Tonight all 22 of us were sitting in a place called Southern Tradition in Woolmarket (north and a little bit east of Bethel), eating catfish and shrimp and other things that I'm sure will be talked about once we get home. It was good to have every single person from our group together, as we've been doing different things in different places. Today I think I visited each one. Lee has spent the week working in the big tool shed up the street at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. He's been there all week, and he's ready to go back tomorrow for one more day- a busy one, probably. Many of our group were working at Patricia and David's house in East Biloxi, continuing to do wiring and other things and taking delivery of a bathtub/shower insert. Four more were at the Food distribution center at Good Shepherd during the morning. Isaac and I were working once again at the home of an elderly couple who are trying to move from their FEMA trailer back into their house. In the afternoon, five of us drove to Moss Point, 35 miles east, to try to work to set up contacts between Lutheran Disaster Response/Habitat for Humanity and a missionary church in an area that hasn't had much attention since the storm (see the picture below).
Even amid all of the roofs that have been repaired since I was here last (blue tarps everywhere back then, very infrequent now- in this area) the effects of the storm are never far away at all. At the restaurant this evening, I asked the owner what damage his place had had. He said that a tornado took the roof from part of the dining room, but was repaired quickly. While the power was out (nine days) he iced the food he had in storage and then got a generator, started cooking, put up a sign on the road, and fed people until he ran out of food.
Tomorrow those who have been working at the house site will be treated to lunch by the owners. I hope to be there too, although I haven't been among those doing that work. I met Patricia and David, the owners, today, and it was very sweet. Patricia (shown in the picture, in front of her house) started to cry when she saw some plants and flowers that people of our group had bought for her. I gave her a hug and told her that back in Renton the preschool kids and I sing God is so Good, so good to me. she said "Amen."
We had worship here last night. Christine played her flute, and Sue played guitar. Many of our people showed up without their shoes on, and now they are calling for a 'barefoot Sunday' sometime at Cross and Crown. It was well attended and felt good and right. When we invited everyone to say names out loud for the prayers, it was good to hear the names of people back in Washington, just as it was good to pray for M. tonight before dinner. We will have a busy day tomorrow, some goodbyes to say and some traveling to do. It will probably be sweet and very difficult at the same time. I think that the difficulty in saying goodbye to Mississippi is some kind of measure of the quality of the week that we've had.
-Pastor Glen