From start to finish
One way to write about our trip to Mississippi would be to simply state the facts, and list out the pertinent information.
It's the facts, in list form, but it's like reading a phone book. The names are there, the information is all there, but the story is missing. And the story is what has latched onto my heart and won't let go.
Here is one of our stories...
Three weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit, there was a fire in the Nesom home in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Raising six kids can't be easy, especially when three of them are little boys, close in age. The fire was in their bedroom. The family had to move into a trailer down the road.
On August 29th, the massive hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast, and hit this area of Mississippi the hardest. Butch and Sandy's temporary home, the trailer, was lost, along with all they had there. Their burned house was also ruined by the storm and its surge. It was declared unsafe - and by any reasonable thought, was destined to be bulldozed.
When Chapel on the Hill's team of eight men, led by my husband (the Associate Pastor) , drove down to Mississippi from our New Jersey church back in October, their first assigment was the Nesom's house. In those days, the debris was even worse than it is now - with some roads still barely passable. The area looked like it had been hit by an atomic bomb. (In many ways, it looks that way even now. It is stunning to drive mile after mile and see toppled houses, empty slab foundations, shredded clothing tangled up high in random branches, and untold numbers of twisted, broken trees. Yet there's always someone around to say the unimaginable: "This is nothing, you should have seen it before.")
Our men were shocked at the condition of the house, as well as of the entire area. They were told, "We don't know if we can save this or not, but our job is to give the family hope."
Bill tells the story with remarkable pictures (click here to read the account and see all the pictures and go here to listen to him describe it when he was there) - how eight men never worked harder, and in a day and a half, they took a home and removed all its ruined, charred, mildew-soaked possessions, tearing out everything (plumbing, wiring, fixtures, ductwork, walls) down to its skeletal framework, in order to try and save it.
Once the men were back from that first trip, they were heartened to learn that another team, and another, and another, worked on their foundational task, to reconstruct this family's home.
An addition had been put on the re-built small home - and our job was to help clean it all as the family (now in two FEMA trailers in the front yard) prepared to move in. The water and electrical hook-up were the only jobs that remained. The Nesoms were one of the first families to be this 'fortunate' (after losing everything in fire, wind, and flood), and their move back into their home would be a full eight months after the devastating hurricane.
Late Thursday afternoon, we met Butch. He's worked at Walmart for 14 years, so unlike many others who were employed by businesses decimated last August, he still has a job. He gave us the grand tour, proudly showing us every room, every light, every bathroom (now they had three). In a new way of fleshing out US geography, he and fourteen year old daughter Jessica recounted each team's state of origin ("The Wisconsin team did the ceiling," "No, they did the insulation, it was the California team that did the siding.")
Over and over, Butch referred to the men from our church. As we stood in the newly painted master bedroom, he said, "I wish they could be standing here right now, they would cry if they could see this."
After Butch's bear hug, more gratitude, and his smiling warning: "Now, you all don't kill yourselves doing this," we were ready.
The next morning we arrived, armed with cleaning supplies we thought useful. We wiped down walls covered with sanding dust, swept floors, took out every single screen to wipe clean of the fine powder from all the spackling, and scrubbed every single window inside and out, until the new home was polished brightly.
Sandy was there briefly and she talked about where her corner would be in the living room, so after she left we moved the one chair to that spot and placed on it a gift basket we'd made from items we bought at the Waveland Walmart (a store that looks more like a giant hardware/grocery store than a typical discount store). We all signed a card, and left it for the family.
Before we could finish cleaning, it was time for Debbie's plane to land in New Orleans. Bethany and Elisa took the rental van to drive the hour distance to Louis Armstrong Airport to get her, and Arleen, Maria, and I were left behind. Once we were done, we hoped to get a ride from someone at the church, but our cell phone connections were giving us grief. After awhile we realized there was no alternative but to pack up our mops and brooms, buckets and cleaning supplies, bags of granola bars and water bottles, and the gallon can of sage green paint we'd bought for the church walls by the new door, and start walking.
We stood outside for awhile and assessed what we'd done, and tried to imagine what it had been like for that storm to go through, what the house had looked like afterwards, and all the family had endured. The neighborhood still showed the fallout from the hurricane,
and at the end of the road you could see many FEMA trailers parked together in what must have been one of many FEMA 'villages.' The sun was pretty warm, and the way was pretty far, but we set out on our little trek. Just then, though, a ride came for us from JoEll at the church, who figured despite our unintelligible static on the phone, we must have needed something.
Later that day when we were at Sandy's brother John's house getting ready to clean it, little Cody wanted a picture with the six of us. Sandy said he "always talks about 'when are my people coming back?'" Our guys had connected with Cody as he ran through the house in those first days of work on their place.
