Volunteering is a part deacon’s role to ‘serve and not be served’

Hundreds of volunteers and organizations have stepped up to help following the devastating tornado in St. Louis on May 16.

For more than a month, volunteers have assisted with cleaning up debris; handing out food, water and toiletries; helping secure damaged homes and getting people to shelter.

Deacon Len Sisul is among those who have been volunteering with the American Red Cross, which opened several emergency shelters in the area after the tornado’s path of destruction left hundreds of people functionally homeless.

As of late June, the Red Cross had consolidated shelters in the St. Louis area to three, with just over 100 people remaining. At the height of the tornado recovery efforts, there were five Red Cross shelters housing close to 270 people. More than 600 people responded to the organization’s call for help, with most coming from Missouri and Arkansas.

Deacon Sisul is a volunteer with the shelter resident transition team, which assists with long-term housing and connects people with other resources, such as medical and legal assistance, transportation, jobs and food. He had been assigned to a shelter at a church in Ferguson, but recently transferred to another location in the city as shelters continue to be consolidated.

While an emergency shelter is not an ideal place to stay, everyone who stays there knows that it’s temporary, Deacon Sisul said. “Every time we get somebody out of there, I’m so happy for them,” he said. “I think it’s the best job that I could have been given, is to help them get out.”

Deacon Sisul, who serves at Epiphany and St. James the Greater parishes in south St. Louis, became acquainted with the Red Cross when he was in college and helped in a blood donation center. He later served in the U.S. Coast Guard as a medic and worked closely with the organization with search and rescue efforts.

During the Great Flood of 1993, which devastated parts of the Midwest along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, Deacon Sisul reconnected with the Red Cross to ask how he could help. He volunteered with disaster services, helping at several shelters in Missouri and Illinois.

More than 30 years later, when the EF-3 tornado ripped through St. Louis, the Red Cross asked if he would step in once more to help with recovery. He’s met volunteers who have helped with other disasters, including the wildfires in Los Angeles and Maui and the hurricanes that hit the Carolinas.

On a weekday afternoon in late June, Deacon Sisul visited with shelter residents who were spread out in the gymnasium at Ferguson Church of the Nazarene. Tiffanie Hull and her 9-year-old son Ronald Wilson Jr. were rearranging their belongings in plastic storage bins, as they were planning to move into out of the shelter and into an apartment the next day.

The tornado severely damaged the home in St. Louis where Hull and her son had been living with family. Many of the homes around her were completely destroyed.

“Everybody’s house had damage,” she said. “It was wild. It’s like somebody just walked through with a sledgehammer.”

The shelter resident transition team helped Hull find an apartment within her budget and made sure that she’d be able to get to and from work. “They helped me more than I wanted to help myself,” she said. “That was so good, because I was scared.”

In addition to his work with the resident transition team, Deacon Sisul has stepped in to offer emotional and spiritual support where needed. “People are just overwhelmed with grief, and they’ll say, ‘call the deacon,’” he said. Once tornado shelter operations come to an end, he plans to undergo Red Cross training to become a disaster spiritual care team member.

The work has been an eye-opening experience and has reminded him to have an attitude of gratitude.

“There’s a guy who asked me at breakfast, ‘Len, why do you do this? What makes you volunteer?’ Deacons are called to serve and not be served; that’s our motto,” he said. “Wherever I’m able to use my talents, I want to do that.”