Day Two at the Astrodome
From Peter:
The next day we returned to the Astrodome and we met another team of Family International volunteers and we all headed to the hospital area that seemed to be the most needy at that time. There was already an improvement in the appearance of people — they were beginning to get washed up, and they were getting some clothes. But overnight they were still bringing in people to the Astrodome and the sea of people had grown up from the floor through the tiered seats because there was no more room for cots. That day in the medical area it was Topaz, myself and 4 young people who were also there from The Family international — and three of them were working on registration and helping people move through the medical department and getting them to where they were supposed to go.
I stepped in to help the woman who was trying to organize the volunteers in the medical center — helping them to get registered, answering any questions they had. That day there was a young girl who was deaf and no one spoke sign language — and she was separated from her family, who were in the area but they had somehow gotten separated. So I directed her to Topaz who can speak some sign language, and we found another person who spoke sign language and that’s how we found out that she was separated from her family. And while we were helping this girl someone walked by who knew her and they were able to reconnect her to her parents — and we prayed with her. We prayed with people throughout the day. There was another man who was mute and couldn’t write but he could hear. We couldn’t find a way of communicating with him. There are also many, many people who are separated from their husbands or wife or children, or their mother or grandmother. And many of the older people suffer from Alzheimers and they wander off if you’re not watching them all the time. And when there are 20,000 people in a place like the Astrodome you can get lost in a matter of minutes. So we worked all through that day, and the young people were very well received. The people at the medical center were happy with our help and asked if we could keep coming back — so we’re planning to concentrate on that area.
