spring break 2006--a year later

So, my post for this week (next week--update on roofing with HPI) is the letter I sent out to my family & friends after last spring break, 2006, when I went with my RUF down to the Morrell Foundation's i-Care Village in Waveland, Mississippi. In two weeks, it will have been a year for me since that first trip, & I'll be back on the coast--full circle. Since that week last March, I will have spent parts of 11 of the last 13 months in Misssissppi. Eight months, altogether. And to think--I originally went for just five days. Crazy.

Hey all,

"Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is a healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision.”

Last Sunday, March 5, I sat in one of the back pews at First Presbyterian Church in Biloxi, Mississippi. I had arrived there, along with twelve other students and our two leaders (Brandon, our campus minister, and Bryon, from our home church in Williamsburg) early that morning after driving all day Saturday. We had walked in, between the broken entryway pillars, been warmly greeted, stood—along with about 85% of the attendants—when asked to identify ourselves as volunteers, and were now reciting the confession of sin.

It amazed me to see these people, survivors of Katrina, embrace their situation to come to a fuller understanding of God. In these last six months, they have come to know what it is to be on the way down, to be low, to have a broken heart and to have nothing. They truly have had to learn to bear the cross in the valley. Yet even through all this, they are able to see in their devastated and ruined homes a place of vision.

After the service, we met with about six other groups, Reformed University Fellowships (RUFs) from around the country. We watched footage of the hurricane, powerful beyond anything the media had shown last fall. Most of the coverage had been on New Orleans, but the eye of the storm passed directly through Bay St. Louis & Biloxi on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. 85% of Bay St. Louis has been destroyed. Most of the federal efforts and money have been funneled into New Orleans, while Mississippi has had to rely on volunteer efforts, most of which have been through church organizations. We were told, over and over, that people who had received nothing from the government (“State Farm Insurance Sucks” signs were everywhere; only 20% of people had flood insurance, & companies were refusing to pay because the damage was caused by “wind-driven water” & not a “flood”; Sunday’s headline was of an 80-year old, wheel-chair bound woman being evicted from her FEMA trailer) were able to rebuild through the aid they had received from the churches.

I thought that the footage we watched had prepared me for what lay ahead that week; I, along with most people in the room, was moved to tears. However, we had arrived in the night, able to make out only a few broken trees and piles of debris. When we walked out of the church, we took pictures with UVA’s RUF. And then we drove around Biloxi.

We first went to a bridge that had formerly connected US 90 across the water. What had looked like any other bridge was now transformed into about 30 concrete towers, each jutting above the water; street lamps and stop signs hung horizontal above the surface, and the double yellow lines stretched up towards the sky, like some unnatural yellow brick road leading up into the clouds. On the shore was a fallen statue—a bronze man, about 20 feet tall, with blank eyes and holding the world in one hand. You could imagine him leaping from one tower to the next, the only one able to use the bridge that humans will never again cross.

The church had been filled with three feet of water; a boardwalk, no trace of which now exists, had been swept off the beach with a fifty foot wave. Houses are completely washed away, leaving only concrete slabs. Others remain in pieces—one whole house, swept out into the Gulf, left behind only a staircase, rising to the right and the left up to a nonexistent second story. Still more, further inland, lie abandoned, everything inside picked up and shaken and deposited at random, soaked through with hurricane water and now molding. Whole stands of pines are flattened, each tree broken and bent at a ninety degree angle. Pipes emerge randomly from the ground, spewing foul-smelling water and sewage into the air until it runs through the streets. Endless broken piers stretch out into the Gulf, which now, with its altered tides, sprays up and onto the highway at high tide.

Our trip was planned in conjunction with Mission to the World (MTW), an organization run through the Presbyterian Church of America. We were housed in a tent-city based out of Buccaneer State Park near Bay St. Louis. The camp was centered around a main tent, housing most of the volunteers. Our group, though, stayed about a quarter mile further back in two just-finished bunkhouses that will later be moved and donated to families who lost their homes. The first night, the house we were in filled up with gnats (interesting fact: since Katrina, the Gulf region, formerly relatively gnat-free, has become a breeding ground for them) & everyone woke up covered head-to-toe in rashes of bites. Our team broke up into three groups, one of which did construction work around the base camp, & by the time we left, both houses were bug-proof.

One of the other groups went to homes in the construction phase, & helped put up drywall & spackle. I was in the third group—I worked with Jess, Ansil, and Sean from W&M, & Beth, Lauren, Jarvis, Bobby, Emily, & Sarah from Wake Forest on a house on Waveland Ave. It is owned by a grandmother now living in North Carolina. The flood waters had reached up to eight feet, making her house uninhabitable. The work order stated that she didn’t want anything salvaged, that we were to remove everything from the house and then strip it to the studs, because she intends to sell it.

The first day, Monday, we followed Jocie, our coordinator through MTW, into the front door. First, she had to remove tape which said “Caution: Enter if You Dare.” She explained that the area, south of the train tracks, had been hit hard by looters. The door opened into a living room, which had a piano sitting in the middle of it, and sheet music strewn all around. As we filed into the house, masks and gloves on, and our eyes adjusted to the dim interior, we saw and understood--as much as we could understand--for the first time just what it meant to have lived through Katrina.

