PDA deploys to Texas Hill Country
Discussions focus on ‘human-to-human connection,’ immediate needs and long-term recovery
LOUISVILLE — As David Rauer eyed the Guadalupe River during a recent Presbyterian Disaster Assistance deployment to Texas, it was hard to fathom how the seemingly innocuous river could have grown so ferocious during the weekend of July 4.
“It's not a big river,” said Rauer, a member of PDA’s National Response Team (NRT).
Flooding of the Guadalupe River near Kerrville, Texas (Photo by U.S. Coast Guard)
Yet, in about two hours, the river rose from hip-height to three stories tall, leading to devastating flash flooding, according to The Associated Press.
“It's hard to imagine that difference when you look at this mild, small river, and you realize how much water was coming down it during the worst part of the flooding,” Rauer said.
Rauer was one of four PDA National Response Team members who traveled to the Texas Hill Country Aug. 7-12 to listen, learn and provide support, following catastrophic flooding that killed at least 138 people.
The deployment by Rauer, the Rev. Pat Ashley, Jan Spence and the Rev. Jim Reitz focused mostly on Kerr County, where at least 119 people were killed, many of them children in places like Camp Mystic.
Though Kerr County was the hardest hit, “there's widespread flooding and disaster from this same storm throughout that mid to western side of Texas,” said Rauer, team lead for PDA’s Long-Term Recovery ministry. “A lot of homes have been impacted and people's lives are upturned because of this flooding.”
The deployment enabled the National Response Team to see some of the damage for themselves, talk to people affected by the disaster and connect with representatives from Mission Presbytery, Synod of the Sun and others involved in the recovery.
“It was an initial deployment, so the primary purpose was assessing immediate needs” but also to discuss “possibilities around long-term recovery,” said Ashley, a retired Presbyterian minister who’s been with the NRT for about 15 years. “And, of course, emotional and spiritual care is always a part of it because so many of the people we meet are affected.”
The team — which was joined by the Rev. Kathy Lee-Cornell, director of the Synod Partnership for Disaster Recovery — also was able to share information from previous disasters, Rauer said. “They were very appreciative that we came in to give them some knowledge of recovery from other disasters to help them as they navigate this,” he said.
During a visit to First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville, the team was able to meet with a caseworker, Bailey Havis, who’s been hired by the church to assist people affected by the flooding. The team also attended a service at the church that included a blessing of backpacks for children going back to school, Ashley said.
Later, “there was a luncheon, and so we had the opportunity to go to that lunch and just talk with people and heard their stories,” she said. It was “human-to-human connection … very connective and heartwarming.”
In this way, deployments help to show that PDA isn’t just an “entity out there but rather people who are concerned and care for them and that we could talk with them about the possibilities that PDA has for working with them long-term,” Ashley said.
Among the local people the team met with during the deployment were the Rev. Jasiel Hernandez Garcia, senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Kerrville, the Rev. Bobby Musengwa, transitional general presbyter for Mission Presbytery, and Mission Presbytery's stated clerk, the Rev. Laurie Palmer, as well as the Rev. Dr. Dongwoo Lee, a minister at Schreiner University, and Fred Gamble, chief financial officer of Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly.
“I think it was a good starting point with PDA, and my hope is that we'll continue to have more enriching conversations and more direct kind of involvement from them,” Garcia said.
Garcia took the team out to see some of the flood damage and the progress that’s been made, such as the clearing of some of the many uprooted trees, Ashley said. The time with him also gave a clearer picture of the scope of the disaster, she said, since you could see “where the river is now and where the damaged places were that were very far removed from where the river is now.”
Lee-Cornell said she was struck by the “memorials that were set up along the river, the notes and the cards and the prayers and the various mementos,” including hand-painted rocks all around town.
Seeing how the disaster has impacted people’s lives and “talking to people about their experiences with it, you just can't get that experience from afar,” she said.
Further explaining the importance of the visit, Lee-Cornell said, “This is the part of being the connectional church. When one member of our family hurts, we're all hurting, and we're all sharing our compassion in the ways that we can.”
Garcia said getting to interact with Lee-Cornell was a highlight for him.
“She's been really great at helping us connect with different organizations and trying to provide resources as we need them in terms of training and you name it, all sorts of things,” he said. “She’s been the most impactful resource, so far.”
Along with working with Cornell and PDA, First Presbyterian Church has been connecting with area churches.
“Churches from Kerrville and Ingram and Hunt are coming together, which hasn't happened in the past, and so it's a fairly new thing that we're meeting on a weekly basis to learn about what each of these places is offering,” Garcia said.
The Rev. Dr. Kathy Riley, PDA associate for Emotional and Spiritual Care, said First Presbyterian Church has done amazing work as has Schreiner University, which the NRT visited.
“Schreiner University is a Presbyterian university, and they provided immediate care after the floods, both as a center for reunification and for meals,” Riley said. “That's another place where the connectional church is simply amazing. … They provided space for first responders to sleep. They served 1,000 meals.”
PDA is likely to return to Texas for future deployments as the impacted areas continue the work of recovery.
“The news media and the attention of the world moves on so quickly,” Riley said. However, “we in PDA will continue to stay in touch with and send teams back in as often as needed. I think that's where the emotional and spiritual care teams and support come in, and so we want to make sure that our folks there know that we remember ... and we continue to provide that presence in a variety of ways," from staff and volunteers.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is one of the Compassion, Peace and Justice ministries of the Interim Unified Agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). For more information about the recovery and to see a series of useful videos, go here. To support PDA’s response through your generous giving, go here.
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