First Pres Salem Katrina Team Report from Gautier November 6

We arrived today to complete devastation. "Send help" is the only message we can relay to friends at home. The damage is awesome. Two months after the event, two months after thousands of people starting recovery work, it looks like it happened yesterday.

This writer has seen fires, floods, earthquakes, chemical explosions and wars, but just ten minutes of seeing what Katrina has done to Gautier tops all that. Thank God the loss of life was somehow "only" what it was.

Most of our team arrived today, joining Morella who'd been working here already. In fact, we were driving in and saw Mary and Wayne in their RV right behind us as we pulled into the church. We were in time to attend worship services with Pastor Chris Bullock giving a strong message of hope and confidence. Communion was served using their new service, as the old was destroyed in the storm. Then we immediately set to work unloading our gear and the gifts we brought with us for Gautier. Mary and Wes did dinner for the camp, serving about 25 hungry souls who'd been working following services this morning.

Tomorrow, Mary and Wes will subject the campground to our cooking again, offering a hot breakfast for their first time in weeks. On the menu...scrambled eggs, ham steaks, coffee and grits! Then our team joins the other volunteers, mostly from Pennsylvania and Maryland, in working on local homes.

A lesson learned tonight. As our teams empty what is obviously rubbish from ruined homes, we need to remember that these things are storm victims' precious posessions. Throwing away damaged photographs, grandma's bureau, dad's old uniform, these things hurt. They're trying to let go and its hard. We heard one team describe helping a homeowner cut several downed pines away from his roof. That man's father planted those pines the day he got back from World War II. It hurt.

Keep us in your prayers. Please send money to help these folks.