[Home]   [Katrina News]   [08 Sep 05]   [18 Sep 05]   [20 Nov 05]   [09 Dec 05]

November 20, 2005

Thanksgiving is nigh upon us.  Thanksgiving marks 87 days since life – as we know it here along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi – changed.  The numbers are out there – the numbers of homes destroyed, lives uprooted, families displaced, money spent.  But the most important statistic cannot be quantified in numbers: the impact of God’s love.

Over the past months, we here along the coast have seen uncountable numbers of caravans of tree cutters, line trucks, Red Cross meal wagons, and military convoys – wheeled and winged.  We have also seen the effects of God love in real and physical ways.  Missions organizations, missions groups, churches of all denominations and sizes, even individual members of God’s family: all have been seen helping rebuild homes, lives, and communities here along the Gulf Coast.

Our small church has become a staging ground of sorts for visiting reconstruction groups.  So far they have come under the umbrella of SteppinOut Missions of Sugar Creek, Ohio.  But not all our visitors are from Ohio – they’ve come from Arizona and Maine and probably a few other places either never mentioned or forgotten – but the work done by these visitors will never be forgotten.  From cutting brush and removing trees to gutting houses and demolishing buildings to shingling roofs and hanging sheetrock and cabinets, these groups of men and women (and some young men and young women, and some not so young men and not so young women) have brought hope and focus from the fog and confusion many of us were affected by in the days immediately following the storm.

Several homes of our members are either fully restored, or are in the final stages of restoration – paint, carpet, and furnishings – thanks to our visitors.  Several families displaced by the storm will be moving back into their homes by month’s end – some as soon as this weekend.  Praise God, for it is His love that has driven these previously unknown brothers and sisters to come down here and stand and sweat beside us in the heat and stench – and stretch and groan at the end of another long but successful and satisfying workday.

We still have major roads out.  Traffic is abysmal.  Just about every business that is open needs employees.  Most signs read “Now OPEN!!  Now Hiring!”  Few businesses are keeping normal hours, as they don’t have the staff to run full time yet.  It is a sad circle:  so many houses were destroyed or so damaged that people had to move elsewhere to live.  This means there are fewer people in the workforce, so stores and restaurants are understaffed.  They need more workers, but there are no homes for the workers to live in.  It won’t change quickly.  It’s going to take time and patience.  We’re not going anywhere.  We’ll watch where we must and help where we can as the rebuilding goes on.

In future weeks and months, we will be hosting groups from Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, and probably more teams from Ohio. We look forward to each and every one, and hope our ability to host them gets better each time.

There is no way to express in words the thanks we at Trinity Bible Church at River Oaks have for the blood, sweat, and (certainly) tears the volunteers have shed helping this community stand back up.  So we can only say: we are humbled by the gift of your servants’ hearts, we are eternally grateful, and you are all in our prayers.

[Home]   [Katrina News]   [08 Sep 05]   [18 Sep 05]   [20 Nov 05]   [09 Dec 05]