Hurricane Katrina Relief - Mount Olivet United Methodist Church of Arlington VA

The area thrived for many years by hosting beach vacationers, fishing boats, and artists and musicians purveying a atmosphere similar to New Orleans, located only minutes from Bay St. Louis by rail and interstate highway number 10. Hurricane Camille’s coming ashore east of Hancock County in 1969 set growth back for up to a decade, but the subsequent years clearly were kind by sustaining a growing tourism industry while preserving a small-town atmosphere. In Bay St. Louis, many private homes, churches, and the two-story county court house remained within two blocks of the beach. The few high-rise hotels sat inland where they did not overshadow the beach.

Hurricane Katrina’s landfall just west of Waveland on the morning of August 29 forever altered this landscape. By puncturing roofs and hurling debris, Katrina’s winds alone were enough to damage almost every building and vehicle in Hancock County. But unlike Camille, Katrina hit Hancock County dead center and delivered floodwaters that ventured inland for several hours that morning to submerge thousands of buildings, some of which washed out to sea with the retreating water. Buildings adjacent to the beach, mostly beachfront homes, took the worst damage, in some cases vanishing without a trace. The survival rate improved commensurately with distance from the beach or quality of building construction. Many of Bay St. Louis' brick and cinder block buildings survived, even the turn-of-the-century brick bank building directly on the beach.

We set out for Bay St. Louis on December 10 and see our first signs of hurricane damage as our different flights land us safely that Saturday morning at Gulfport Airport, some 30 minutes east of Bay St. Louis. From the air while approaching Gulfport, the sight of smashed homes, shopping centers, and warehouses alongside apparently undamaged buildings make Katrina's wrath seem random. We also observe the first of many ubiquitous blue tarpaulins covering damaged roofs. Having endured probable water damage, most of the six-gate airport terminal is uncarpeted. We exit our aircraft onto bare concrete floors. Trees downed by wind and temporary trailer parks straddle the airport's main road into Gulfport. Roof damage and broken windows are prevalent everywhere you look in Gulfport. Most buildings are still standing and functional, but the car rental company operates in a mobile home on what appears to be the remains of its pre-Katrina facility.

The team assembles in the terminal parking lot, loads luggage into two rented vans, and sets out for Bay St. Louis west along I-10. Hurricane damage seems tolerable until we cross the border into Hancock County, when the number of downed trees seems to suddenly increase. Our first view of the worst damage comes after we exit I-10, head south on the road into Bay St. Louis, and apparently reach the floodwaters' northernmost range. Wrecked cars sit motionless in drainage ditches along the side of the road. Unlike Gulfport, most homes, businesses and shopping centers we see are smashed beyond repair and uninhabited. The bottom end of one demolished house rests against a telephone pole that somehow remains standing. Gulfport got off light compared to this place.

We enter downtown Bay St. Louis and drive directly to Main Street United Methodist Church, our home for the next seven days. The church's sturdy cinder block walls and location across the street from Hancock County's three-story brick court house likely shielded it from the most intense wind and rain blowing from the bay only three blocks away. The church's wooden sanctuary, clearly its oldest wing that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, sustained the worst damage. Many roof shingles are blown off, several stained-glass windows are broken, and the steeple lies on its side right outside the front door. But the sanctuary is elevated above ground and therefore escaped any visible damage from the foot of water that flooded this area.

The tin-covered steeple is dented but still intact. An adjacent sign reads, "Please don't remove." Later we hear what will probably become a Bay St. Louis legend. Shortly after the storm, a heavy equipment operator shoved street debris aside for later pick up and disposal. The sporting goods store proprietor directly across the street urged him to preserve the steeple by placing it on the church's property. When he refused, the proprietor ran back to his store, returned with a gun, and persuaded the operator to reconsider.

The church is in relatively good condition for having sustained a foot of water. Its cinder block hallways, fellowship hall, and adjacent kitchen seem undamaged but many other rooms, particularly its pre-school wing, are missing the lower halves of their pre-flood dry wall. Later we learn that the entire church was sealed and heated for two weeks, an expensive process that thoroughly dried it out and removed all mold or mildew.

