Louisiana Recovery News!

Greetings from the Westbank Storm Relief Center!
We've just had an anniversary! It has been a wonderfully rewarding and hectic four months since our center opened on October 3. Every day we have been witness to God's awesome power and blessings and it is an honor and priviledge to let God work through us at Aurora UMC and the Relief Center to bring hope and healing to our broken community.

Since our opening we have had 698 volunteers work through our center and they have served 427 people in our community. We have been able to close 218 cases and currently have 701 open cases. The phones ring constantly as word spreads throughout the community of the work being done through our center. Things have not slowed down!

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Mexican and Texas Methodists join hands to work in New Orleans

Susan Hellums of the SW Texas Conference has just returned from New Orleans with an UMVIM team that included seven people from Mexico and nineteen from First UMC, McAllen, TX. Twenty six team members in all. Team members from Mexico included Bishop Pedro Moreno Cano, SE Conference of Mexico and Willie Berman, UMVIM Coordinator for the Eastern Conference of Mexico. Bishop Moreno and his group rode a bus for 16 hours to reach Reynosa, crossed the border into McAllan, then traveled with the McAllen team to New Orleans. They worked together in hurricane relief efforts.

To read the entire story (with photos) go to: http://gbgm-umc.org/vim/news/intrntltm_norl_jan06.htm