| We stand imperfect but faithful, in it for the long-term  by Bishop Felton Edwin May Bishop Mays response to Laurie Gates-Wards commentary: I am grateful for the Rev. Gates-Wards loving witness and compassionate ministry in the wake of Hurricane Isabel. I am also moved but puzzled by her expressions of pain and disappointment in our response. We have all faced difficult challenges in our efforts to help people recover from this unprecedented disaster. However, while our conference staff has asked Gates-Ward and her colleagues to identify and report needs to us and we have responded to several urgent needs timely requests for specific assistance have been surprisingly few. We have sought to respond to every request for aid in all three of the affected districts. If we did not rush in with abundant material resources immediately after Isabel struck, it was in part because we were working in concert with other denominations and service agencies that did. We have taken the role of providing a long-term, rehabilitative response to this disaster, with the United Methodist Committee on Reliefs (UMCOR) gbwc_superuserance and support. When local churches and agencies have stopped serving meals and providing clothing, gift cards and other needs; when the Red Cross, Salvation Army and FEMA have closed down their operations and left these areas, there will no doubt be many victims whose needs are still unmet. Homes will still be in disrepair or uninhabitable. Residents will still need food, furnishings, clothing and supplies. Insurance and legal difficulties will still be unresolved. Individuals and families, especially children and youth, will still need counseling to heal the trauma and despair they have suffered from the untold losses and disruption in their lives. To respond most effectively to these needs meaning to prevent duplication and leave no victim behind we are now recruiting, screening and training case managers, some of them assigned to us by the state of Maryland. We also are developing an extensive database of specific needs and the strategies, networks and resources to meet them. And as the necessities of insurance approvals, work permits and safe working conditions are cared for, we will deploy Volunteers in Mission teams to do the removal, repair and reconstruction work they are capable of doing. We will also provide or facilitate counseling for children and adults, and seek to provide volunteer legal assistance where it is needed. These measures likely will continue for two years or more, and they will require all the funds that have been generously donated and more. But we will be there we the Baltimore-Washington Conference, including its bishop, district superintendents and staff, its pastors, lay leadership and congregations, all with the invaluable help of UMCOR and our denomination. We stand imperfect but faithful and committed to this task to which Christ calls us: to meet human and spiritual needs in the name of our Savior and to do it in ways that promote harmony, effectiveness and exemplary cooperation. I will continue to pray for and with the Rev. Gates-Ward and members of her congregation, as I did on that early visit, and to reach out in love to her and other clergy and laity who have been so deeply hurt by this still unfolding tragedy. I can assure them that in the end our response as a conference, including their part in it, will have been more organized and comprehensive than they could ever imagine. As we gradually rebuild the ruins and raise up the foundations of many generations, ultimately, I trust, we will be called the repairer of the breach and the restorer of streets to live in. (Isaiah 58:12b) Bishop Felton Edwin May is the episcopal leader of the Washington Area. | 
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