Salem Katrina Team Report November 28

It was wonderful to be back in church Sunday. So many happy questions about the Team's work at Katrina. It sure was great to see Ed, David, Rick and Karen. Morella, Wayne and Mary are stilll traveling. As mentioned frequently, Joan and I head back to the Gulf - me on December 8 and she flies in on December 19 along with our son Ben who flies in from college in Vermont. We'll first be volunteering at Christus Victor, the Lutheran church in Ocean Springs and then returning to Gautier Presbyterian in early January.

I'd like to give a brief very preliminary detailing of where most of our funds were spent these past several weeks, both to account to our church members and to show other teams what kind of expenses we all run across, helping in Katrina. Many other teams managed their budgets by simply driving to Gautier and working, covering their own fuel in a casual manner, then returning home. This listing does not include out-of-pocket expenses of team members who refused repayment (and these special people in the RV in front of me know who they are!), the expense of vehicles being taken to Gautier (other than fuel), or team members' plane tickets which they themselves paid. Neither does it include the very significant value of gifts such as the quilts, copiers, wood working equipment, medical supplies, generators, televisions, cleanup kits, phone systems or other donations the team took to Gautier - over two tons!

U-Haul trailer rental, 1 way - $294
Fuel (gas, diesel, propane, oil) - 2650
Food (team) - 1040
Tools (respirators, equipment, etc) - 780
Professional mold inspections (10 ea) - 1000
Bus Ticket for volunteer (per PDA) - 150
Cash for casual labor (per PDA) - 45
Propane stoves, radios, lantern - 195
Cash to PDA representative - 500
Lowe's, Home Depot supplies - 650
Gift to host church for rebuilding - 1250
Camp setup for PDA - 250
Office supplies for PDA - 200
Pastor's travel - 650
Held in reserve - 1000
Kitchen equipment - 250
Eye glasses for victim - 180
Eye glasses for victim - 100
Dentures gift for victim - 600
Molding, paint for victim - 100
Major First Aid kit & supplies for PDA - 290
5-gal fuel jugs for PDA - 21
Multi-fold ladder, wallboard equipment - 125
Printing, signs - 85
Postage - 15
Airport parking - 21
Electrician's fees for PDA - $250
Air mattresses & pillows (for PDA camp) - $65
Value of donated plane ticket for one team member's travel - 500
(note: we still have one unused $500 gift card for fuel, already totaled in fuel expenses above, needed for team member's drive back to Salem in January or February as they may decide)

We averaged about $100 per day of labor of team members including transportation, tools, relief supplies and the several types of PDA organization financial support. We could have simply gotten ourselves there and worked, because it turned out there was a functional kitchen and the tents were adequate, and many expenses we faced were optional , such as the professional mold inspections for the homes before we put the wallboard up- we could have elected not to pay for such things, but the budget allowed the team to provide such vital help and the money amounted to cash bullets to shoot at problems as we discovered them! Consider: The cost of this project compared very well to other missions, such as this year's Mexico Mission, which cost over $20,000 for much less on-site labor.

With our budget we addressed many individual victim's needs such as dentures, and we improved the PDA camp as well as the host church. It turns out we could have as easily not bought the food preparation items and some of the tools, but as recently as a couple days after we'd already started driving the PDA web site was still telling teams to bring their own "chuck wagon", water, fuel and other such basic items. PDA could help all of us by keeping such team and individual checklists current, if possible, and to make them as specific as possible depending on the camp teams are supporting. The needs in a disaster are quite different the first week versus the tenth week!

As team leader the responsibility for the use of our budget was mine. The standard I used was to spend with caution, as though it was my own money, which some of it was. I wanted to spend only for things which, if challenged by a reasonable friend at church, I'd be willing to cover at my own expense because I felt they were appropriate disaster-related items. Our team established an initial budget goal of $8500 and eventually raised $13,100. Donations were received from sister churches, First Presbyterian Church of McMinnville and First Presbyterian Church of Newberg, by our own missions committee, and by anybody else not fast enough to get out of Rick Pollan's way - he is a fund-raising champ!

Our next trip back to the Gulf entails no expense now that our vehicles are there, other than food for participants @ $10/day each plus whatever relief supplies a budget might support, such as more medical supplies or individual relief such as eye glasses and dentures again. The team members returning are covering their own plane tickets and their vehicles are already there, and their return fuel to Oregon already covered. The Gautier Presbyterian Church intends to rebuild their Sanctuary, but we have limited our support to improvements in the fellowship hall kitchen because that served as the PDA's money-saving, team-comfort, service-delivery base camp - we purchased modular kitchen counters for them, and provided office equipment and wireless Internet. We will continue to support Gautier by managing their blog site (www.gautierpresby.blogspot.com) and their web site (www.gautierpresby.com) which entailed no expense. We assisted other teams in setting up their own project blogs.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank everyone who so generously supported our team in this long project, especially our volunteers who gave both money and lots of sweat bringing help to the Gulf.
...for the Team,
Wes