| More help arrives for Isabel recovery by JOHN COLEMANUMCONNECTION STAFF The Baltimore-Washington Conference is stepping up its efforts to facilitate recovery from Tropical Storm Isabel, thanks to a $50,000 grant from the United Methodist Committee on Relief and some much needed personnel help. The grant, received in late March, is being used to help pay for case managers who are connecting victims with needed resources and for an on-site coordinator who will assist work teams in repairing and rebuilding homes damaged by the devastating storm. The conference hired three case managers in January to handle the deluge of phone calls and applications for assistance, offer referrals to those seeking help and make follow-up contacts to monitor results. They work out of the office of the Maryland Interfaith Recovery Team, located at Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church on Belair Road in Baltimore. MIRT is a coalition of United Methodists, Lutherans and other denominations collaborating in disaster recovery and rebuilding efforts with the state and county governments and other agencies. According to the Rev. Andrea Middleton King, who supervises the conferences case management responsibilities, the staff, along with Americorps volunteers assigned to assist them, had contacted more than 1,300 Isabel victims by the end of March. Nine young Americorps volunteers completed their four weeks of work in mid-April. Another group is scheduled to replace them April 25, beginning with a day of training delivered by the staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Americorps is a federal program that offers volunteer service opportunities with stipends to recent college graduates in a wide range of areas. We needed their help in making phone calls, organizing and refining our huge database of information, and doing the necessary field work of visiting people who requested help to get more information and respond to their needs, said King. They have been a blessing to us. On April 15 Scott Cline, an experienced manager of disaster recovery efforts, joined the staff for a one-year stint to help coordinate the on-site work of Volunteers in Mission teams. Those teams, recruited and assigned by conference  VIM coordinator Sandy Rowland, will soon begin helping to repair homes damaged by the storm. Cline, a pharmaceutical industry executive from Flemington, N.J., managed work teams in the North Carolina Conference for nearly three years after Hurricane Floyd struck there in 1999. He also worked for UMCOR in East Africa responding to the 1993 civil war in Rwanda that sent millions of refugees streaming into then-Zaire and Burundi. It started when I was laid off from my job in 1994, and it became the opportunity of a lifetime, recalled Cline. The conference is searching for conveniently located rental housing for Cline, who offered to relocate and assist the Isabel recovery effort full-time for one year at a salary of only $25,000. He will work in the three main affected districts: Baltimore-Harford, Annapolis and Washington East. This is my ministry, said Cline, to go where Christ leads me in mission, and its remarkable that I have been able to do this when the need and opportunity arises. I love meeting and working with VIM teams, he explained. They are very loving and giving of their time and joyful in their witness. I also look forward to helping more people who have suffered from this ordeal get back into their homes. | 
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