Pastor Leon Philpot sends greetings from Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in New Orleans.  Grace was severely damaged during Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005.  Through Lenten Self Denial offerings in 2006 and 2007 totaling over $8600, Trinity has helped Grace recover from the devastating impacts of the storm. 

On January 21^st, I had the opportunity to visit Grace and to meet with Pastor Leon Philpot and Grace’s Coordinator for Community Development, Caitlin Moen.  I was in the Gulf Coast, primarily in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, for a week doing Katrina recovery work and a visit to Grace and to St. Paul Lutheran Church in New Orleans, also heavily damaged by Katrina, was offered to several members of our team.  During the several hours that we spent with Pastor Philpot, we heard stories not only of Grace’s recovery, but also of the recovery of the community itself.  As we walked through Grace there were few signs of the devastation that had occurred.  But their Gathering Space had many reminders of what they went through, including many photographs and a cross made from several organ pipes from their totally destroyed Moller pipe organ.  Pastor Philpot explained to us Grace’s commitment to being one of the instruments in the recovery of the community.  Two and a half years after Katrina, many of the neighborhoods are no more than twenty percent recovered and at most, the affected neighborhoods are no more than forty percent recovered.  One of Grace’s commitments is to house teams of volunteers who come down to New Orleans to help with the recovery efforts.  Caitlin Moen’s job, funded by a one year grant, is to work with the volunteers and to match them up with the organizations coordinating the actual recovery efforts, such as Habitat for Humanity.  I noticed on Grace’s calendar that Trinity Lutheran, Lemoyne was sending a team to Grace the week after I was there.  Pastor Philpot expressed to us that their biggest fear is the next natural disaster, even one that’s not in the Gulf Coast.  Such a disaster will pull money and volunteers away from the work that still needs to be done in Mississippi and Louisiana, work that will take at least eight to ten years to complete.

The recovery situation in Mississippi, where I spent most of the week, was no better than in New Orleans.  In fact, Lutheran Disaster Response estimates that Mississippi is only about twenty percent recovered.  As our team worked on a variety of projects in Ocean Springs and Gulfport, we heard stories from flood survivors.  We talked with Jeffrie, a man in his 80s, and heard his story.  Jeffrie’s house was flooded and uninhabitable.  He received a FEMA grant that enabled him to get out of his house until his FEMA trailer arrived.  His money ran out before the trailer arrived and he moved back into the only semi-habitable room in his house.  A case manager eventually found him there very sick from mold and mildew.  He had to be hospitalized for several weeks.  His FEMA trailer finally arrived, and work on rehabilitating his house was eventually completed by volunteers.  Jeffrie is extremely thankful, despite all he went through.  There’s Miss Ruby.  Her house is part way through being rebuilt.  We were supposed to work on her house all week, but the money for materials hadn’t come through yet, so Miss Ruby still waits.  There’s the woman whose house was restored and she was able to move back in.  Then someone discovered that an electrical contractor had mixed copper and aluminum wiring, a dangerous combination.  So the woman was moved back into a FEMA trailer and the drywall of her house was completely removed so that the house could be rewired.  The scorched areas around the breaker box attested to the danger that had been there.  Hopefully soon the re-reconstruction can be completed so that she can move back into her house.  Yet she is so appreciative of what has been done for her.  

Before the trip, we were asked to come with a servant heart – that in all probability things wouldn’t go the way were expecting them to, that circumstances would alter the projects that we would be working on, and that certainly was the case.  When we got to Camp Victor, we were told that people would probably want to talk about their experiences, that in fact they needed to talk about them, and that certainly was the case.  In the one neighborhood in Gulfport where we were working we were told to expect some distrust – people simply did not understand why volunteers would travel so far at their own expense using their vacation time to help them.  But in the end, they all appreciated the work that was being done to help the community recover.  I had felt called to go to the Gulf Coast for some time to help with the recovery effort, but hadn’t done anything to act on that call.  God presented me with an opportunity that I could no longer ignore.  I am thankful that he did and I expect to return for another work trip.  I hope others, hopefully many others, will be able to serve on work teams in the Gulf Coast or any other area of need and be witnesses to the love of Christ.