Mississippi Update from Ted

Hello from

Mississippi

. Yesterday (Monday) we began the work week.

We began with a good breakfast served with that wonderful Southern hospitality. We had a devotional time. All of our students and adults were put into teams. These teams were given a project or series of projects to do. There are fences being put up. There is plumbing, debris removal, painting, yard work, small construction projects being done. There are  windows to install, doors to hang, toilets to secure, fences to build. The mission is even setting up a pre-school for the Baptist church as they move into their new building.

Their old original church building was largely swept away by the surge from Hurricane Katrina and there is nothing left of the building today except for the cement foundation slab. As a matter of fact, from the beach to about ¼ mile inland there are very few buildings or businesses and a great many empty lots. The project I am working on is for Gary and Nell Palermo. They are aging and ailing. FEMA provided them with a new roof. The rest of the damage was left for them to deal with. They have been much abused by dishonest contractors, who have either done shoddy work or have failed to do the work they were being paid to do.

I hear that this is not unusual in post-Katrina

Mississippi

Gulf

areas. We are repairing and painting the ceiling under the FEMA roof as well as doing other interior painting and repair work. The whole yard was cleaned out and a great deal of “stuff” was thrown out.

Piles of it.

What I am finding is that many people have made the front of their homes presentable but they have not yet parted with all of their debris. We removed the better part of a tree from up against the house next door. The

Palermo

’s house was pressure washed to remove grime and algae from the siding.

My big “God Moment” came when I was walking out of the back room and walked through the living room where Mrs. Palermo was talking to a friend on her cordless phone. Loud and unashamed she said, “Here he is! That man from Washington who brought kids from

Washington

State

and

Oregon

. He’s the man who told me that God wanted him to come here to help us.”

The students worked hard and had some fun, especially with the power washer.

It is 90 degrees and almost 90% humidity here- the power washer was a popular tool. Then it was back to church for showers and free time.

We ate another fine meal served up with that remarkable Southern hospitality. We had a fine time of worship and received great teaching from our speaker William Rambo. He spoke from Luke 6: who do you say that I am?

When (not if) the storms comes will our house survive built on the rock? When life is not everything you thought or hoped it would be what then?

After this worship time each of our groups got together to debrief and talk and pray among themselves.

It became clear that many of our students had little idea of the magnitude of the Katrina disaster and some had little idea even of what a hurricane is like. So they were told about the debris field left by the huge storm surge- a swath of debris 12 feet deep over 100 yards wide and 100 miles long along this coastline.

In the debris field were TVs, furniture, cars, pets, houses, the entire contents of stores and restaurants, boats refrigerators, trees and even some people.

Dead people.

Many people had to swim for their lives and emerged from the woods after the storm carrying everything they now owned.

It was then that we decided to invite a 22 year old youth pastor from Bay St. Louis, MS, and his youth to tell us first hand what it was like and what our being here means. I’ve come to understand that at least one of the reasons we are here is hope and to let people here who are struggling to recover from a massive disaster that they are not forgotten, by us, by God.

As we considered what it meant not to be

Mexico

we began to ask the question: Is it harder to have nothing and get something great or to have had everything, lose it and try to recover it.  It is good that we are here.

I’ll tell you David Dorn’s story and more of ours tomorrow…