blue girl: Katrina Health Kits

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Last night I went to our community's Methodist church and helped put together 200 Katrina Health Kits. Not wanting to be a Mrs. Jellyby, I also dragged my 13 year old son along. Well, come to think of it, I might have been acting like Mrs. Jellyby, because I made my son sacrifice his skateboarding time last night to do it. I think I might have been a mean Mrs. Jellyby on top of it all because as he was complaining about going with me, I told him that I knew he had the eyes and ears to see and hear the people's misery on TV, but I wasn't quite sure he had the heart to want to do anything about it.

I spoke with the lady at the church that organized last night's assembly line. She told me to direct all of you here:

The need for Health Kits is especially acute, according to Gwen E. Redding, director of the Sager Brown Depot of UMCOR in Baldwin, LA. The center is to the west of the major storm impact and did not sustain major damage.

“We are getting calls from all over,” Ms. Redding said, “and we do have kits on hand but not enough to fill all the requests coming from the Gulf and around the world.”

The center also needs Flood Buckets but, at present, Health Kits are in greatest demand.

The value of a health kit is $12.00, if persons want to contribute the money. For kit contents, make gifts to UMCOR Advance #901440, “Material Resources.”

Given the emergency, delivery is strongly encouraged, but kits may also be shipped to:

UMCOR Sager Brown Depot
P.O. Box 850
131 Sager Brown Road
Baldwin, LA 70514-0850

Please also provide $1.00 per kit to cover distribution costs.
This may be sent to Sager Brown to the UMCOR Advance #982730, “Contain Your Joy.”

Please mark the outside of all your boxes with your name or the name of the Church. Mark "Katrina Health Kits enclosed."

I'm thinking some of you may not want to spend the money on shipping a huge box of supplies. My recommendation would be to call your local United Methodist Church to see if they are also putting Health Kits together and to see if you could drop them off and they could go on their truck to the next distribution point.

There's a lot of information, broken down by region on umc's site. Just surf around and you'll be able to find answers to your questions. If not, let me know and I'll see if I can help.

My son pretty much glared at me the whole time as we drove down the to church.

As we got out of the car he said, "Mom, you don't understand. I sort of have a problem with God right now."

But, after he spent an hour with several of his friends (who were also there to help much to his surprise) and after the Youth Group leader explained to them that the hurricane wasn't anyone's fault regardless of what they might hear from others on TV -- I think in the end, it did his heart a lot of good.