When thousands of displaced families and evacuees flooded Baton Rouge in late August, St. James Episcopal Church immediately threw wide the doors.

Hundreds of FEMA, Red Cross and other rescue workers followed and St. James again said, “Come to us.”

The wealthy downtown parish, with its 350-pupil day school, its three-story office building, its meeting rooms, parish hall, kitchens and shower rooms knew it had resources that were going to be needed and it offered them generously.

“We won’t say ‘No’ to anybody,” the Rev. Mark Holland told his staff, setting the tone for what would become a months-long effort.

Turning over second and third floor offices, meeting rooms and storage space, St. James received the bishop and his staff, the staff of the Cathedral and several additional rectors and their teams from New Orleans.

St. James Day School admitted an additional 100 grade schoolers, adding three classrooms by giving up the choir room and the atriums usually dedicated to the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.

“It’s always about relationships,” said Holland. “It’s always about how you treat each other. I can’t imagine not sharing what we have.”

His staff seems to feel the same. The Rev. Stephen Hood, who works with children and youth, told how the church “jumped at the opportunity to be a place of hospitality” for the dozens of evacuee families being sheltered across the street at First Baptist Church.

“We opened up the first floor. We had TV. We had drinks. We had coffee. We tried to do whatever we could think of. We had computers. That was a big deal. People wanted access to the Internet,” he said. “The clergy at St. James had for months been preaching about hospitality and welcoming the other and all of a sudden here we are doing that very thing.”

Nancy Jo Poirrier, parishioner and volunteer, made that welcome concrete when a member of the staff asked her to start an unusual ministry.

“We were looking for ways to help other than being a distribution center for clothing, toiletries, baby goods,” said Helen Campbell, director of lay ministries. As volunteers delivered those goods to the evacuation shelters, other needs became obvious.

“One of them was [the need for] a shower ministry for the disaster workers,” said Campbell. The mothers of newborns, housed across the street, needed the same thing.

First Baptist had sleeping quarters, but no showers. St. James had two shower rooms on an upper floor of the day school. So the migrations began, twice daily.

In the mornings, between 6 and 7:30, the shelter volunteers and FEMA workers arrived. Volunteers handed them mugs of coffee, shaving lotion, towels and toiletries and sent them off to the showers. In the evenings, the mothers arrived, some with their babies which they relinquished to a host of volunteers who’d come just to rock the little ones.

“We picked out – with much fussing -- only the best towels for them,” says Poirrier. “We had containers of guest soaps from all over the world. Episcopalians travel well so we had the Ritz Carlton and this spa and that spa and soaps and shampoos.”

“We would sit with them. Hold the babies sometimes. We wouldn’t have to say much, just ask ‘What are your plans at this point?’ and their whole life story would come out. It was encouraging … no one cried or said “Oh, poor me.” No one was angry,” she said.

“Our shower service was really a giving and receiving. We received the stories of their lives and the knowledge of their lives and what their true possession was and it was family. Oh, it really was a blessing.”

When it became clear that the mothers needed a hot breakfast in the mornings, Gail St. Pierre, dietician for the day school, who was already preparing an additional 100 meals for the new students and coffee for the FEMA workers, said, “Sure we can do that.”

“We would come in early, at 5 a.m.,” she said. When they didn’t have the personnel to deliver the meals to the mothers, Poirrier signed up volunteers just for that task.

Holland is pleased with that, though not particularly surprised. He calls it the tradition of St. James – that sharing of blessings.

“Hundreds of my parishioners have stepped up to do things they never dreamed they would every think about doing… St. James will continue to thrive as a result of this experience… There’s a real sense that people are living out their baptismal covenant in very tangible ways… and that’s a real benefit.”