Many in the faith communities in my city -- Wilton, Connecticut -- have been involved in work along the Gulf Coast post-Katrina. They include both our Christian churches and Jewish Temple B'nai Chaim. Teams from St. Matthew's Episcopal Church have been going to New Orleans every other month for more than 18 months now.  

In January 2006, I went with one of those groups. This last month, however, I went solo and filled in with church teams from Florida, North Carolina and Ohio doing contents removal and gutting of small "shotgun" homes (one story, with rooms in line).

At one, the 65-year-old owner sifted through his belongings for the precious little he could save as we had carried them to the curb. His small house was his only investment.  But he did have his love for music. His electronic keyboard was unsalvageable from the flooding, but we found a footlocker with some of his handwritten musical compositions preserved within.

The 70-year-old owner of another home was hospitalized for diabetes that had caused his foot to have to be amputated. He had been a small-time painting contractor, and his house was crammed to the rafters with ruined painting supplies and rusted or wrecked tools as well as the usual household goods. A friend of his came over as we were finishing and was astounded at the full contents removal and gutting. He said he never believed it could be done and how thrilled the owner would be.

Another house belonged to a woman whose young daughter had died before Katrina and whose teenage son had died in a car accident after Katrina. Her husband was hospitalized with a heart condition. She found she could no longer handle emotionally living in New Orleans. She simply wanted to get her small home in condition so that she could sell it. She asked especially that we look for photos of her deceased daughter because she didn't have any. We thought we found one amidst all the debris -- water-damaged but still showing this beautiful girl.

Much still needs to be done in New Orleans. Government continues to show itself woefully inadequate to the task. Recent reports and investigations on the levees show that not only was the original construction faulty (it took the Corps of Engineers' report 6,000 pages to document the problems existing at the time of Katrina), but also indicate that levee rebuilding has not been accomplished properly. FEMA's inadequacies are notorious, and now "Road Home" government payments designed to help families return and reestablish their homes in New Orleans have been delayed by the private claims processor.

Nevertheless, progress was very evident in the 18 months since my first post-Katrina visit. Gutting city-wide is now almost entirely complete. Rebuilding is going on everywhere. Habitat for Humanity has finished a row of new homes filling an entire long block in the Lower Ninth Ward with more under construction.

Restoring homes also restores the complex web of family relationships that have long characterized New Orleans. Extended families often lived within blocks of each other and formed a well-developed system of mutual support.

Why rebuild New Orleans at all given the precarious levee situation? It is an important part of the past and present of our country. Mark Twain called New Orleans one of the three great cities of America, and we all know its role as the birthplace of jazz -- and the nurturing ground for it still. I saw that firsthand at Jazzfest on a Sunday afternoon during my visit. For many there is no choice: the only home they own is there. Their mortgages are still in effect. Their extended families are rebuilding there.

And while a recent Time magazine sharply criticized some of the new flood-protection work and proposals, it also complimented others concluding that "the good news is that scientists believe they know how to save" the Louisiana coast and with it New Orleans. When The Netherlands faced enormous flooding in the 1950s, it hired the best engineers in the world to create a system that has stood the test of time. The same should be done here.

Anyone who has worked on rebuilding in New Orleans can assure you that work done there is every bit as transforming for the doer as for those helped to a restored life in a beautiful city.