The Mississippi of my youth is vastly different now. The Gulf Coast where I spent weekends avoiding college term papers, piles of dirty laundry, bad dorm food and the Graduate Record Examinations was ripped apart by Hurricane Katrina.

One is immediately struck by the absence of things -- the large empty spaces where buildings once stood and the concrete slabs with trailers parked on them. The beach roads, once cluttered with gas stations and fast-food restaurants, are devoid of the usual glaring advertisements for cheap eats, gas, motels and souvenirs. Even now, piles of debris remain.

Some of the hardest-hit communities along the Mississippi Gulf Coast are those of Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian and Long Beach. Gulfport and Biloxi have made progress toward recovery, and these smaller communities are progressing as well, despite tremendous obstacles such as those presented by the tremendous population decline post-Katrina.

Pass Christian, for example, had a population of 6,000 before Katrina. By 2006, the population had fallen to 2,000. Housing construction has been slow, but skeletons of wood and steel are more numerous than they were six months ago, with the largest efforts still coming from volunteer crews.  

Volunteer camps
Camp Coast Care (CCC), one of seven volunteer camps operating in the Gulf Coast area, is a mission program of the Lutheran and Episcopal Disaster Response, an outreach of the Lutheran Episcopal Services in Mississippi. Episcopal Relief and Development is one of the major agencies supplying financial support for CCC's mission.

Since Katrina struck on August 29, 2005, more than 11,000 volunteers from all over the world have participated in the recovery/rebuilding efforts at CCC in Long Beach. More than 450 homes have been repaired or rebuilt through the efforts of Camp Coast Care staff and volunteers.

Much had been accomplished, yet much remains to be done. It's predicted that the recovery process will take a minimum of 10 years. Volunteer help will be needed for years to come, and Camp Coast Care will be a presence for at least another two years.   

My husband Shawn and I spent a week at Camp Coast Care recently. We arrived squeaky-clean and soft-skinned; we left aching, grimy, blistered and somewhat the worse for wear. We had a grand time!

We swept and mopped; scraped and painted; spackled and nailed. Shawn laid baseboards, and I learned how to operate a pallet jack. We cleaned up trash along the beach and unloaded debris at the town dump. We met people from all over the world and worshiped next to those whose churches and homes had been washed away. We found remnants of people’s lives scattered across concrete slabs -- pictures, a tackle box still full of lures, hooks and wigglers, a rusty tool set. A quick prayer said for the owners of these objects was all my heart could stand.

Sunday, as we headed for home, we stopped in at Trinity Episcopal Church in Pass Christian. Trinity had sustained massive damage -- walls gone, windows blown out, furnishings that had been thoughtfully purchased and lovingly tended buried beneath the water. The cemetery behind the church looked like a movie set for Halloween. Fallen trees and sunken earth were punctuated by cracked and toppled headstones.

Joy in service
As arrived, we were enveloped by a wave of worshipers who urged us to join them for the morning service. With Tyvek walls, folding chairs and empty windows, the chill quickly penetrated.

Our discomfort soon faded, however, because we were in the midst of people who radiated such warmth that the less-than-ideal conditions were forgotten. As the service ended and the pianist began to play the most rollicking, jazz-blues New Orleans version of Blessed Assurance I have ever heard, we could see that indeed these people knew this assurance given by the One who comforts.         

Wherever we went during that week in Long Beach or Pass Christian, the voices of the grateful followed us. "Thank you -- thank you for coming -- thank you for helping us."
It is we who are the most grateful to those inhabitants of Mississippi who opened their hearts and homes to us. Thank you for allowing us to live and work among you for a brief period of time. Thank you for the wonderful table fellowship and some of the best catfish, mullet and crawfish ever! Thank you for sharing your grief, hopes and dreams with us and for letting us shoulder your burdens for a time. Thank you for reminding us that the Holy Spirit resides not in buildings of mortar and stone, but in the hearts of God’s people.

It was our privilege and great joy to be with you and share in the resurrection of your communities: bruised and battered, but whose spirits remain undaunted. You will remain in our thoughts and prayers until we are with you again, hammers in hand.

More information about Camp Coast Care is available here or by contacting Volunteer Coordinator Michael Magargel at MMagargel@lesm.org or 228-234-5193.