{"id":2683,"date":"2005-09-07T00:23:12","date_gmt":"2005-09-07T00:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/relocation-experts.html"},"modified":"2005-09-07T00:23:12","modified_gmt":"2005-09-07T00:23:12","slug":"relocation-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/relocation-experts.html","title":{"rendered":"Relocation Experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The papers are busy with stories of relocation and lives restarted. I particularly liked this one, about what a Catholic parish in Rockville, MD is doing:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
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HOUSTON, Sept. 6 — "Need a home?" the flier asked.<\/p>\n

The Rev. William Finch, pastor of St. Raphael’s Catholic Church in Rockville, arrived here Tuesday ready to sell Montgomery County as a haven for 50 hurricane evacuees living in the Astrodome.<\/p>\n

He’s printed 100 fliers outlining the package that he and his parishioners have assembled for those who get on his bus for Maryland: $500 in cash, unlimited use of cell phones, access to schools, help finding jobs. And they will live in some of the nicest homes in Rockville and Potomac for as long as it takes to reestablish themselves.<\/p>\n

An ambitious and generous plan. But getting his congregation’s 3,300 families, many of them well-to-do, to donate more than $100,000 was the easy part. As he prepared to board a flight for Houston on Tuesday, he realized that his busload of good intentions could go for naught.<\/p>\n

"I’m scared to death," the 51-year-old District native said.<\/p>\n

Since deciding to go after watching television coverage of Katrina’s catastrophic aftermath last week, Finch has contacted the Red Cross and Texas officials for help identifying evacuees. He said he has not been able to reach anyone who can help.<\/p>\n

Others who want to assist have been rebuffed. When the D.C. government sent 10 buses to New Orleans to pick up storm victims Friday, people reportedly refused to leave.<\/p>\n

With no contacts, Finch’s game plan is pretty simple. He plans to go to the Astrodome on Wednesday, walk around and ask people if they want to live in Maryland.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing. Wonderful, wonderful stewardship, long-term commitment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The papers are busy with stories of relocation and lives restarted. I particularly liked this one, about what a Catholic parish in Rockville, MD is doing: HOUSTON, Sept. 6 — "Need a home?" the flier asked. The Rev. William Finch, pastor of St. Raphael’s Catholic Church in Rockville, arrived here Tuesday ready to sell Montgomery…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRelocation Experts - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/relocation-experts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Relocation Experts - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The papers are busy with stories of relocation and lives restarted. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}