Rescue missions of Rotary

The idea of service above self is not only germane to the Rotary Club. The club in Ville Platte, during its last two meetings, heard from representatives of different organizations who are doing just that of serving others above themselves in Honduras and across the parish.
On the last meeting in January, the Rotary Club heard from Winston LaFleur from Ville Platte Christian Mission about a benefit dance to raise money for his mission trips to Honduras.
“We’re not charging anything, but we’re asking for a $10.00 donation for a plate of food,” LaFleur said. “It’s going to be a potluck type thing with a buffet to go through. We got rabbits, squirrel, pork, chicken, BBQ, jambalaya, and gumbo.”
The benefit dance is set for Saturday, February 16, from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Ville Platte North Side Civic Center. There will also be a silent auction.
LaFleur told the Rotary Club he first got involved with the mission trips to Honduras in 2009.
“I started in the mission trip with a group from Prairieville,” he said, “and I went with them for eight years. The first year I went, the lady in charge said to bring $100.00 and $125.00 is extra. So, I brought $300.00.”
He continued, “I didn’t bring a credit card or wallet. The only ID I had was my passport. When we got to the airport to come back, I could not buy me a hamburger at Burger King. I didn’t have a nickle on me. I had given it all away. That’s how much it had touched me.”
Since then, LaFleur incorporated the Ville Platte Christian Mission. He said, “Last year, we brought 18 from Ville Platte, and we have 20 this year. We will probably have about three places left right now if anybody would be interested in coming on the mission trip.”
This year’s trip is set for June 28 through July 5.
LaFleur, then, went through the poverty conditions in Honduras including the road conditions. “There was a place we passed on the bus, and if the bus would have slid we would have fallen in a hole,” he commented. “It’s sort of like St. Landry Parish.”
He also went through what work the mission groups have done over the years.
“We raise money to do good in Honduras,” he said. “All of the money that is raised is sent to Honduras.”
For LaFleur, the most important thing of the mission work is knowing he is doing God’s will.
“That’s the bottom line,” he commented. “If you’re doing it for any other reason, you’re wasting it because this is all a God thing.”
“God has me here talking to y’all, which I have no idea what He has in mind when He has me doing these things for Him,” LaFleur continued. “I try to do His will as best I can. I buck Him a lot, but I still do enough to keep things going as best I can. I figure I might be seeing Him pretty soon, but, regardless, I’m trying to do the best I can with what I have to work with.”
At this week’s meeting, the Rotary Club heard from Jill Stevens of Every Paw Animal Rescue or EPAR.
Stevens was part of the formation of the group in the summer of 2014 and went through how the organization has changed over the years.
“We have come a long way and changed a lot since then,” she said. We have a lot of foster homes now because we don’t have a facility and this parish doesn’t have a facility. The animals we take in from the streets or from the two local pounds go to foster homes to be kept inside or in yards.”
She continued, “We have a lot of volunteers who either don’t want to or can’t foster, and they volunteer by driving dogs to catch their transportation up north because we send a lot of dogs to other groups.”
Since EPAR’s inception, according to Stevens, the Evangeline Parish Police Jury has become sort of like a silent partner.
“By the end of 2017, I was trying to run the group by myself with a handful of volunteers,” said Stevens. “With my job and my two kids, I couldn’t keep up with it anymore. We had finally gotten to the point where we had more vet bills than we had money in our EPAR bank account.”
“So,” she continued, “I went to the police jury and said I was going to have to shut it down because I couldn’t let all that fall back onto me financially. They decided, since they can’t provide this service and we’re the only group that’s doing this, they would give us a set amount of money every month to contribute to our vet bills.”
The relationship with the police jury has led to EPAR’s current project. As Stevens said, “We’re working to try to secure a location and funding for a facility.”
She added the facility will either be built by EPAR and donated to the parish or be built as a private non-profit facility.
“We definitely want the location to be in the Mamou, Vidrine, Pine Prairie, or Ville Platte area because that’s most conveniently located for those of us going there most often,” Stevens said. “We want it away from homes, and it can’t be in an extreme flood zone”
She continued, “We want this to be an adoption center, and we want to have about 50 kennels built into it, so that way we don’t have to rely completely on foster homes. We’d like to be able to have a place to take in and quarantine dogs and have a place to put aggressive dogs because we don’t have a single foster home willing to take in an aggressive dog.”
Stevens concluded, “Hopefully, by the end of 2019, we’ll either have the facility or have a good plan for it.”