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2008 Hurricane Relief Trip to Mississippi
On the morning of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near the Louisiana-Mississippi state line. In its wake, Katrina left more than 1,800 people dead and more than $81 billion in damage.
 In early fall of 2005, a team from First Presbyterian Church-Nashville along with members from the Mississippi Presbytery toured the destruction on the Louisiana-Mississippi coastline. The initial goal of the FPC-Nashville team was to locate a town and a church home base from which we and other volunteers could help renew and revitalize this devastated part of the world. With the help of the Middle Tennessee Presbytery, Long Beach Presbyterian Church in Mississippi was chosen.
Presbyterian teams from Nashville were quickly assembled, and the work to clean up the Long Beach Church and convert it into a Presbyterian outreach for the local community began. Showers were installed, bunkroom beds were  built, HVAC replaced, new carpet was laid, and a kitchen able to serve up to 100 mission workers at a time was readied. The Mississippi Presbytery hired an on-site manager to oversee the church and all the workers who were to follow.
The site manager receives requests for assistance via The Red Cross, Mississippi Disaster Relief and from other local agencies and churches. Today, the site manager, Van Richardson, has lived at the Long Beach Church for approximately a year. Since 2006, nearly 6,000 people have "bunked" at the Long Beach Church and FPC-Nashville has sent down teams each year.
Our recent trip to Mississippi was over Presidents' Day weekend. The team included Chris Cantrell, Trajan Carney, Mark Eberle, Mark Garey, Kevin Hughart, John Rose, Johnathan Rose, Lynne Smith, Tom Van Pernis and Elizabeth Wagster.
Along with our group staying at the Long Beach Church were teams from Maryland and Pennsylvania (approximately 50 people). Our group was sent to the construction site of a new home for Greg Cuevas in rural Pass Christian (about 20 minutes from the Long Beach Church). Greg is a 50-year-old man who has been living in a FEMA trailer since fall 2005. He lost his wife when she was 32 to cancer and right before the 2005 storm had a kidney transplant, which has left him unable to hold a fulltime job. We spent four days insulating, hanging drywall, mudding and caulking his new home. When we left Long Beach, the site-manager told us that other teams were right behind us. Greg will shortly have a new home and a fresh start following 2 ½ years of heartache. What a blessing it is to be apart of a community that has a heart for missions.
It is difficult to describe in words the destruction that sadly is still the focal point of the landscape in Mississippi, but it is safe to say that, with the continued support of the Presbyterian community at large, we will one day arrive in Long Beach with our towels and sunscreen instead of our hammers and saws, for the work will have been completed.
—Elizabeth Wagster
Katrina Relief Team Member |
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