For two days after Hurricane Katrina made a ruin of his New Orleans neighborhood, David Mince, 50, waited on the roof of his flooded 9th Ward house, eating Spam and crackers, watching dead cats, dogs and humans float by, and waving to helicopters until one finally rescued him.
A few days later at a Baton Rouge shelter, his surreal week took another strange turn. A representative of the Dream Center, a Christian ministry based at the former Queen of Angels Hospital near Echo Park, offered Mince a free Lear jet ride to Los Angeles.
Within hours, he'd arrived in Southern California, where he was offered free room, board and medical care for a year. He picked out a free wardrobe of new clothes. A Dream Center volunteer helped him look for work as a marine electrician.
All the while, Mince said, he waited for a catch. But it hasn't come. There have been no mandatory church services. No required Bible studies. No religious tracts or talk of Jesus.
"People say, 'It's a cult, it's this, it's that,' " said Mince, wearing a new black T-shirt, jeans, underwear, socks and hat. "The proof is in the pudding. They haven't stopped giving to us. They put dreams back in my life."
For the last 10 years, the Dream Center -- an Assemblies of God church that is also supported by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel -- has ministered to L.A.'s poor, sick and homeless.
That ministry, along with the center's massive facility, Dream Center officials say, has put the group in a perfect position to assist with hurricane relief.
"This clicks so well with our vision: 'They may not have anything, but they are worth something,' " said Gina Hanley, a worker at the ministry.
Already, the Dream Center has taken in 200 hurricane survivors, mostly families who indicated to center volunteers in Louisiana that they would be interested in relocating. They have been promised care for at least 12 months. Center officials say they have room for as many as 300 evacuees, a number they expect to reach by Sunday.
Just how they will pay for the care they've promised the arrivals, though, is still not entirely apparent. Pastor Matthew Barnett, a 31-year-old with a baby face and a crew cut, said he "stepped out in faith" when deciding to host the evacuees, confident that God would provide even though the center had been struggling just to meet its pre-Katrina monthly budget of about $550,000.