Most of the church is converted into a relief center. UMCOR's office occupies the hallway along the front yard, which is filled with donated relief supplies and storage tents to house them. Any church materials that survived the flood sit in sealed cardboard boxes stacked several feet high in the fellowship hall with the room they belong in written on the side. Many of the sound absorbing panels from the walls of the fellowship hall, which also serves as a basketball gym, also are piled up until the church resumes normal operations. Occupying the rest of the fellowship hall are couches, a television set, round eating tables, and other tables with coffee machines, microwave ovens, and toasters. Boxes of donated food and water sit both in the fellowship hall and throughout the church so relief workers can help themselves. The country's magnanimous response to Katrina ensures we won't go hungry.

Elsewhere in the church, rows of cots fill the two largest rooms to house rotating relief teams. New but unpainted dry wall adorns the pre-school wing that is largely uninhabited. Indications abound of Main Street UMC's pre-Katrina world. Apparently unchanged since the flooding, bulletin boards display new member photographs, advertise sale of the United Methodist Youth Fellowship cookbook, and promote UMC's world mission. The church's library books occupy display shelves outside the library that is filled with relief supplies and designated the "snore room" for noisy sleepers. The usual pamphlets and flyers comforting those confronting life-changing transitions like divorce or death are relegated to a table in a hallway as if to illustrate the relief effort's temporarily superseding the church's primary mission.

The church's proud history in this community began in 1852. Photographs of most of its senior pastors adorn the wall by the parking lot entrance, mostly black and white portraits of conservatively dressed men wearing plastic-rimmed glasses. The earliest is of one who served from 1892 to 1895. Everybody who served since 1922 is included. Only one man served twice during two years at the height of World War II before returning for five years in the late 1950s. Three years seems to be the average length of service. The shortest tour was two months during the civil rights movement in the summer of 1968. The longest, a giant smiling man looking like a gregarious southern backslapper, served for 14 years beginning in 1988. All of these faces become increasingly curious as the week progresses. Did any of the challenges they faced compare to Katrina?

We settle into one of the two large rooms filled with cots and meet with Bethany, the UMCOR on-site coordinator. Bethany recently completed her graduate degree in Kansas. The East Kansas UMC Conference's disaster relief coordinator recruited her to lead UMCOR's efforts in Bay St. Louis, where she arrived in early October. With the help of Main Street volunteers, Bethany oversees the distribution of the relief supplies piled in the front yard and maintains the list of Bay St. Louis residents who have requested volunteers to help rebuild their homes.

After settling in, we explore Bay St. Louis for the first time. We walk three blocks to the beach where many bars, restaurants and piers once straddled a beachfront road. Now the road is broken up into so many large pieces of asphalt that you wouldn't know it existed. The boarded up Hancock County bank, a sturdy turn-of-the-century brick structure on the National Register of Historic Places, is the only fully intact building. A sign on the door provides a phone number customers can call to access their safe deposit boxes. All other houses or businesses still standing are missing entire walls, some still containing furniture and appliances apparently untouched since the storm. On the beach itself, somebody with a sense of humor has reassembled wooden beams into a bar complete with a wall-hung pay telephone. The wind uprooted many trees now lying on their sides with their roots completely ripped out of the ground. Neither the Highway 90 bridge nor the railroad bridge connecting Bay St. Louis with the eastern shore of the bay are functioning, although repairs to the railroad bridge are well underway. How long will it take to completely clean all of this up?

It takes us half an hour to move just several hundred feet down the cluttered beach. We then walk back into Bay St. Louis past the First Presbyterian church, where we meet a fellow relief volunteer who has traveled here to help from his home in Jackson almost every weekend since Katrina. The pot-bellied middle-aged man tells us in a thick southern accent that because First Presbyterian is located on the highest ground "between here and East Texas," the advancing floodwaters went around it completely. He also tells us that many people stuck out Katrina in Bay St. Louis, and that many drowned on the top floors of their homes. One survivor who reached his roof was almost killed by wind-blown flying objects, particularly tin roof sheets, that he fended off with a barstool. The volunteer urges us to let the survivors we will meet talk about their experiences because they like to share them and because they "like to teach northerners how to talk" and send them home.