After the picture-taking, Sandy handed me an envelope with a letter and pictures that chronicled every team, every group. Nineteen teams had worked on that one house. Our men were listed first:
Then at the bottom of the lengthy list, our team was added:
The letter, meant for all those teams from California to Tennessee to Georgia to Wisconsin, said in part, "Thank all of you for what you have done for us. This wouldn't have happened if God had not sent you. Continue to remember us in your prayers." Each of the family members signed their names.
Then at the end of the chronology, Butch and Sandy wrote this,
The carefully detailed list of volunteers' names was titled: "Katrina's Angels."
Butch, Sandy, and all the family: know that we will always remember you, too, we pray for you, and we will come back. We couldn't possibly stay away.
It was an honor to serve you.
-Six women (five for the first half, one more for the second half)
-April 26th-30th
-Five flew out of LaGuardia, one flew out of Newark...'Challenging' travel, due to delays, little commuter-sized planes, one very nervous, motion-sick-prone passenger (who did very well!), 'technical difficulties,' stopovers in Atlanta, Charlotte, and (unexpectedly for one of us) D.C., with jaunts on shuttle buses and metros, and driving in windy downpours and during a tornado warning.
-What we did: we scrubbed out shower stalls in the shower trailers at the Lakeshore Baptist Church site, moved chairs and hymnals to paint particle board bookshelves for the hymnals, cleaned out the foyer area for the temporary church building, visited the Nesom home and then cleaned it as they prepare to move in, painted the sound board at church, moved debris from Miss Leddy's lot so she could have her FEMA trailer brought there, bought gifts for baskets for the Nesoms and for Miss Leddy, cleaned John's house (his was one of few to survive the storm...he lives on the second floor of a house on enclosed-stilts; he had water damage reach that floor even), decorated for a baby shower (for the daughter of a church member who had had a premature baby girl) with gifts Debbie carried from airport to airport on her journey south and with balloons and streamers and posters we bought at the Waveland Rite-Aid, attended part of the shower, visited with our new friends Lloyd and Renee (Bill and I had gone to see them in early March in their FEMA trailer) in their newly arrived double-wide home in Bay St. Louis, prayed with Lloyd and Renee in the living room of their place, walked on the beach on the Mississippi Sound, ate in the couple of newly opened eating spots along US 90, and - our last job - finished up work on the sound board at the church.
It's the facts, in list form, but it's like reading a phone book. The names are there, the information is all there, but the story is missing. And the story is what has latched onto my heart and won't let go.
Here is one of our stories...
Three weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit, there was a fire in the Nesom home in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Raising six kids can't be easy, especially when three of them are little boys, close in age. The fire was in their bedroom. The family had to move into a trailer down the road.
On August 29th, the massive hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast, and hit this area of Mississippi the hardest. Butch and Sandy's temporary home, the trailer, was lost, along with all they had there. Their burned house was also ruined by the storm and its surge. It was declared unsafe - and by any reasonable thought, was destined to be bulldozed.
When Chapel on the Hill's team of eight men, led by my husband (the Associate Pastor) , drove down to Mississippi from our New Jersey church back in October, their first assigment was the Nesom's house. In those days, the debris was even worse than it is now - with some roads still barely passable. The area looked like it had been hit by an atomic bomb. (In many ways, it looks that way even now. It is stunning to drive mile after mile and see toppled houses, empty slab foundations, shredded clothing tangled up high in random branches, and untold numbers of twisted, broken trees. Yet there's always someone around to say the unimaginable: "This is nothing, you should have seen it before.")
Our men were shocked at the condition of the house, as well as of the entire area. They were told, "We don't know if we can save this or not, but our job is to give the family hope."
Bill tells the story with remarkable pictures (click here to read the account and see all the pictures and go here to listen to him describe it when he was there) - how eight men never worked harder, and in a day and a half, they took a home and removed all its ruined, charred, mildew-soaked possessions, tearing out everything (plumbing, wiring, fixtures, ductwork, walls) down to its skeletal framework, in order to try and save it.
Once the men were back from that first trip, they were heartened to learn that another team, and another, and another, worked on their foundational task, to reconstruct this family's home.
An addition had been put on the re-built small home - and our job was to help clean it all as the family (now in two FEMA trailers in the front yard) prepared to move in. The water and electrical hook-up were the only jobs that remained. The Nesoms were one of the first families to be this 'fortunate' (after losing everything in fire, wind, and flood), and their move back into their home would be a full eight months after the devastating hurricane.
