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Mississippi
Mission Trip June 25 –July 2, 2006
Twenty-seven
brave and determined souls headed for Kiln,
Mississippi from Westminster Presbyterian
Church, Albany New York to help victims of
Hurricane Katrina and Rita in their process
of recovery. We were graciously allowed to
stay in the Dedeaux Center run by Catholic
Charities to assist hurricane victims in the
immediate area. For me it was the hardest
that I have worked in one week in quite some
time. The emotional stress of wanting to
help as many families as possible in the
time we had added to the dynamic of the
week. We did help nine different families —
some more than others. We did everything
from general clean up, brush removal, sheet
rocking and painting to plumbing a garden
shed to be used as a house, roofing a house,
raising and leveling a trailer and building
kitchen cabinet doors. We even managed an
afternoon adventure to the French Quarter
and boat ride on the Mississippi.
One of the
moving experiences of the week was the
assistance we received from people we met as
we worked. We needed house jacks to raise a
trailer for Terry Jones. The Kennedy’s also
needed to raise their trailer and were going
to purchase jacks—they loaned us the jacks
to use at Terry’s. Terry’s trailer needed a
new roof and he knew of a local church that
would help when he was ready. Miss Mae’s
house needed a new roof and this local
church loaned us the lift to raise the
shingles to the roof and the nail guns to
apply the shingles. The minister even
brought the shingles to Miss Mae’s with his
truck and trailer. When we were unable to
finish the roof before we left he helped one
of our crew who stayed to see that it was
done. We even met one of the Kennedy
children working at a local convenience
store where we were buying juice for our
parched workers. This connectedness and
willingness to assist each other was
heartening.
From my
experiences of traveling in the war-torn
countries of both Bosnia and Afghanistan, I
felt I was in familiar and uncomfortable
territory. The difference was that this was
my own country. Here, almost a year after
the devastation, there were areas where it
seemed that nothing had been done. The task
of rebuilding the lives of the residents of
this part of the country has just begun!
What has been done so far has just scratched
the surface! This is surprising to me in
that we live in one of the richest country
of the world and the rebuilding seems just
as slow as in Afghanistan. My heart goes
out to these people of the Gulf Coast who
are working so hard to piece their lives
together after loosing almost everything
that they had spent years building or that
had been left them by their ancestors.
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