Afterwards we hear the distinct sounds of a band playing Robert Plant's "Bad Case of Loving You" and other classic rock oldies on the corner of Main and Tolume Streets one block from Main Street UMC. It's Second Saturday in Bay St. Louis, a bi-weekly evening celebration held weekly since Katrina that features a live band and open houses by arts and crafts stores with names like "Clay Creations and "Funky Rose" selling local antiques and works by local artists. The band's name, MJR, is derived from the first letters of the names of its five members. The leader, a heavily accented middle aged New Orlean, looks as if he pays his bills with his day job but lives to play the drums and sing lead for MJR. A crowd steadily gathers in front of Clay Creations directly across the street from MJR to drink beer and wine as the sky darkens. Most of them resemble young urban professionals, but one family with six children appears, several dressed in Santa Claus suits. Inside Clay Creations, the local brewer and chili dogger gives away free samples, while art produced from the wreck of Katrina is displayed. A black and white photo of a toilet and bathtub sitting amidst the wreckage of their beach house is titled, "Bed, Bath, and Beyond." Clearly, this community is determined to come back.

Back at the church we meet more of those called to Bay St. Louis since Katrina. Walter and Ruby, a retired couple from Missouri, have made multiple trips here where Walter has put his construction skills to good use and Ruby has channeled her passion for cooking to support other volunteers. She makes grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken soup for us for dinner. Jamie is a young, heavyset guy from Arkansas who hitch hiked his way here shortly after Katrina in order to find work wherever he can. Tim is a young, leathery-skinned manual laborer and self-described redneck from Fort Valley, Georgia who arrived three weeks after Katrina with a church group and stayed on ever since. Bethany leads our first evening devotion by encouraging everyone to allow themselves to identify with the people we will meet who have been stripped of all their possessions. How would you feel if it were you?

The Sunday paper makes it very apparent how far removed we are from our concerns back home in Washington. The front page reports how three-month grace periods for many mortgages are ending so that homeowners will default without assistance, but that Congress might not reconvene to pass a federal relief bill before January 31 after the Tom DeLay trial is expected conclude. On the editorial page, a column compares President Bush's failure to deliver funds to rebuild Iraq quickly with missed opportunities to do the same in Mississippi. Another by Senator Trent Lott promises that he and the entire Mississippi congressional delegation will do all they can to make sure the federal government does right for Mississippi. Another editorial takes the Washington Post to task for opposing federal relief funds for survivors who lacked flood insurance by pointing out that many never bought any because federally designated pre-Katrina flood planes told them it was unnecessary.

After breakfast, the team fills our two rented vans and drives north of Bay St. Louis on a stretch of the bayside road that survived Katrina. The neighborhood we transit had many nice beachside homes, some inhabited year round. Virtually all of these are gone now. The few that survive consist only of their roofs and top floors. The debris of many are cleared away, but some piled remains still look undisturbed from the day of the disaster. Messages spray-painted on the remains announce that all the former residents are okay and provide contact phone numbers. A message on one wrecked truck pleads, "please don't loot...this is all we have." Real estate signs in a few lots reveal that some owners will never return.

At the end of the road sits a police car with an officer asleep in the front seat. Unable to drive further north, we turn around, return to Bay St. Louis, and pass a trailer with an occupant clearly back on his feet: a Rolls Royce is parked out front. We drive west towards Waveland along the beach where we see the worst of the devastation. Other than an old stone church, not a single building along the beach seems to have survived, but we run out of time to explore further.

Back at the church, we attend the Sunday morning worship service in Main Street's small but ornate sanctuary. The laughter ensuing when a small child wanders up to the altar during the service emphasizes its informality. Unlike back home, nobody wears ties or formal dresses and the senior pastor has no robes. The service begins when one of the music leaders announces, "we're a little disorganized up here so bear with us." The sermon describes how the entire body suffers and rallies to assist when one of its parts is hurting. This is a direct reference to the volunteers from Virginia and Michigan present to assist Bay St. Louis, as well as to Willis, Main Street's senior pastor from 1979 to 1983 who has been sent from his district superintendent post near Jackson to support the relief efforts for a few days. All the pages in the hymnals and bibles are wobbled from water damage but still functional. We later learn that the few children present are the only ones remaining in the church. No others have returned since fleeing Katrina. The longest part of the service consists of congregants announcing upcoming events as if all want to restore as much pre-Katrina life as possible. For example, an upcoming show is emphatically called a Christmas vice Methodist show as if the emphasize inclusiveness.

