Residents make efforts to help Katrina victims

Missionary Minnie Norwood, with the Say Yes Lord ministry, is gathering donations in a truck outside Food Pavilion through Friday to help Hurricane Katrina victims.<br>Matthew Weaver/Columbia Basin Herald

by Matthew Weaver<br>Herald Staff Writer
| September 8, 2005 9:00 PM

Community seeks to aid those in need

MOSES LAKE — Relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Katrina are taking on several forms in the area.

Missionary Minnie Norwood, with Say Yes Lord Ministries, is taking donations of clothing, food or "whatever is needed" at the Food Pavilion parking lot, including prayers.

Norwood was in Hurricane Camille in Hattiesburg, Miss., in 1969, so she knows about the trauma, although "it's nothing like this," she said. "This is just devastating to look at the pictures."

The truck where donations can be left arrived Tuesday, and will leave Friday at noon. The truck opens at around 8 a.m., and closes around 7 p.m.

"We're going to have a beautiful turn-out when people find out about it, because we are a caring community," Norwood said.

Trudy Tobias, services coordinator with the Salvation Army Moses Lake service extension center, said that the Salvation Army is presently accepting only cash donations.

"Since it's such a distance, I'm telling people that have clothing and food that they want to donate to either donate it to their local food bank or contact the governor's office, as we are going to be getting a number of people into the state, from what I hear on the news," she said. "Otherwise, help our local food banks with any food, clothing or household goods that you might be wanting to donate."

Tobias estimated that close to $1,000 has been raised since Sept. 2.

Contributions made to the Moses Lake center of the Salvation Army are credited to Grant County or the Moses Lake area, Tobias said.

"We'd like them to know that the people from this area are wanting to help as well, and are helping," she said.

John and Karen Lovrovich, Moses Lake residents for about four years with their four children, are donating their recreational vehicle, and are hoping other people will join them in making similar donations to house hurricane victims.

"We intend just to donate it, just because we don't want to try and get it back," John Lovrovich said when asked if people would eventually get their donated vehicles back. "We've been blessed with a lot. We're going to miss our RV, but for somebody else, this can be a home."

The idea to donate the RV came from watching the news and "getting a burden for the people who have basically nothing," John Lovrovich said. He wanted to do something. "We have an RV, and can provide it for them. At least one family can have a sense of home."

John Lovrovich said the movement, online at http://jointheconvoy.com, has already gotten a few responses, with another person who wants to make an RV donation, and other people willing to drive in the convoy of RVs, which will leave from the Wal-Mart parking lot Sept. 24 and stay at Wal-Mart parking lots throughout the journey to Houston, Texas. He hopes more people will "get a vision if you're available, get a heart and burden for us.

"This is not about us, this is about the people we're going to be giving the home to," he said.