Greetings, everyone!

I never got a chance to post to the blog before we left for Biloxi – there just wasn’t time. And I didn’t get a chance to post to the blog while we were in Biloxi – there just wasn’t time there, either. So, now that we’re home, I’m going to give it a try. Too many things happened to try and talk about them individually, and anyway – hearing about it just isn’t the same as living it. So, I’ve decided to focus on something I learned instead. I learned that I’ve never really understood what is “possible”.

Following is a list of things that, before Biloxi, I would not have believed were possible. I was wrong…

- Housing 100 volunteers per night in a church the size of Cross and Crown – not for a night or two, but night after night, week after week and month after month
- A Mississippi Power truck that drives down a street of homes in a mostly deserted neighborhood where almost no one even has power just when you will have to stop work because of a seal on the power box that can only be opened after consultation with the power company, and actually stops when suddenly pursued by a band of dirty, sweating, shouting and excited strangers
- Cooking two meals a day for 100 in a kitchen just a bit bigger than mine at home, with a single ordinary kitchen stove with one oven (not a commercial stove and oven) and a single, home-style dishwasher – again, not for a day or two, but day after day, week after week and month after month
- Turning a two-stall horse trailer into a portable shower facility with just a little bit of imagination, two pre-formed shower stalls, and some pipe
- 100+ people living day in and day out in a church with a four-stall ladies’ room, a two-stall/two-urinal men’s room (so I am told), one handicapped restroom, and one plain, ordinary bathroom, with shower, off the sacristy
- A family that has lost everything, including their car and pet dog, and still manages to greet strangers with a friendly smile, words of welcome and greeting, and encouragement in time of our loss and need
- A store clerk willing to personally deliver the very last tub enclosure available to a house where no one lives on the same day it is purchased
- A home nearing the move-in stage, thanks to unknown strangers who mucked the house out and fixed the roof, Methodists who hung the sheetrock, and Baptists from Tennessee who perfa-taped and mudded (and, they were willing to let us use the one working john for blocks around!)
- Getting 100 hot, sweaty, dirty and tired volunteers through three showers with enough success that no one not in on the secret would have believed that showers were in short supply
- A competent business woman and mother, acting as an electrician in a pinch, fishing a wire through one hole, around a blind 90 degree corner, and out another hole – on the first try
- With Andy's help and expertise, cooking seven turkeys in one oven in one day and having them ready to serve for dinner at 6:00
- Three vehicles (two with over 100,000 miles already logged) safely driving 6,408 miles each in a matter of days with no more trouble than a flat tire and a failed re-tread

I pray that I will never view what is “possible” with the same blind eyes again…

Mark 9:23 – “Everything is possible for him who believes.”

Yours in Christ,
Melodie Campbell