Fort Bragg Kids Give 'Sparrow Change'
To Uprooted Hurricane Kids in Louisiana

Fort Bragg -- March 31, 2006

Sparrow change? Obviously a play on "spare change" -- coined (pardon the expression) by the children of Evergreen UMC in Fort Bragg. They throw coins into a jar to help keep the sky from falling. Like a Middle Eastern legendary sparrow on its back with its feet in the air to try to keep the sky up, "One does what one can," say they.

This time, they did what they could for kids who were evacuated last August from Methodist Home of New Orleans to Louisiana Methodist Children's Home in Ruston, La. -- 330 miles to the northwest. Thirty-six kids and 12 staff members fled the New Orleans home (dedicated to abandoned, abused and neglected children) the day before Hurricane Katrina hit. They expected to stay for only three days. But it became six months, as it appeared the New Orleans home might be unfixable from the storm damage.

Fort Bragg pastor Wanda Windsor contacted Louisiana Methodist Children's Home and learned that the children were doubling up in rooms and sleeping in the chapel. So the Evergreen children sent $500 in sparrow change to the Ruston home for relief to whatever extent "one can."

Rev. Windsor started collecting sparrow change after Sept. 11, 2001, so that a small church can do whatever it can to relieve stress in the larger world. As the coins grew into "real money," the Evergreen congregation decided that the children should choose the causes to help -- from options the pastor supplied.

The children, over these five years, have bought animals for the Heifer Project (which supplies farm animals to help build self-sufficiency) to send to families overseas. They helped AIDS children in Africa, and have sent money to UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) every year. When a mother and baby came by Evergreen one day when kids were present, they poured out money from the Sparrow Change jar for a bus ticket. For other needy folks, the kids have made peanut butter sandwiches and given handfuls of coins.

"It dispels our kids' fear and worry to some extent and teaches them that even the smallest one can do something real to help people in need," said Windsor.

An irony is that, even though Evergreen collects faithfully for others through its Sparrow Change jar, the church itself is in financial trouble. "We don't have enough money to support ourselves, even though people give very generously of what they have," Windsor wrote when Fort Bragg's turn came up in the cycle of mutual prayers that Golden Gate District churches offer for one another. "With no endowments or trust funds or savings accounts -- and with a dedication to families with expensive special needs and not much money -- we don't yet see God's plan to bring us the money we need to keep our ministries vital. We pray some financially 'richer' church might partner with us to support our children's ministries, which fill a unique need here on the coast."