Sugar Bowl trip includes time for worship
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NEW ORLEANS
The Utes were in town to play Alabama in the Sugar Bowl the following Friday, but many on the team, of which about half are Church members, took time out for the early-morning sacrament meeting.
Ute players and coaches, wearing shirts and ties instead of their usual red-and-white gear, streamed into the small building at 9 a.m. for sacrament meeting and sat near the back. Branch clerk David Van Dam said it was hard to squeeze everyone in the Phase One building to accommodate the visitors, which made up close to half of the 120 in attendance.
"It was close, but we made it fit," he said.
A unit of the New Orleans Louisiana Stake, the branch, located on St. Charles Avenue, three miles west of the Superdome, is still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city in August 2005.
According to Brother Van Dam, two wards and a branch totaling nearly 700 members were reduced to a single branch of fewer than 200 because of the effects of the storm.
"Two of the buildings were destroyed and most of the members were displaced," he said. "They took three congregations and consolidated them into one branch."
Brother Van Dam said the majority of the Church members, from the well-off to those on welfare, were relocated after the storm and didn't return to the area. He said that included approximately 60 medical and law students from Tulane University.
Utah assistant coach Morgan Scalley, a returned missionary who served in the Germany Munich Mission and one of five LDS coaches on the Ute staff, said the talks were inspiring, including one about a non-member who was relocated in Utah after Hurricane Katrina and ended up getting baptized.
Later that evening, Brother Scalley and two Ute players, defensive back R.J. Rice and long snapper Clint Mower, spoke at a fireside for the New Orleans Louisiana Stake. The Baton Rogue Mission put on the fireside and about 200 people attended, including members, missionaries and investigators.
For Rice in particular, it was a special occasion to attend the two meetings because he lived in the New Orleans area for 10 years as a youth and was baptized while he lived in Louisiana.
