Le Mars Daily Sentinel: Local News: After the flood, Locals help Cedar Rapids woman reclaim 'home' (11/17/08)

After the flood ripped through Cedar Rapids this year, a single mother named Andrea and two of her daughters were left without somewhere to really call home.

They moved two times since then and currently were crammed into Andrea's mom's one-bedroom apartment. The things they did rescue from their home were stacked up in a storage unit.

This month, a group organized by the United Methodist Church of Le Mars spent a weekend helping Andrea and her family move into their own place.

Barb Johnson helps clean a Cedar Rapids home as part of a group of five people traveled from Le Mars to give flood relief. Ruth Postma, Josh and Audrey Hansen, and Joseph, a foreign exchange student, also participated. The trip was organized through the United Methodist Church of Le Mars and Seney.
[Click to enlarge]
"It was just a big weight off her to be out of her mom's place and to know that she was home finally," said Audrey Hansen, one of five Le Mars people on the trip.

The Le Mars group left for Cedar rapids at 5 a.m. Friday and as soon as they arrived at the United Methodist Church's flood relief hub, they were assigned to help Andrea and her family.

"She had just moved before the flood and had been renovating, so everything was in her basement and got flooded out," said Joshua Hansen, a pastor at the UMC of Le Mars and Audrey's husband.

Trying to find an apartment, Andrea and her family moved from place to place, sometimes spending nights on the floor in a sleeping bag.

Finally, a few days before the Le Mars group arrived, Andrea found an apartment.

The group's job: help her make the move.

"We cleaned on Friday and Saturday we moved the stuff out of storage," Josh said. "She had furniture donated to her and they'd salvaged quite a bit from her first home."

Audrey said she was encouraged to see many boxes of Andrea's photos had been saved.

"You can get a new couch, but you can't get new baby pictures," the Le Mars woman said.

Moving went quickly, Josh said. A group of student volunteers helped as well.

"We formed a bucket line up her stairs and passed boxes," Audrey said.

Andrea told the group that their help was really a "right place, right time" situation.

"It's not just moving boxes," Audrey reflected later. "It's emotional and spiritual support. Andrea really formed a connection with some of the women on our trip and they did some 'mothering.'"

Reflecting on the trip, Audrey said it struck her that there is always someone who has it harder than you.

"There are days we think, 'How am I ever going to figure this out,' but that is not the end of the world," she said. "Seeing Andrea and what she had to go through made me realize what I had. But she had also seen a family and said, 'Wow, how good do I have it.' It's amazing."

For Audrey and her husband, this was their first mission trip.

"It was doable," she said. "And it was helping people in our own state. So many people need help in our own communities."

"It was good for us to put our faith into action," Josh added. "It's important to take the opportunity to go and do rather than sit and talk about it."

Although the Le Mars group devoted their time to Andrea's situation, they saw other parts of Cedar Rapids in need of some TLC.

"They're saying it will be another 2-4 years before everything is back up to where it was," said Barb Johnson, of Le Mars, who organized the trip. "They've already demolished 30-60 homes and 100 more are on the docket."

"Until you're there you don't realize how big it really was," Audrey said.

A lot of Cedar Rapids looks good, Josh said. But a lot of the damage can't be seen from the outside.

"Inside there's mold and mildew and stains," he said.

"There's still a lot to do," his wife agreed.

She recounted a moment when they were driving around Cedar Rapids.

"Now most of the businesses are open, and it looks 'done,'" she said. "But then we drove by where this dump was set up. It was like six or eight city blocks."

It was pillows, mirrors, furniture, household items destroyed in the flood.

"It was a huge mound, three stories tall," Josh said.

Many houses need work before winter, and the Le Mars UMC is planning another weekend trip before November is over.

"Probably the next crew will be drywalling," Johnson said. "We're trying to get everybody winterized."

For more information, contact Barb Johnson at 712-568-3454 or the United Methodist Church of Le Mars office at 546-4037.