We were standing in a house that looked nothing like any house that any of us had ever seen. Once through the door, we quickly filled the only available standing room. Around us rose a 3-ft. wall of debris—eighty years’ worth of stuff, topped with fallen ceiling tiles. Everything was covered with mold—black, patchy spores that raised clouds of dust when brushed against.

It took us two days just to get everything outside. Monday, we managed to create a mountain about 8 feet high, stretching halfway across the property line (about 50 ft.) & stretching as far back from the curb as we were allowed (12 ft). It was picked up that night, & Tuesday, we doubled this. Wednesday morning, the pile was still there, & so we began another pile across the road. The most difficult thing to move out was the fridge. There were two, & on Monday afternoon, we attempted to move the first one. One of the ropes slipped, & it burst open, releasing a mixture so toxic that we had to evacuate, & the next day, before entering the house, we had to spray the entire area down with undiluted bleach. Fortunately, we got the second fridge out more carefully. They weren’t the only dangerous things in the house though; aside from the mold, we later discovered that the homeowners had been chemists. The garage had been converted into a lab, & on Tuesday we removed a bottle of mercury along with dozens of other bottles of chemicals. On Wednesday, we hit a gas line, hooked up to a Bunsen burner. One of the girls from Wake commented that if the work didn’t need to be done so badly, we never would have been allowed near it.

Late Tuesday, while the guys started ripping down the drywall from the front rooms, which had already been cleared, I was tackling the back sewing room. The way the waters had circled through, the already-packed room had ended up with quite a bit of debris accumulated from the rest of the house. I pulled out about a dozen hand-knitted vests, about 60 skeins of yarn, a sewing machine, & three closets’ worth of clothes and shoes. What struck me most was how colorful everything was. The bathroom wallpaper was bright, vibrant flowers in primary colors. The bedspreads were a vivid orange; people kept digging up bright green pewter vases, pairs of red dancing shoes, a yellow teapot painted with purple irises. At one point, late in the afternoon, I finally got out a cabinet that I had been struggling with, and underneath, I found fifteen completed quilt squares, each with a person’s name. I brought them to Beth, who was keeping a pile of things she thought the family might want, & went outside for a water break. There are just some things you can’t see and be unmoved.

Needless to say, we were so happy when the daughter stopped by on Tuesday. She thanked us profusely—everyone our team worked with was so thankful—and said that her mother had asked that, if possible, we find for her a porcelain bust of Venus that had been given to her as a wedding present. By this point, we had removed a good portion of the contents, & no one could remember having seen it. We were sure that it had been crushed. But, after we pulled the second fridge out, there it was—wedged between it and a chair. It was just one of the small miracles that we witnessed, but so huge because this was the one thing that she asked for, out of everything that she owned. Later, one of the Wake girls saw an unopened box in the trash pile, & happened to open it… inside was the deed to the house & the homeowner's will.

The ten of us really bonded over this house. We could hardly believe that it took us four days, about 280 man hours, to clear this house that Katrina destroyed in 8 hours. When we finally carted out the last wheelbarrow of drywall on Thursday, we were left overwhelmed by how much we had accomplished, and by how little it was in comparison to all that needed still to be done. We had helped one family, but how many more people are there who still need help? What about the neighbor who came by the collect furniture out of the trash because he was left with none, & received no federal aid or insurance money?

Each morning I went on a run with my friends Amanda and Sarah. We ran by a sign, declaring in giant block red letters, “KATRINA WAS BIG, BUT GOD IS BIGGER.” This attitude, so incredible, is one that pervades the Gulf areas hit by Katrina.

“On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand, and cast a wishful eye
To Canaan’s fair and happy land, where my possessions lie.
All o’er those wide extended plains, shines one eternal day;
There God the Son forever reigns, and scatters night away.I am bound, I am bound,
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound, I am bound,
I am bound for the promised land.”

The hymn we sang in church on Sunday, literally standing on Biloxi’s stormy bank, is real to these people. Their faith rests entirely in God and in His goodness.

“You have shaken the land and torn it open; mend its fractures, for it is quaking.” Psalm 60:2. Each person we talked to has reached an acceptance of the storm. A lot of people said to us that they trust God completely to repair what has been destroyed. Another of the neighbors told us that he is so thankful that all he lost is stuff, & that he and his family are safe. He told us what a blessing it is for him to be able to witness people pulling together to rebuild, to see the Christian community rally together to pour out Christ’s love to God’s children. He told us that he wishes we could be so lucky.

The night we left, we got to write on the walls of our bunkhouse, messages that the new family would never see, but which would be built into their lives to give them hope and courage. I didn’t know what to write, & opened my Bible, praying that I would find the words to say. “God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.” Psalm 46:1-3.

We will not fear. This is the message of the Gulf Coast. As they seek to create the “new normal,” they do not fear. As Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, & the Gulf Coast struggle to rebuild in the shadows, in the darkness of the valley, many look to God’s love to sustain them. These people may have thanked us, but I am infinitely more grateful to them. They are my hope and my inspiration.

Love,
Kate

...Yeah, people from pre-college call me Kate. It's weird, I know. Anyways... I got second thoughts right before I posted this... started doing some web fact-checking... (FYI: all the numbers & statistics were as I was told them... so, as far as I know, they're accurate)... realized this was virtually impossible, but did come across one statistic, not that I was looking for, that blew me away--that there have been, as best as people can estimate, 61 million volunteers to the coast.