Members of Hampton First Baptist Church were expecting the arrival of the Johnson-Sturgent family from New Orleans. The family was among those evacuated after Hurricane Katrina made landfall last month.First Baptist Church, Hampton, has received word that a seven-member family from New Orleans will move into a house that it has offered to Hurricane Katrina victims willing to relocate and make a “fresh start” in the Lowcountry.
“The family, which has five children between the ages of 5 and 13, will be here in the next two or three days,” pastor Greg Clements told The Baptist Courier Sept. 27. The family has been staying in a shelter in Augusta, Ga., he said.
The church plans to move the family into a house next door to the church, which was donated by a physician several years ago and is being used as a youth center. “The house will be provided rent-free, including utilities, and we’re putting in some new furniture,” Clements said.
Church members are seeking job opportunities for the father, a contract tile setter, and the mother, who coordinated housekeeping for a hotel. And they will help the children enroll in the public schools in Hampton, Clements said.
“Another family, part of the extended family of the first one, is almost certain to follow,” Clements added. If the man’s father and mother, who were rescued from a rooftop in the flooded 9th Ward, decide to come, the church hopes to arrange from a bank the use of a repossessed house for about six months, he said.