Hurricane Katrina Children's sermon

Children’s Message
Sunday, September 4, 2005
French Quarters

Well, friends, I need to call on you, my best mission fund raisers with a new challenge.

If you watched the news at all this week, I bet that you were as sad as I was as you heard about all of the destruction that Hurricane Katrina caused in the states around the Gulf of Mexico this week. And just like last time, as soon as it happened, I started to wonder what our church might be doing to help. I got some phone calls and e-mails from families wondering how we might work together to help the people in New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana, and parts of Mississippi and Alabama and Florida.

I checked with church world services (the people who we did all of our health kits through after the tsunami) to see if they needed health kits for the hurricane, but what I found out is that this time, money is really what will be the most helpful.

And I knew that we could bring in money, and I hope that everyone at Third Presbyterian Church is able to contribute a little bit of money, but I wanted to make a special challenge for the kids. So I thought. Now I have been to New Orleans a few times, and it is a beautiful, wonderful city, so I thought about New Orleans, and the wonderful things about it—the music, the food, the French quarter—hey, the most famous, historic part of the city of New Orleans is called the French quarter! Maybe if we collected quarters, it would be a way to be thinking of New Orleans while we did it, so that, my friends, is what we are going to do.

Get out your piggy banks, take back those cans in the garage, look under all your couch cushions, and bring as many quarters as you can find into church during the month of September. We will send all the money that we collect to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and they will use it to help their partners to help out in New Orleans, and all of the other places in that region that were hit by the hurricane.

Let’s pray:
Loving God,
Please be with the people affected by Hurricane Katrina
Be with those who have lost special people
Be with those who have lost special possessions
Be with those who are trying to help others out,
And help us to do the same.
Amen.