Churches Helping Churches On The Coast

There are thousands of stories about churches
sending teams to the coast
to help with recovery from Katrina.
Here are some of them.

Kent Presbyterian Church, Kent Ohio
At First Presbyterian Church of Pascagoula, Mississippi

When Hugh Johnson was a boy, he lived near the beach in Biloxi, Mississippi. He knew about hurricanes. After all, his home stood up to Hurricane Camille — the 1969 storm that was the standard against which all coastal Mississippians measured such storms.

Now an adult with a boy of his own and living half a nation away in Kent, Ohio, Johnson nonetheless followed the path of Hurricane Katrina as it walloped the Gulf Coast. He knew people would need help and he wanted to be one of the helpers.

He queried his congregation at Kent Presbyterian Church and assembled a four-person team willing to take a week off to help folks they didn’t even know.

Four people answered the call — Johnson, who is in construction and real estate; his son Nicolaus; retired fireman/paramedic Rob Ullinger, and Zach Allbright, a recent high school graduate who’s in horticulture. They gathered up the gear they needed to be selfsufficient — tents, water, cook stove and food suitable for an ice chest — and headed south.

Ullinger, who now works installing sound systems in churches — a skill he learned while serving on his church’s design team — said it was easy to get time off. His clients understand that some work is just higher priority than other tasks. Besides, he discovered that one of the churches on his client list was unavailable to work with him because they were sending a big relief team south, too.

When the Kent group reached the Gulf Coast, they checked in with the Presbytery of South Alabama for a contact in Mississippi and discovered that they also had accommodations available — the back Sunday school rooms at Providence Presbyterian Church, the closest to Mississippi of all the churches in south Alabama.

From that home base, they checked in with the First Presbyterian Church of Pascagoula, picking up their work orders. The minister told them that every single member of the congregation had damage and some 80 percent had lost everything.

“There was a lady by the beach,” said Nicolaus. “Her house was off its foundation. We helped her dig through the sand for her personal items.”

Nearby they helped a man whose house had been inundated with storm water and sewage. “You put on your gloves and hauled,” added Nicolaus. A 13-year-old eighth grader, his teachers offered school credit if he made a video documentary while he worked.

At another house, they cleared the backyard of debris to make room for the trailer FEMA was providing, said Ullinger. While they were clearing, they came upon a packet of cancelled checks, undamaged by the storm — but belonging to the woman they had helped first.

They worked in the church itself, donning filter masks as well as gloves to remove everything that had been soaked with sea water and sewage and now was growing a coat of mildew.

They liked working at the church, but “we wanted to get out to the public and help individuals in need,” said the elder Johnson.

Coastal residents were still “shell shocked,” said Ullinger.

In fact, the relief workers experienced some of the same shock. It was overwhelming to see the damage — a mattress in the trees, trucks crushed, a child’s second floor playroom 200 feet away from where the rest of the house used to be. Though Albright has watched plenty of TV news coverage, he said, “you don’t really see things like this.”

In fact, Albright grew up in Florida and has weathered his share of hurricanes. But he said “this is by far the worst I’ve ever seen.”

They talked with one woman whose son had been called back from duty in Fallujah to work in New Orleans. “He said Fallujah looked better,” Ullinger reported.

As they worked along the coast, helping wherever they could, they took one side trip to Biloxi to see the house Johnson lived in as a boy — the house that survived Camille. But Katrina had washed it away, too.

Not all missionary work requires passports.

In South Alabama, where some residents were recovering from their own hurricane damage, others served as hosts for relief workers from across the country.

From the South Alabama churches, teams could reach the heavily damaged coastal areas of Mississippi in an hour or less, without putting any added strain on the folks who needed their help. Spring Hill, Overlook, Government Street, Westminster, Cottage Hill, Christ, Grand Bay, Grace, Stockton and Providence churches all were available to visiting relief workers, setting up temporary showers and helping with meals. Bay Treat was also opened to workers.

Second Presbyterian Church, Nashville, is early responder

Volunteers were commissioned during worship on Sunday September 11 at Second Presbyterian Church, Nashville. The twelve member team left early the next day and headed for the Bay St. Louis area of Mississippi to spend the next week helping with the hurricane Katrina relief efforts in that area. The caravan included a 24 ft camper purchased by the church and donated to the Diamondhead Community Church for future mission team use. The team was led by Lou Hoop who offers this account of their trip.

“We staged out of Diamondhead Community Church PC(USA) in Diamondhead Mississippi. Diamondhead is a small retirement community just north of Bay St. Louis, MS, on Interstate 10. The Diamondhead Community Church is pastored by the Rev. Chas Jones.

Diamondhead Church has been very proactive since the early days of the relief effort in staging work crews to various areas of need on the Mississippi coast. While we were there, work crews were also there from churches in Oxford MS, Deland FL, Maitland FL and several members of First Pres. of Lebanon TN led by their pastor, John Cheetham.

We spent the week working in the following areas:

Pearlington MS — Pearlington is a small racially mixed unincorporated community of 1,000 souls on the banks of the Pearl River just North of Waveland Mississippi. They experienced a storm surge in the 20 to 25 foot range. In Pearlington, members of our team help manage a local relief center that was involved in distributing food, water, clothes, medical services, and meals to local community members. The other members of our team assisted the Living Waters for the World personnel in site development for a purified water system.

Bay St. Louis — In Bay St. Louis, our team was involved in the cleaning and restoration of 1st Presbyterian Church of Bay St. Louis. We also assisted local families in the removal of debris from their yards and storage of their surviving furniture.

In the Diamondhead Community, our team also cleared the Diamondhead Community Church grounds and also cleared debris from various church member’s yards.

Personally, this trip was one of the most significant times in my life. More than the damage and devastation of property, what was most compelling was seeing the mental devastation in the eyes of the survivors and residents. This work will need to go on for years to come.

We were especially blessed to have 3 youth, Josh, Russell, & Spence, with us. Our group was a very balanced representation of our congregation.”

Second is scheduling another trip for the week of November 5. The volunteers will be going to help clean up Longbeach Church in Longbeach Mississippi. The church will also serve as a community center when work is completed. Other churches in the Presbytery are also being encouraged to send teams.