Wednesday, 11/23/2005 -- Day 4

I don’t think that catfish sandwich settled very well with me. I woke up in the middle of the night with an awful stomachache. I prayed that I would feel better and then fell back to sleep. By the grace of God, when I woke up this morning the stomachache had gone away and I was feeling fine.

The daylight has revealed just how devastated the town of Gulfport is. We gutted the house of a man named Benny today. It was very sobering. It was a great honor to be able to pray for this man as a group before and after we worked. Damage to Bennys home was extensive. There was a waterline up to my shoulders (about four feet) in most rooms. The floor was buckled in many places and in the kitchen, the floor had a hole in it so we could not even go in there. Upon entering the house, we found family pictures strewn on the living room floor. Again, it’s one thing to see the devastation on the news but when you walk into one of these houses and see pictures of the family lying in ruins, that’s when it starts to become personal. My first response was to turn away from the pictures. For some reason I felt like I shouldn’t be looking at them. By the time I went back to the living room, someone else had taken the pictures away. As we worked, we took ruined items, drywall, etc out to huge trash pile in the front yard (just about every house in the area has one of these piles in front of it.) As I worked, every once in awhile, I would look up out a window or something to see the lone figure of Benny sifting through the pile trying to find anything that could be salvaged. It was a sad sight to see. As you can imagine, he found very little.

Bennys wife and child have moved to the East coast so that his son could go to school. Benny is staying with relatives in the area so that he can continue to work and try to rebuild his home. The home is so damaged that it may be a total loss. He has a FEMA trailer on the property but the keys that FEMA gave him to the trailer do not work so he can’t get into it. He’s found it just about impossible to get the situation with the keys straightened out. Luckily he has those relatives to stay with.

At lunch, we toured a wildlife refuge close to Bennys house that had been devastated by the storm. Garbage and pieces of buildings were strewn all about the refuge. On an earlier walk through the refuge, Tiffany says she saw a Pepsi machine among the trees. The trees…well, here’s the best way that I can describe the trees: When I was a kid, my dad and I used to trim the bushes and trees in my parents back yard. We would then take all of the branches and leaves that we trimmed and dump them into a big pile on the side of the house. The trees in this wildlife refuge looked like a big giant version of one of these brush piles. The branches were tangled up, many of the trees were on their sides either broken or uprooted entirely. Surprisingly, the boardwalk that led into the refuge was in very good condition for about 200 yards back.

After we finished the work on Bennys house, he was very grateful. I remember him saying, “I don’t know how I can thank you all.” After talking to him for a little while, we prayed together and then said goodbye before gathering our tools and heading back to St. James.
The church that we are staying at (Saint James Baptist) is a black southern Baptist church. The pastor, Eddie Hartwell, has been serving food to the community ever since the storm.
We were joined today by a team from Arkansas. The leader of that team, Vic, seems like a really warm and friendly person. When we came in from work, he made it very clear that his team was here to serve us.

We had an awesome church service tonight. Pastor Hartwell spoke as did Dave from Philly and another Pastor from the area. It was a great message about letting our light shine to those around us. Dave led us through the book of Nehemiah and used Nehemiah as an example of the rebuilding of a city (Nehemiah, remember rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem.) He talked about the importance of prayer. Pastor Hartwell also said some great things about coming out of our comfort zone.

Sitting next to me in the service was an amazing woman who the congregation of this church apparently refers to as Mother Robinson. She was working hard at agreeing with the speakers as they spoke. It seemed like after every phrase that was uttered from up front there was an “AMEN!” or “PRAISE THE LORD JESUS!” Coming from Mother Robinson. I think it would be fun to bring her back to Good Shepherd for a Stu Webber sermon. He’d love her. I really hope I get to be there when those two meet in Heaven.

Anyway, we got to talk to Mother Robinson after the service. She’s 68 years old and had her home destroyed in the storm, yet this woman who comes up to about my chest has so much joy in her relationship with Christ. She loves Jesus so much. I’ll never forget her telling of the day after the storm. Pastor Hartwell has a meat smoker outside of his church (This thing is a beast! Easily as tall as a house!) Mother Robinson talked about how she had waited out the storm at a relatives house inland and how she helped to serve food to needy people the day after the storm. She saw the smoke coming up from that big smoker and as she tells it, “The Pastor didn’t have to tell Mother Robinson to come help!” Apparently, in those first few days after the storm, it was just her and Pastor Hartwell serving since everyone else had left the area. She talked about the ingenuity that was required of her when all the food had been used up except a sack of potatoes and a brick of cheese. Mother Robinson, thinking quickly, mashed up the potatoes and then boiled them up with the cheese. According to her, she and the Pastor labored over what they should call the new dish before settling on “Cheese Taters.” “Those people ate those potatoes like they was steak.” She told us with a smile. Mother Robinson also talked about how the Lord had blessed her with a new house since the storm. Apparently a team like ours had miraculously managed to build her a nice new house in a short amount of time.* She told us that she had never owned a dishwasher or a clothes dryer until now (she had eight children who’s clothes she had hung out on a clothesline day after day for Lord only knows how many years). It seems that she also owed $6000 on her old house and somehow that debt got erased. “I’m goin’ to meet Jesus debt free!” she told us with a contagious laugh. “Praise God!”

This woman was just so full of the Holy Spirit. Very loving toward other people. You look at her and you see Christ. I could have listened to her for hours. I really hope she comes to Thanksgiving tomorrow.

I’m really making great friends on the Philly team. There’s Sarah -- seventeen years old, saved a few years ago. Also Frank, Susanne, Pastor Dave, the other Dave, Pastor Mark etc. All of them are great folks. I got to share my testimony today with Sarah and Susanne and also had some great conversation time with Frank. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving -- Another big day.
* I would later find Mother Robinsons story in the October 2005 edition of the Christian Science Monitor. The article describes how a missions team built her new house from the ground up in a mere seven days!