After the service and lunch, two church members show us what needs to be done to restore the pre-school wing, but they seem unsure of exactly what to tell us. Nevertheless, the whole team spends most of the afternoon mudding the newly installed drywall, sweeping the dirty floors, and preparing one area for installation of a new sink. Later on, several of us drive to inspect the first house Bethany has assigned to us for work. The small one-floor home is far along with its recovery. The owners merely want us to install new siding on the interior walls. However, the house's flood-damaged electrical outlets apparently have been reinstalled, and no building inspection permits are visible. Fearing liability for unsound construction, we elect not to do this job.

While breaking away briefly from this, I listen to the Katrina story of Katherine, a Main Street member. Katherine has lived in Bay St. Louis for the past 40 years. She and her husband received plenty of warning about Katrina's impending landfall, and had long had a plan for what to photographs and heirlooms to take in case of a hurried evacuation. Katherine and her neighbors also loaded up as much furniture and other items as possible into a rented U-Haul truck that they drove to high ground, although this proved futile when floodwaters later submerged it. Katherine and her husband drove themselves to NASA's nearby Stennis Space Center where their son works and stayed in an RV throughout the storm. Lacking gas to return, they remained at Stennis for two weeks before driving back home to find their house flooded beyond repair. They recovered as many wet clothes as possible, which had to be washed three times with vinegar to remove the musty smell. Katherine and her husband presently live in an RV parked in a friend's driveway and don't know yet if they will rebuild. Katherine estimates that 40 percent of Bay St. Louis has not returned yet since fleeing Katrina. Bay St. Louis' schools reopened last month, but Main Street UMC hopes more of its children will return after the New Year when they will have completed fall school semesters in their temporary homes. But these hopes may be optimistic. With so many local tourist jobs wiped out, how can everyone come back?

The church seems full to capacity on Sunday evening with more new arrivals. Willis, the former senior pastor, is an elderly lifelong Mississippian from Natchez with one of those slow and halting southern accents. Bay St. Louis was just recovering from Camille when he first arrived at Main Street in 1979. A special beachside service at the time marked that hurricane's tenth anniversary. However, recovery from Katrina's more severe devastation will take up to 15 years. UMCOR has told the Mississippi conference that "we'll be with you for five years." "It'll break your heart," says Willis, who recalls how Bay St. Louis thrived during his four-year tenure with significant growth in the tourist industry and how many pre-Katrina Main Street members remained since he left in 1983. He firmly believes Bay St. Louis will come back even though many pre-Katrina residents will not, particularly those who are too old to rebuild.

Newly arriving today are Michael and Mary from Terre Haute, Indiana. A former information technology worker enrolled in a career-switching graduate program when Katrina hit, Michael felt a calling to assist as fast as he could by launching a local media pitch for relief supplies, which he and several others loaded up into three vans. Departing four days after Katrina, the three vans headed south together until one broke off and headed for the driver's hometown in Louisiana. The other two continued south past Jackson but eventually split up to seek fuel. Michael and his partner continued driving south until a blown tire and subsequently damaged wheel forced them to flag down a passing vehicle that helped them deliver the supplies to a nearby shelter that hadn't received any fresh water for five days. A local deputy sheriff was so grateful for Michael's and his partner's efforts that he drove them north to catch the other van in which they eventually rode home. The experience introduced Michael to various people who facilitated his making multiple return trips to the area, which he has recorded on the web in a blog. This trip was the first on which he'd brought Mary, a nurse who apparently was eager to see what keeps drawing Michael down here away from their two boys.

