There's more

than one way to help in a crisis.

Fourteen members

of two Fayette County churches are doing their part for relief efforts

in New York City, not by helping sift through rubble or mount search-and-rescue

efforts, but by supporting those who do.

Members of

Peachtree City and Providence United Methodist churches left Sunday, some

driving all night in a van and some traveling by airplane, heading for

a converted recreation center on Staten Island, where they are now providing

such mundane services as doing the laundry, cooking and serving meals

for workers staying there.

Led by the

Rev. Sam Silverman of Peachtree City UMC, volunteers on the trip are Joe

Runnals, Barney Spurr, Kevin McCormick, Tara Workmaster, Darlene Pope,

Karen Wenrick and Becky Williams of Peachtree City; and Kevin Zaj, Jana

Strickland, Marsha Wells, Mary Inlow, Bill Coppedge and Dan Lighthouse

of Providence.

The local group

is working with Home Port Relief and Rescue Center, a facility designed

for a much happier mission called Fleet Week. That's the time when eight

to ten military ships stop in at the Staten Island Pier and volunteers

provide spirit-lifting recreation and relaxation for around 5,500 soldiers

and sailors, said Ronnie Micciulla, director of the operation.

"It's

a high-spirited kind of thing," she said.

But Home Port

has now been transformed into housing and support services for 187 National

Guardsmen and other workers who are tasked with sifting through a growing

mountain of debris from the World Train Center towers. The debris is being

deposited by truck and barge at an old land fill, and the workers are

looking for anything that might help identify victims of the disaster.

A regular cadre

of New York volunteers has dragged donated mattresses into racket ball

courts and a gymnasium, converting them into a dormitory, and has been

feeding, clothing and providing a variety of services for the workers

for six weeks now, said Micciulla.

She doesn't

have to say that the work has become exhausting ... you can hear it in

her voice. "We are really shot," she said.

"They

are incredible," she said of volunteers like the ones from here.

"They're taking the burden off of our people for awhile." Fayette

volunteers, who are scheduled to return Saturday, are simply helping with

the tasks that the New York volunteers have been doing ... stripping and

making every bed every day, cooking and serving 1,000 meals a day, laundry,

warehouse security, counseling, massage therapy, warehouse security ...

"You name it."

Volunteers

even get involved with providing changes of clothes during the day because

of New York's rapidly changing weather. "It was freezing yesterday,

and tomorrow it's supposed to get up to 80," said Micciulla.

Most of the

New York volunteers took the first two weeks off from work, but now are

back at their jobs, going from work to Home Port, home to sleep and back

to work.

The work is

emotionally exhausting as much as it is physically hard, she added.

"They

help us out tremendously," Micciulla said of the visitors. "And

they bring that little bit of Southern hospitality to us."

If other groups

want to help out, Micciulla said, they'll be welcome. The Home Port phone

number is 718-448-4076.

"What

we need most of all is your prayers," she said. "It's going

to be a long, cold winter."