CRWRC Award-Winner Doing Double Duty

When Ed Mulder accepted an Award of Appreciation earlier this month, it was not only in recognition of the work he and his wife Helen had done as Christian Reformed World Relief Committee regional managers in a disaster response in Indiana and Illinois—it was personal.

When the Mulders drove home from a Mission Emphasis meeting at New Hope CRC in Lansing, Illinois one fall day in 2008, they had to pull over at the end of their street. The block was flooded with four- and-a-half-feet of water from a levee break on the Little Calumet River. Thankfully, the Mulder’s house sits on high ground and was spared significant damage. Many other families in Porter, Lake and LaPorte Counties were not as fortunate.

The Mulders, who are CRWRC disaster managers in six Midwest states, for the first time found themselves both responders to a disaster—and victims of it as well. The couple was instrumental in the formation of a faith-based organization, Lakeshore Area Regional Recovery of Indiana (LARRI), that continues to coordinate the restoration and rebuilding of homes and lives in Northwest Indiana and neighboring Illinois.

Ike Randolph, executive director of the (Indiana) Governor’s Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, presented the Mulders, CRWRC Disaster Response Services groups manager Art Opperwall, and nine other groups, with Appreciation Awards at a special "Champions of Hope" dinner earlier this month.

"LARRI is a model for other places and groups," Randolph said. "People of faith have been involved here since the beginning. . . . " Ed and Helen Mulder agree.

"When we work shoulder to shoulder with people from other faiths, backgrounds and communities," Ed Mulder says, "we begin to know a bit about what heaven will be like."