Grant is an all-around handyman from Kansas who is making his latest recurring trip. Shortly after Katrina, he quit his job of 36 years with a family owned Kansas company in order to dedicate himself to relief work in Mississippi. The first of several groups from Grant's home church, the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood Kansas, is arriving tomorrow night. But since theirs is a 12,000-strong mega-church, Grant doesn't know any of them. Grant has adopted a family in Bay St. Louis and dedicates most of his time helping them rehabilitate their house. Grant also first brought Jamie to Main Street by picking him up from the highway. But we best remember Grant for hooking up the outdoor shower stall, one of only two showers available to relief workers in the entire church.

Monday

This is our first full workday. The team scatters in three directions. Jay goes with Walter to work on a house in Diamondhead, a small Hancock County town further inland. Howard, Wayne, and Janis remain in the church to work further on the pre-school wing. They spend the next four days installing new sinks, vanities, and countertops bought with donated Mt. Olivet funds to replace those destroyed by the flood. They also reinstall a washer and dryer that doubles the number of these appliances available to volunteers staying at Main Street and which operate virtually around the clock when complete.

The rest of us accompany Michael to another home that has requested volunteer help. The home is on the west side of Bay St. Louis in a development called Waverly Park. The owner, Connie, is a gregarious and outgoing kindergarten teacher with a perfect New Orleans accent. Connie and her husband live in an RV trailer in the driveway of their brick house, which is well on the way to recovery from enduring eight feet of floodwater thanks to Connie's persistence in hiring contractors. With all of the soaked carpeting and old dry wall removed and mud washed out, our task is to hang new dry wall throughout the single-story home. Two piles of dry wall mostly donated by Connie's husband's company sit in the living room, so there's no question of what everybody needs to do. Most of us have no experience hanging dry wall, but Michael's knowledge and quality tools get everyone up to speed quickly.

We work all morning, drive back to the church for lunch, and then return for the afternoon. I soon break away on a mission to McDonald's hardware store to buy a four-foot straight edge that will facilitate cutting drywall pieces. McDonald's is a classic old-style southern hardware store with a wood-paneled interior apparently unchanged since at least the 1950s. Old black-and-white portraits of this family business' founding members adorn the walls. There's not a single computer in sight, but the staff is courteous and helpful if you seem to be looking for something you can't find. One pot-bellied elderly employee greets a similarly looking customer. Like old friends, the two chat for several minutes about post-Katrina building codes before parting with "see you buddy." It vividly reminded me of the small southern town where I visited my grandparents as a child.

By chance, I encounter Wayne and Howard at McDonald's who are searching in vain for a part needed to turn the pre-school wing’s water main back on. I drive them to a plumbing supply store and then back to the church before returning to Connie's house, where my lengthy absence requires explanation. We complete hanging new dry wall in 1 1/2 rooms before it becomes too dark to continue.

Monday night brings still more people to Main Street. Ten volunteers arrive after a two-day, 14-hour drive from the Church of the Resurrection. Also arriving separately from Kansas is Julie, the East Kansas Conference disaster relief coordinator whom UMCOR mobilized after Katrina. Julie recruited Bethany, and has arrived to take her back home since Bethany's replacement is arriving later in the week. A mother with five children, one of who accompanies her, Julie’s home church bestowed her title with no expectation that any duties would accompany it. An elderly couple from Orlando, Florida delivers a carload of toys for children displaced by Katrina. During our evening devotion, we discuss how we see God today and agree that its most often it's in the faces of the people we are helping. We then sing several Christmas carols using Main Street’s waterlogged hymnals. Later on, many gather around the TV for Monday night football, which starts an hour earlier in the central time zone than it does at home. The New Orleans Saints, the local team in these parts, play the Atlanta Falcons on the road. It's an exciting, close-scoring game at halftime but everybody goes to bed for the second half, which is just as well since the Falcons later win a lopsided victory.

