, but we have electricity!

The only damage he could find was some to the fence. He also mentioned that the phone lines appear to still be down.

Art & Blondell Avery's house & Artie's Printing appear to be in good shape. They did sustain some wind damage, but nothing severe. They will headed over to check on my house and Brad's house in a bit.

One other thing, for those concerned about looters in Algiers. There was security everywhere. Armed military patrols walking the streets. Police are stationed throughout Aligers. Helicopters are patrolling from overhead.

I am even more convinced that God has a great plan for Berean. It appears that we can have the opportunity to really focus on helping others who were really impacted by the storm. Keep us in your prayers.

Doug

Prayers from all over the world

I had to share this. Below is the text from an email I received this morning. -Doug

Hello,
I am from Turkiye. Especially I want to say I am so sad for Hurricane Katrina. I watched pictures about hurricane katrina and I am bad now. sorry my english is not good so I cant explain in my heart. but I know God hear us so I and family will pray for people in the N.O. Because I know that no one returns empty-handed from God court.
I think and hope that died people are in paradise now.
and I know and I dont forget that prayers in the USA when earthquake in turkiye 1999. if we are human we must pray for blameless people.

again sorry for my english. I want to share my emotions with you.
Kemal
Turkiye

Berean Hurricane Relief Fund

I know that many of you who have visited this blog have expressed interest in contributing to Berean and our efforts at helping people recover from Hurricane Katrina. We have been able to work with our bank to set up a special fund to which you can contribute.

The money that is contributed to the fund will be used for:

• Helping familes rebuild/repair their homes that were damaged.
• Providing any support needed for these families while they are in the process of rebuilding their home.
• Making sure that the initial major costs of our church are paid so that we can keep ministering to the hurting and needy of New Orleans. This would include our missionary support, ministry staff and mortgage obligations.
  

If you would like to contribute to this fund, there are three ways to do so.

1. You can transfer money electronically to the fund. In order to do this, you will need our account number and the routing number. We would be happy to provide that for you. Please contact Doug or Brad.
2. You can visit your local Hibernia bank and make a direct deposit into the fund. Again, you will need our account number to do so.
3. You can mail a check to this address:

Hibernia National Bank
Attn: Keith Jordan
P. O. Box 3597
Baton Rouge, LA 70121

Please make your checks payable to "Berean Bible Church." Write "Berean Hurricane Relief Fund" on the comment line.

It looks like Crystal and I will be moving down to Baton Rouge in the next couple of days. Community Bible Church has graciously offered to put us up in an apartment. We are planning on praying and planning this weekend about how Berean can play a role in rebuiding New Orleans.

Thanks!

Doug

a message from Pastor Brad

Hi Everyone,

We are now in a Best Buy borrowing their internet! Hopefully, we will have it hooked up in my parent's home on Tuesday so we can get connected with all of you "refugees" ( I prefer evacuees, don't you?). We are so very thankful that we have heard from so many of our flock who are safe. We are praying that God will do a great thing in New Orleans very soon. Many of the pastors and people I have spoken to on the phone for the last 4 days have called this a "God moment". Truly, it is that. We are poised and ready to get back and help the hurting and minister to the needy, as God has called us to do. You will not believe the number of churches who are ready to partner with us, help us get back on our feet, and start again for the glory of the Lord. They are all over the country. Please don't put your roots down too deeply, because the Lord may want you back in New Orleans soon! :) I know, however, that realistically we may be a mission church after we get past the relief and rebuilding stage. We are excited that the Lord may use our facilities as a staging ground so we can share the gospel with those who have seen the brevity of life up close and personal. Keep praying for the Lord's will for Berean Bible Church to be clearly known to the leadership team. We need clarity now, and short term planning in a big way! Blessings to all.

Aerial photos of the church property

The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmopheric Administration) has a website where you can see aerial photos of New Orleans after Katrina. It is kinda hard to navigate, but if you are willing to take your time, you can probably find a pretty good picture of your house.

I found the church property. I went ahead and cropped the picture so that you can see it. Look at it here. The property looks pretty good. No major roof damage. BUT, it looks like many trees on the back half of our property have fallen over on our neighbors on both sides.

Information Overload

So this blog is starting to get a bit cluttered. I guess we are going to have to find a longterm way to connect as a community. It seems like a great option is a message board.

Now, I know that many of you maybe aren't familiar with a message board. Don't worry, we'll figure it out together. A message board will help us to organize all of the information, and they are a lot easier to use for ongoing conversations.

So, with that said, follow this link: http://bereannola.proboards55.com, register a username and begin posting!

Once again, email me if you have any suggestions or comments!

Do you need a place to stay?

It looks like we all should be looking for a place to stay for at least weeks if not months. I know that some of you are in hotels. I have had many people contact me with offers of places to stay in Birmingham, Atlanta, Tennesee, Dallas, New Jersey, etc. Do not hesitate to contact me if you need a place to stay. Needless to say, these families are willing to house you, feed you, perhaps help you find temporary employment, perhaps help get your children enrolled in school.

If you are not from New Orleans, and would like to provide housing, contact me as well.

Call me on my cell (504-975-7570) or email me. Yes, you should be able to get me on my cell. It might take a couple of tries.

doug

Info for homeschool families

Kelly Driggers wanted me to pass this message along to any homeschool families. Note especially the paragraph that is in bold text:

From: "Home School Legal Defense Association"
To: "Mr. and Mrs. Michael Driggers"
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:39:07 -0400
Subject: Home School Foundation Hurricane Response
======================================================================
From the HSLDA E-lert Service...
======================================================================
Dear friend of homeschooling,

In response to the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina, the Home School Foundation has established a Hurricane Emergency Response program to help homeschooling families who have suffered great losses.

We will use contributions to this program to assist families with replacing lost or destroyed curriculum and meeting emergency needs.

If you know of homeschooling families who need our assistance, please have them call us at 540-338-8899 or email info@homeschoolfoundation.org.

If you would like to make a gift to help these families, here's how.

Donate online at:
http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=2553

Send your check:
-Payable to: Home School Foundation
-Memo: Hurricane
-Mail to: Home School Foundation, PO Box 1152, Purcellville, VA 20134

Long after the winds and rain have stopped, many families' lives will still be in upheaval. Please continue to pray for these families. Our prayers and gifts can minister God's grace to them during their time of great need.

Sincerely,

J. Michael Smith
President