On March 25 of 2006, my niece Amanda, her friend Lexi, and I were among 45 people from the Detroit Presbytery who headed south  to Pearlington, MS.  The eye of the hurricane passed through this small costal town leaving 85% of the home in need of repair  or demolition.  Volunteers run the Presbyterian Disaster  Assistance camp that we stayed at quite efficiently.  We slept 3  to a “pod”, made of  what looked like corrugated cardboard, but coated with plastic.  We ate breakfast and dinner and had twice daily devotions in a large tent that people use for wedding receptions and similar outdoor events.  We had a large row of port-a-potties and 6 shower tents.  Meals were cooked in the “kitchen pod”, a larger version of the type we slept in.  There were even a few electric outlets for recharging cell phones and cameras.  

             This area was badly hit, so while we did have one crew doing  drywall, most of the rest of our work was what is called “mucking”.    This involved going into “fresh”, untouched since the storm, houses and helping the homeowners remove their belongings as well as all the debris left behind.  Many times we were removing everything in the house leaving only the studs.     Other jobs included digging a septic line, sandbagging to keep water back, removing pews from a church, salvaging lumber and scrap metal to be reused in a new home, various plumbing jobs and building the floor foundation for a new house 14 feet off the ground. 

  Two wonderful ladies, Jackie and Johnnie, from the local Baptist church fixed our lunch every day.  They got up each morning and began cooking at 7:00 a.m.  During our stay, they were serving close to 200 people a day.  One of them even came to work after being told she had pneumonia because she didn’t have anyone to take her place!  These meals were all done on a donation basis and there always seemed to be plenty of food .

  We were able to drive into Biloxi one morning and see the devastation along the coast.  Words cannot describe what it’s like to drive for miles along
a major stretch of coastal roadway and see damage everywhere you look.  We stopped for lunch at “God’s Katrina Kitchen”, a large circus tent where volunteers serve lunch to 400 or more people a day.  At the front of the tent is a wooden cross where you can tack up prayer requests for the nightly prayer service.  Most were very simple, “Pray for my Paw Paw” or “Help my cousins move back home with us” and “Help us get a FEMA trailer soon”.  There is another large tent next to it where people can get necessities such as food and clothing free of charge.

      Pearlington had a recovery center in the local elementary school where people could come to make phone calls and pick up necessities.  They named it Pearl Mart and put up signs saying “We will not be undersold”.  The children that used to attend that school now must find their own way to another school 30 miles away.