As yesterday, Connie was on the site with us all day and visibly grateful for our help. We hear her survivor's story in bits and pieces. Connie and her husband opted not to evacuate because they did not want to be out of contact with their son, a deputy sheriff in nearby Harrison County, and because previous hurricane warnings had desensitized them. When it became apparent late on Sunday that they should have evacuated, the packed highways threatened to strand them on an open road when Katrina hit. Connie and her husband therefore worked out a plan with the three other remaining families on their street to communicate by walkie-talkies and evacuate by a boat one of them owned. The power went out early Monday morning shortly before Katrina arrived, and then the floodwaters reached their house that is slightly less than a mile inland from the beach. They frantically evacuated any household belongings possible up into their attic -- Connie recalls impulsively grabbing a value-less magazine rack -- before fleeing there themselves as the water rose to eight feet. After communicating with their neighbors, Connie and her husband swam out to the pre-arranged point for meeting their neighbor's boat on which they rode to higher ground a few hundred feet away until the water receded. Connie recalls hearing the boat's propeller blade scrapping against submerged cars. Returning to their homes, the Waverly Park survivors slept on their porches and had no food or water. With all of her ground floor possessions washed away or destroyed, Connie found Christmas candles, pillows, and many other forgotten and suddenly useful items in her attic. As Tuesday passed into Wednesday, the radio reported that nobody south of the railroad tracks where Waverly Park is located had survived. Fearing that nobody was looking for them, the survivors spray painted the world HELP on the street that eventually attracted a passing helicopter.

Our dinner conversation at Main Street with Bethany revolves around how obsessed our group is with food and Thomas' dismay on Sunday morning over the lack of orange juice. When Bethany mentions that Main Street's church bell hasn't been rung since Katrina, Bob and Shawn immediately get up from the table to rectify this situation, although we can’t hear the bell in the fellowship hall.

Willis has left today. His replacement, a young albino-haired preacher from the Jackson area leads the evening devotion. The preacher begins by describing how people frequently don’t believe he’s old enough to be a preacher. He attributes his youthful appearance by declaring that “living for the Lord does you right.” During the devotion, we ponder what else we, the United Methodist Church, and our various UMC conferences can do to assist Katrina survivors. Somebody mentions the front page editorial in today's local paper citing the latest Katrina casualty statistics and urging everybody, particularly people like us visiting Mississippi from elsewhere, not to forget about the state’s plight. We further ponder how we can help Main Street get back onto its feet and reclaim ownership of its church that the Katrina relief effort has largely taken over. Someone overheard Main Street congregants on Sunday morning asking if it was time to restart Sunday school, a sure sign that the church is slowly coming back.

Connie and her husband, whom we have not yet met, arrive unexpectedly in the middle of the devotion. Connie says she brought him by to thank the group for working on their house. Through tears, she recounts how they chose to stay through Katrina, and how anxious her husband is to move back into their house. She hasn’t received a hug or kiss when he’s arrived home each night this week, just an "I'll be right back" as he rushes into the house from their trailer to see that day’s progress and assess whether moving back in is possible. She also offers to donate their unused drywall to another needy family. Is this the highlight of the entire trip?

Later in the evening, I learn more about Tim, probably Main Street's longest continuously serving relief worker. Tim's hometown in Georgia is the home of the Bluebird Corporation, a leading school bus manufacturer. We are from different worlds but bond over the fact that his grandfather recently lived and died in the nearby town of Butler, where my father was born. When the relief group he came with returned home, Tim took a contractor job in New Orleans but an infected wrist forced him to quit after two months. He since found that he preferred working with volunteer groups such as ours, enjoys the generosity they display, and hasn't met anybody he dislikes. Tim originally pledged to remain in Bay St. Louis until the last house is rebuilt because "these people can't put it back together by themselves," but now plans to stay as long as possible and has no pressing reasons not to. When describing the Katrina victims he sees, Tim quips without elaborating that he's "known that kind of desperation." As for his motives, Tim implies that "I'm trying to get away from my upbringing" that was "full of hatred and racism," which is hard to do when you're brought up with it.

That morning, Dale the Doorman, one of several contractors Connie has hired to restore her house, makes a site inspection. Dale is another self-described redneck who grew up on a Mississippi farm several counties to the north where he never knew the Gulf coast existed until visiting it 17 years ago. He went back home to pack his belongings and has remained here ever since. He apparently acquired a wife and children and survived Katrina in his house that sustained minimal damage. Afterwards, Dale fled to a nearby church where the sight of low-flying helicopters persuaded him that things were serious. The first one that landed turned out to be carrying not relief supplies but a CBS News crew that began asking questions about FEMA. Unable to say anything negative about the relief effort, Dale couldn’t give the crew the interview it wanted. Dale quips that you never know how badly you need ice until you don't have it. He is optimistic about the Gulf coast's recovery. It'll be back better than ever he says, but it'll take time. This is perhaps why he tells us, "The world needs more people like you right now."

