Group from ELCA's Waldorf College helps with flood relief

by Frank Imhoff, ELCA News Service

A group of 16 students and 10 staff, family members and friends
of Waldorf College, Forest City, Iowa, traveled to Rushford,
Minn., Sept. 22, responding to a call from Lutheran Disaster
Response (LDR) to help with flood relief, according to a college
news release. Five weeks earlier Rushford received 17 inches of
rain in less than 24 hours. Rushford was flooded when dikes
built on Rush Creek four years earlier were unable to hold back
the rain and that which had fallen upstream.

The Rushford City Mill, owned by the Hoiland family, was one of
the first businesses in Rushford. The building is listed on the
National Register of Historical Places. Eric Hoiland lives at
the wheat mill, which houses part of his family business.
Hoiland lost his business, home and all personal possessions in
the flooding. "We were really able to put a face on the disaster
when we helped Eric," said the Rev. Charlene Rachuy Cox, campus
minister, Waldorf College. "Eric was just an average person who
in a few hours had his whole life destroyed. He told us that
even the clothes he was wearing on Saturday had been donated,"
she said.

The Waldorf group helped clean approximately 18 inches of mud and
debris from the mill's basement. LDR estimated the cleaning
project would take two days, but the Waldorf group completed the
project in less than a day. "I am always amazed at how, when you
put Waldorf students on a project, they give it everything
they've got," Cox said. "They shoveled the mud in the buckets,
hauled it out, dumped it and came right back in to get another
bucket full. They worked just like a machine." She added,
"Their spirit was unbelievable." Waldorf is one of 28 colleges
and universities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
(ELCA). Lutheran Disaster Response is a ministry of the ELCA and
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.