Hurricane Survivors Ask for Bibles

Boston, Massachusetts – As people were rescued from the Superdome in flooded New Orleans and transferred to Texas, the Daughters of St. Paul and Mrs. James Hunt heard a request over and over again: “Now that we have food and other essentials, the most important thing we need right now is a Bible.”
“We have a storeroom full of books of comfort we could send to these people: Bibles, Surviving Depression, God is Here… When Bad Things Happen, small prayer books for courage and strength in times of anxiety and difficulty, coloring books for the kids,” Sr. Margaret Charles Kerry said, as she spoke with Mrs. James Hunt, initiator of the plan. And the project to send Books of Comfort to the Hurricane Survivors was born.
“It’s important to rebuild homes,” said Sr. Anne Joan Flanagan, a Daughter of St. Paul stationed in Chicago who is herself from New Orleans. She has spent days following Hurricane Katrina trying to locate her family members. She knows now, first hand, that it’s also important “to rebuild lives.”
Books of Comfort will bring Bibles and other books of spiritual comfort and healing to people throughout the Gulf Coast Region. “We don’t realize the power of prayer,” said Angela Kerry, who is still living with her husband in a temporary home after everything she owned was lost in Hurricane Ivan, 2004. “We keep on thinking we are in charge. But God is in charge. Books of hope and comfort are exactly what these people need. You just can’t deal with this without faith."
The books of comfort will be distributed with the help of religious communities working in the areas affected by the hurricane. The Daughters of St. Paul had to flee their own convent and Pauline Books & Media Center in New Orleans and have a community near the shelters for the hurricane survivors in San Antonio, Texas.
Donations to send Books of Comfort can be made online at www.pauline.org; by calling 1-800-876-4463; or by sending a check made payable to Daughters of St. Paul to Books of Comfort, Daughters of St. Paul, 50 St. Paul’s Ave., Boston, MA 02130.
About the Daughters of St. Paul:
The Daughters of St. Paul are a congregation of women religious founded to use the media to announce the Gospel. Their publishing house, recording studios, Pauline Center for Media Studies, and Spanish radio apostolate are located in Boston. They are located in 16 states across the US and in Toronto, Canada.