The entire team assembles for lunch paid for by Shawn's father at Beningnos, a po boy restaurant in a 19th century building near the Bay St. Louis railroad station. Po boys are submarine sandwiches with just about anything on them, including seafood which most of us order, although the options include local delicacies such as alligator sausage, fried crab claws, and sweet potato fries. The restaurant is clearly a local institution. We're told our orders will take one hour, but we gladly wait, as does the rest of the clientele. This gives us time to talk to Shawn's father, a Biloxi real estate broker, who tells us how he's very busy these days and that Gulf coast real estate is a long-term investment opportunity if you can afford the property taxes on a wrecked lot collecting no rent. We also have time to observe the restaurant's decor that evokes local history and character. 1969 newspaper pages and the "Camille crack" in the wall remind everyone of the extent of damage from Bay St. Louis’ last big hurricane (no comparable "Katrina crack" is visible). Old black and white photos on the wall feature local landmarks, young boy bands from probably the 1960s, and promotional photos of a local rock band active in the early 1970s. Other photos apparently feature this building's former occupants such as a family run grocery store in the 1940s and 1950s.

After lunch, we return to and finish hanging the last of the drywall on Connie's house. After saying our farewells to the very grateful Connie, we drive to Waveland in time to see the sunset. This time, we drive through what was this small town's central district, which now consists of mobile homes housing the town's government. Portions of the town's police station are the only structure still standing in this area south of the railroad tracks where most of Waveland was located. Also surviving is the historical marker denoting Camille's complete destruction of Waveland in 1969. This is the near-total destruction we feared we'd see everywhere we went on the Gulf coast. Shawn and Marie have to confirm for the rest of us that there really was a town here. We drive to the remains of what had been Marie's grandparents' home by the beach. Like most of Waveland, the house is completely gone with only its foundation remaining.

When darkness falls, we drive to the Bay St. Louis Wal Mart to pick up some food and to try in vain to find a friend Connie referred us to who might be willing to supply bed sheets, blankets, and towels at a reduced rate for Main Street. Survivors ask for these items most often but they are not available. The doorman explains that only one third of the floor space is functional and they're glad to have it. With no grocery stores reopened yet, the Wal Mart sells mostly basic necessities, particularly food that takes up most of the store.

Back at Main Street, the parking lot is full of vehicles adorned with federal government agency logos and license plates. The church is hosting a meeting between the community and representatives from the wide range of federal and state relief agencies. When we join the meeting in progress, representatives from FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, the state police, the state transportation department, and many other agencies update Bay St. Louis residents on the status of relief efforts and take questions. Many residents are obviously anxious for information, but their questions are respectful and the answers are direct and dispassionate. The oft-derided insensitivity of bureaucrats towards the people they serve is not evident here. Everybody is doing their best to deal with a bad situation. The local TV station films the event.

On our last full day in Bay St. Louis, the entire team deploys together for the first time to the same site, a new job much dirtier than hanging drywall at Connie’s or installing fixtures in the pre-school. This house still needs a lot of its initial flood damage cleaned up. Located in a Waveland neighborhood north of the railroad tracks, it escaped the worst of the flooding we saw earlier in the week; the water rose only four feet here. Other volunteers already removed most of its water-damaged carpets and drywall. We spend most of the morning moving the unsalvageable kitchen appliances and bathroom fixtures out to the street for later pick-up, removing any remaining unusable drywall, pulling nails from the wooden studs, and sweeping the floors. The thick dust prompts us to wear filter masks. This work is more like what we expected to be doing for most of the week.

Nancy and her son probably lived in this house for most of his life. They planted their footprints in the concrete driveway when he was two years old. Except for four years as a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas, Nancy has lived in this area her whole life. Her Vegas experience landed her a job in Bay St. Louis when the first casino opened in the 1990s, but the owners didn’t treat their staff as well as had the more professional Vegas casinos so Nancy moved on to a bookkeeping job and a certification program as a phlebotomist from which she graduated just week ago. Her son was a competitive drummer in high school and now attends a local junior college. A poster advertising a drum kit is the only pre-flood item remaining in his room.

