How Katrina Made Me Thankful

When the deadly hurricane tore me apart from my young son, I reached out to God like never before.

By Stacy Nolan as told to Berta Delgado-Young

Stacy, her son A'Mahd, and Mike Buster, executive pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church

Hurricane Katrina was like a jagged knife. It cut up our lives in so many ways I didn't know if we'd ever be able to pick up the pieces. On August 29, the day she sliced across New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, I was on my way to Texas.

The day before, with the weather forecasters predicting Hurricane Katrina would slam into low-lying New Orleans, police and city officials ordered us to clear out. Before I could exhale, I was in a caravan of three cars with two of my children—4-year-old Jeremiah and 1-year-old Ashanti—and 17 other people from our extended family. The goal was to get out of the city. But first, I had to find my youngest child.

My 7-month-old son, A'Mahd, had been staying with his godmother, my friend Nikolle. When it became clear Katrina was definitely coming, I scrambled to contact Nikolle, who lived on the other side of town. I punched her cell phone number repeatedly and heard the same message over and over—"No signal; call again later." We tried to drive to Nikolle's house, but the streets were too jammed with traffic. My heart raced in panic. I have to get to my son!

The highways were backed up for miles, and the others in our caravan were desperate to get out of New Orleans.

Suddenly, I faced the most painful decision any mother could imagine: Stay or leave?

In my head, I knew I couldn't stay in the city. But my heart told me it was impossible to go.

Yet, as I looked at little Ashanti and Jeremiah, I knew I had to do what was best for them too. I had to leave.

Wiping the tears from my eyes, I prayed to God that He would keep A'Mahd and Nikolle safe in His hands. I trusted Him to watch over them.

We left New Orleans for Dallas, Texas, escaping the floods. Nevertheless, my heart was drowning in sadness.

An angel in Dallas
When we finally arrived in Dallas a couple of days later, we spent the night at a hotel. The next day we went to the Red Cross shelter hastily set up at Reunion Arena to get food, clothing, and other necessities, and to search for anyone who might have seen A'Mahd and Nikolle.

"If they left New Orleans, I have a feeling they're in Baton Rouge," I told my family. "I just need to find my baby."

I asked about filing a missing person report and showed everyone I met a photo of A'Mahd on the tiny screen of my cell phone. It showed a smiling A'Mahd with his brother and sister. It was the only photo that I had of him.

Stacy and A'Mahd with Happy Hank and Mike Fechner, minister of spiritual development at Prestonwood Baptist Church

Jeremiah and Ashanti were beginning to sense things weren't right. Besides the trauma of being whisked away to a strange city, they were missing their baby brother. "Where's A'Mahd?" they kept asking. "I want to see A'Mahd!"

At the shelter, an aid worker gave us the address of the Dallas Housing Authority, where workers were scrambling to find more permanent housing for the thousands of evacuees who were suddenly homeless.

In time, I realized God had been listening to my prayers.

Mike Fechner, the minister of spiritual development at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, has spent years working with the Dallas Housing Authority and other groups in inner-city Dallas to bring whatever aid necessary to the people who needed it most. With evacuees pouring into North Texas, Mike and a team of volunteers went to the housing authority with an offer to help displaced families like ours.

There, Mike found us.

"Something led me to you," Mike told me later. "Of all the people there, I was led to you."

I truly believe this wonderful man was our angel. He listened quietly as I told my story. Then he gathered my family together, gave us inflatable beds and blankets, food and water, and led us in prayer.

And then he did something that let me know it was going to be okay. He handed me a stuffed animal.

"This is for A'Mahd," he said, "because we're going to put our trust in God that you will be able to give that to him."

He never doubted it would happen.

The eternal wait
We set off toward our new home with the peace and assurance that God was taking care of everything. The generous people at Prestonwood Baptist promised they would help us meet whatever material need we had. And they did.

But my heart still longed to see A'Mahd. The long wait for news was agonizing. Each hour seemed like an eternity. At moments, doubt slipped into my head. I cried until my eyes ached, and I couldn't eat. But I continued to pray and believe.

I clung to the stuffed toy dog Mike had given me. Its name was Happy Hank, and he recited Bible verses and said, "Jesus loves you" when you squeezed him. I held Happy Hank and kissed him as if he were A'Mahd.

A call from Iraq
I discovered later that Mike and his staff at Prestonwood had launched a search of their own, phoning contacts across the country to see if anyone had information about A'Mahd and Nikolle.

Three days later, heaven smiled down on us when Nikolle called the church. She had found her way to a relative's home near Alexandria, Louisiana.

She and A'Mahd had been trapped in New Orleans by rising water and had to wait there for the flooding to subside. "We stayed with a neighbor who lived on the second floor because water was coming into my first-floor apartment," she said. "I put A'Mahd on one of the floaters I use to take him to the pool, and we swam to the neighbor's apartment."

She said there were four neighbors left in the whole complex, and they reached out to help each other. With the flood ebbing, Nikolle and A'Mahd were able to flee inland, toward central Louisiana, where Nikolle had family. They located shelter and food, but found there was no way to reach me to let me know A'Mahd was okay.

In a miraculous series of events, Nikolle finally e-mailed her husband, Theo, who was a U.S. Army soldier in Baghdad. Theo called Nikolle and gave her a working number for my family in Louisiana, and they told her to call Mike at Prestonwood.

We were all amazed at how God used so many different people to finally connect us.

God's jet plane
The next step was bringing A'Mahd and Nikolle from Louisiana to Dallas. It was a daunting task in the hard days following the hurricane. But God made a way.

A businessman, who had connections with Prestonwood Baptist, owned a private jet. He had taken a small group of church ministers and staff members to Louisiana that morning to help local churches with aid efforts and to determine the most critical needs there.

After several phone calls and some hurried coordination, the jet was re-routed to make a stop in Alexandria, where the Prestonwood team picked up A'Mahd and Nikolle.

As the jet rolled to a slow stop at a suburban Dallas airport, five of the six men from Prestonwood stepped out. Nikolle followed them down the steps. Then came Prestonwood's executive pastor Mike Buster, with A'Mahd in his arms.

I couldn't contain my joy. I stretched out my arms and ran to them even before they'd finished coming down the stairs. Tears ran down my face as Pastor Buster handed me my baby.

I held A'Mahd tightly and kissed him over and over, praising God for His miraculous blessing.

Grateful hearts
Katrina tore us apart for a while, but God brought us back together. He showed us His love through the wonderful Christians at Prestonwood Baptist. He showed us His grace by keeping A'Mahd and Nikolle safe through the deadly waters that rushed through New Orleans. And He showed us His faithfulness by bringing my baby back to me.

This Thanksgiving, it won't be hard at all to list all of the blessings from the past year. Like thousands of others, we've lost so much. Our home was destroyed, and New Orleans will never be the same.

But as we gather with family and friends, we'll know with every moment that God is watching over us and that He has a plan for our future.

When A'Mahd finally came back to me, I gave him Happy Hank. He squeezed the little toy dog joyfully, and a big smile lit up his face when he heard Hank say, "Jesus loves you."

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Berta Delgado-Young is a freelance writer and the communications editor at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine.