Salem Katrina Team Report for January 2

Happy New Year, folks! We are excited about a new year of service and of happy family developments.

We enjoyed Christmas with our old friend Clara Webster and we were invited to worship on Christmas Eve at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville. Those great folks loaded a UHaul trailer for us to take back to Gautier, bringing new microwaves, television, beds, stoves and a washer-dryer. These goods were distributed to needy storm victims, thanks to Pam Martin, Gautier's Disaster Assistance Coordinator.

Pastor Chris Bullock emailed us that his church was filling up with volunteers, so we have relocated our little group, joining Christus Victor Lutheran Church in nearby Ocean Springs.

Ben, our youngest son, has volunteered at this church's distribution warehouse, where families affected by Katrina can get clothing, food, appliances...the "stuff" of life necessary for existance after the storm. Ben loves the hard work and great crowd of adults and youth he's working with. I'll continue doing case work with area veterans, which I've found very rewarding.

Joan continues to do her wallboarding and other hard work, but today was a change as she offered to drive other volunteers to their flight departing from New Orleans airport, about 100 miles away. Our local Gulfport airport had terrible fog which forced nearly every flight to be cancelled.

Dan Grimes, the area supervisor for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, came over to recover the PDA name badges we'd been given by Julie when we first registered at Gautier Pres. Seems we aren't allowed to put our photos on the cards we were given...only PDA officials can do that. He explained further the differences between the Presbyterian Church and the PDA, and why their logo, etc. cannot be used by churches. I gather, as he explained it, that the name badges we were first given should not have been pre-printed with their PDA logo on them as that would have implied that the volunteers were working as part of the PDA. These badges had the PDA logo at the top with the volunteer's name and city below, and were on a string which included a luggage tag from PDA also. These are identical to the cards distributed at the D'Ibverville camp, so I'm still confused.

Good news: Dan is having his stitches removed today and is obviously feeling better following treatment.