Nancy and her son fled Katrina late Saturday night a few hours ahead of Sunday’s mass exodus. Expecting to return soon, they packed only three days’ worth of clothes and drove all night to her sister’s home in Florida. Marring their unexpected two-week stay was a frustrating lack of information about Waveland. All the initial post-Katrina news focused on New Orleans and then the Gulfport/Biloxi area before CNN’s Anderson Cooper finally reported that Waveland had been wiped off the map.

With most of the work completed, only Bob, Shawn, and Jay return to Nancy’s house after lunch. Marie and Janis stay to clean up Main Street while the rest of us drive to a house that has requested help moving furniture and rolling out a new carpet. As is all too common, this house is in a predominantly black neighborhood that is noticeably poorer than the other parts of Bay St. Louis we’ve seen so far – hardly any houses are made of brick. The floodwaters reached here too, but apparently did not rise very high.

The house belongs to an elderly lady who’s out shopping, but her adult son Lionel greets us at the door. The room is an enclosed sun porch full of the clutter that commonly accumulates in houses occupied for many years by the same residents. Lionel explains that he and his brothers grew up in this house where during Camille they had held boards in place to buttress the windows against the wind.

We move the furniture and unroll the new carpet, but it’s eight inches too wide for the room. Lionel calls his younger brother to decide what to do. He arrives just before their mother calls on the phone and instructs them to unroll the carpet, which she’ll have cut later. How we are to accomplish this is unclear, and the brothers nod at each other in agreement that she’s a stubborn woman not dissuadable by arguments. Lacking the proper tools and not wanting responsibility for damaging the new carpet, we leave the brothers to put the room back together.

In the late afternoon, we reassemble at Main Street before heading out to dinner at an Italian buffet restaurant – is there no end to the big meals? Over dinner, we decide to leave for the airport together as early as possible tomorrow morning even though our flights leave several hours apart. The church is dark and quiet when we return after dinner. The Kansas group left this morning. Bethany, Julie and her son departed this afternoon. Grant headed back to Kansas on Wednesday, taking with him Jamie who hoped to find a new job somewhere along the way. Only Mike, Mary, Walter, Rudy and Steve, Bethany’s UMCOR replacement, remain along with Tim who was released from the hospital today. We contemplate what Main Street will feel like tomorrow night when it will be even emptier. For our last and smallest devotions session, Marie reads a bible verse that describes the reader as the personification of God. We recall seeing houses with warnings like, “You loot…I shoot” spray-painted on their walls and then discuss how our being here offers hope to people who may have none. By way of example, Walter describes a local family who lost their house. To get the family back on its feet, the father took a swing shift job that tired him out so much that he wrecked his truck on the night before Thanksgiving and was hospitalized. A family like that might have had nothing else going for it lately besides volunteers showing up at their house with tools and free labor. Did we restore anybody’s faith in the future? We may never know.

Where has all the time gone? We discuss and pray for the people we stayed with here this week who are gone from our lives forever. Someone prays that Steve will carry on the good work Bethany began. Tim will stay as long as he can and Walter and Rudy will remain through the 23rd before returning again in February, Mike and Mary are also departing tomorrow morning, but Mike remains committed and will return. The faces change but the Lord's work will go on at Main Street.

As planned, we all get up early, load the vans, say our goodbyes to our remaining fellow relief workers, and head for Gulfport. After stopping at the Home Depot to return an unused sink fixture we purchased earlier in the week to install in the pre-school, we gather for yet another meal at the International House of Pancakes just a few blocks from the airport, the last time our group is all together. It’s a happy occasion. The food is good, the service just fine, and nobody’s rushed to make their plane. The first to leave make their flight in plenty of time while the others turn in the rental vans before returning to the airport to await their flights. Everybody makes it back home safely with a lifetime of memories about our trip to Bay St. Louis and full of hope that we’ve blazed a trail for many other Mount Olivet teams to follow.