Fw: Message from Shelley Hendrix with UA re: Hurricane Katrina Relief

[Guest guest]

Thought you guys might want to read this, its good for the autism groups of the

south to pull together right now.

Message from Hendrix with UA re: Hurricane Katrina Relief

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Thank you to everyone who has reached out to help Hurricane Katrina victims from

the very bottom of my heart.

Our family is finally back in our home as of noon today with power and are so

grateful to be able to be back. My boss was gracious enough to open her home to

anyone and everyone that needed help. She had people rotating through there all

week and will probably continue to do that. We had people volunteer to come

over and put a tarp up over the part of our house where the winds blew the

siding off and they helped remove all the big branches from the yard this

afternoon. Great help when you can't keep a little kid from running out of the

yard to try and do it yourself.

This week has been completely crazy. Exactly one week ago, I spent all weekend

preparing for the storm, moving things inside, washing laundry to get ready for

a long time without electricity, gathering supplies and figuring out what we

could get or cook to feed Liam on his diet over charcoal if necessary. We have

a lot of red beans in cans.

Today, Baton Rouge is full of people everywhere, in our churches, in our

schools, in the civic center. There are helicopters now flying overhead

bringing people and supplies back and forth to New Orleans. My street has piles

and piles of leaves and branches everywhere...everyone looks like they have a

huge barricade in front of their homes. We have energy trucks and cable trucks

and phone company trucks lining the streets. Most of these guys are from other

states and the people working on my street rode out the storm in their trucks

just to be onsite and ready to help us all get our lives back to normal.

Liam has been great, but I cannot imagine what this would have been like to go

through if we were in a shelter or if we weren't able to return to our home. He

finally had a big meltdown this afternoon because we didn't have ice in the

freezer and he didn't understand why there was nothing in the refrigerator, or

what we were going to do with our " broken " house. He processed some information

from the news he did see and was scared that our house was on fire, which was a

great reminder as to why no child should be have access to any scenes like that

on the news whether they have autism or not.

Unlocking Autism is working hard to find families that were displaced due to

Hurricane Katrina. We need your help. Each person that receives this email

knows hundreds of people you can email to. We will send out another notice and

we need you to forward that notice far and wide to everyone in your address

book, whether they have a child with autism or not. There are generally six

degrees of separation for anyone, including Bacon and when we find these

people, we can help them immediately now because you all have been so incredibly

generous. Ask them to pass it on as well. If all those prayers, novenas and

jokes and good luck emails can circulate so much, this can too!

As we find them, we will report that back to you and let you know about the

families you have helped.

Please continue to pray for these families. Recovering from something like this

will take an enormous time. These families will need our help for months to

come.

Thank you again for all your help and your outreach. You are an incredible

community and an ever better family.

Lots of love from Baton Rouge,

Hendrix

President, Unlocking Autism

www.unlockingautism.org

866-366-3361