Late Thursday afternoon, we met Butch. He's worked at Walmart for 14 years, so unlike many others who were employed by businesses decimated last August, he still has a job. He gave us the grand tour, proudly showing us every room, every light, every bathroom (now they had three). In a new way of fleshing out US geography, he and fourteen year old daughter Jessica recounted each team's state of origin ("The Wisconsin team did the ceiling," "No, they did the insulation, it was the California team that did the siding.")
Over and over, Butch referred to the men from our church. As we stood in the newly painted master bedroom, he said, "I wish they could be standing here right now, they would cry if they could see this."
After Butch's bear hug, more gratitude, and his smiling warning: "Now, you all don't kill yourselves doing this," we were ready.
The next morning we arrived, armed with cleaning supplies we thought useful. We wiped down walls covered with sanding dust, swept floors, took out every single screen to wipe clean of the fine powder from all the spackling, and scrubbed every single window inside and out, until the new home was polished brightly.
Sandy was there briefly and she talked about where her corner would be in the living room, so after she left we moved the one chair to that spot and placed on it a gift basket we'd made from items we bought at the Waveland Walmart (a store that looks more like a giant hardware/grocery store than a typical discount store). We all signed a card, and left it for the family.
Before we could finish cleaning, it was time for Debbie's plane to land in New Orleans. Bethany and Elisa took the rental van to drive the hour distance to Louis Armstrong Airport to get her, and Arleen, Maria, and I were left behind. Once we were done, we hoped to get a ride from someone at the church, but our cell phone connections were giving us grief. After awhile we realized there was no alternative but to pack up our mops and brooms, buckets and cleaning supplies, bags of granola bars and water bottles, and the gallon can of sage green paint we'd bought for the church walls by the new door, and start walking.
We stood outside for awhile and assessed what we'd done, and tried to imagine what it had been like for that storm to go through, what the house had looked like afterwards, and all the family had endured. The neighborhood still showed the fallout from the hurricane,
and at the end of the road you could see many FEMA trailers parked together in what must have been one of many FEMA 'villages.' The sun was pretty warm, and the way was pretty far, but we set out on our little trek. Just then, though, a ride came for us from JoEll at the church, who figured despite our unintelligible static on the phone, we must have needed something.
Later that day when we were at Sandy's brother John's house getting ready to clean it, little Cody wanted a picture with the six of us. Sandy said he "always talks about 'when are my people coming back?'" Our guys had connected with Cody as he ran through the house in those first days of work on their place.
After the picture-taking, Sandy handed me an envelope with a letter and pictures that chronicled every team, every group. Nineteen teams had worked on that one house. Our men were listed first:
Oct '05 - Chapel on the Hill/New Jersey
Gutted House
Then at the bottom of the lengthy list, our team was added:
April '06 - Chapel on the Hill, New Jersey
Cleaning to move in house
The men of this church gutted the house for us to start rebuilding - the ladies did the final cleaning for us to move back in.
The letter, meant for all those teams from California to Tennessee to Georgia to Wisconsin, said in part, "Thank all of you for what you have done for us. This wouldn't have happened if God had not sent you. Continue to remember us in your prayers." Each of the family members signed their names.
Then at the end of the chronology, Butch and Sandy wrote this,
"Every time we turn on a light, wash our hands, take a bath, walk across a floor or into a wall or even get sent to our (very own) room, you will be remembered. May God bless all of you."
The carefully detailed list of volunteers' names was titled: "Katrina's Angels."
Butch, Sandy, and all the family: know that we will always remember you, too, we pray for you, and we will come back. We couldn't possibly stay away.
It was an honor to serve you.
posted by Donna-Jean at Tuesday, May 16, 2006
4 Comments:
I knew you'd be a blessing. It is so sad that there is so much cleanup still to be done 9 months later. Thank you for sharing.
We may see a time where Christians will begin to realize that many can be won if we will see to their needs and show them love. Matt. 25:31-40 tells us that God will count our works of compassion as having done it unto Him. And what a way to serve Him!
Hi Donna Jean. This is Bethany Nesom. I just wanted to tell you (and all the people of both your crew and your husband's crew) THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH for everything each one of you did. We are finally back in our house. We ran into a few problems with our water but thanks to some other volunteer workers we got that problem fixed. I now know what it's like to have my own room. It feels wonderful to be able to tell people, 'Get out of my room' and for my sister not to be able to say 'Well it's my room too'. Again, I just want to say thank you very much. It really means alot. Ya'll are all in my thoughts and prayers. God Bless You!!!
Bethany -
I'm overwhelmed that you would write me. I'll re-post your letter so everyone can read it who might otherwise miss it.
We think of and pray for you daily and we hope to see you again in October. You have touched our lives more than you can ever know.
And we'll never forget your purple bedroom :-)
Love in Him,
Donna-Jean
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