I am honored to conduct a Starting Over Life Skills Class at the local shelters. It took me a while to find my niche for giving back. I realized the struggle of my youth helped me to connect with people and situations that some people may find too disturbing. It is so important for people to find a way to give back that fits their unique personality, skills and comfort level. It will be a little different for each person. My background allows me to relate to people who are struggling to survive and for me there is no greater reward than to help re-build hope, strength and confidence in their ability to meet the challenges these courageous people have before them!

It was my second trip to the area in as many months.

My first was with a group of Furman University students who are members of an on campus United Methodist group called Wesley Fellowship. It was their spring break and the second trip to the area for many in the group. Their choice had been a Habitat house in the Bahamas, or to return to the Gulf. They chose the Gulf. We worked in the small gulfside community of Pass Christian or “The Pass” as the locals call it. The Pass was on the northeast edge of the storm., usually the worst area for a hurricane. From the damage I saw, this storm was no exception. 90% ( and that’s conservative ) of all physical structures were either obliterated or severely damaged. No commercial structure of any kind was available for use for several weeks after the storm. Our task was to sheetrock the ceiling of one home and complete the finishing touches on another. The latter would be the finishing touches before the resident’s moved out of their 8’x25’ Katrina trailer where a single mom and two children had lived for most of the last 15 months. For the folks that got to work on the this home, it was a special joy. Most on this team had been to the area the year before and seen the destruction at it’s worse. The team shared that being able to help someone begin to return their life to normal ( as normal as life can be in this situation) was a special gift. The home that I worked on became known as the sheetrock house. For a team of virtually unskilled labor to be taught the art of hanging sheet rock, and get all of the ceilings done in 3 days, would require nothing short of divine intervention. We got it. Our teacher was Mike Zimmerman, formerly a bartender in Detroit, MI when the storm hit. He would watch the news hour after hour and the burden on his heart finally overpowered him. He told a few patrons that he had to go do something, even though he had no practical skills. Within 1 week, he sold most everything he had, raised almost 3000.00 in donations, postponed a pending marriage and left for the coast almost 750 miles away. He knew no one. He arrived 9 weeks after the storm on the steps of the first local church he found and just said “I am here to help, use me”. Today Mike literally can do anything. His fiancé now wife is a social worker and the two live in a garage apartment. They plan on staying as long as there is work. They’ll be there a long time.

Mike taught 3 of us how to hang sheetrock. By the third day, the first group had spun off 3 other teams. Mission accomplished at the Sheetrock House.

I really hadn’t planned on returning to the area but our Youth Director at my home church of Advent UMC, Gene Aiken, approached me and said he was a team leader short, could I help. I asked what will I be doing and his answer made me gasp, “sheetrock”.

Nothing I saw in the Pass prepared me for what I would see in St. Bernard Parish, a community outside of New Orleans. It wasn’t the utter destruction we had seen in Pass, it was just empty. Row after row, street after street of vacant house and buildings, dirty, gray, ceilings collapsed, waste.

Our temporary home in The Pass had been Diamondhead UMC, sleeping in their clean, air-conditioned Fellowship hall and eating in their spotless kitchen. Not to be in St Bernard Parish. We slept in a converted tiny community Methodist Church that had been completely submerged for nearly three weeks. Inside were concrete floors, stud walls , lots of dehumidifiers and fans. Bugs, Bugs and more Bugs. Each evening neighbors would come over and tell us their story. This is a common trait I have experienced on nearly every trip I have been on, people want to share their story. I had told the team the evening before we started about this learning. Take time to listen, you may be the closest thing to someone who cares they have ever met.

My recently acquired proficiency in sheetrock hanging was seriously a gift from the Lord. I spent the first day training 3 teams. Fortunately we had one among us who knew how to tape and mud ( spackle ). By the 3rd day we had 7 teams expertly hanging sheetrock. We completed one house for a guy name Matt. Matt has severe diabetes and is paralyzed in his left hand and foot. Nonetheless, he has done most of the work on his home himself. Matt’s spirit and attitude significantly affected us all. When we asked him how he had handled losing so much, his answer shook me, he said” I have never attached myself to much of anything, and I know who I should trust for everything else”.

Amazingly, we found one of Matt’s Mom’s prayers from a small prayer book he said she read all of the time. She had died 1 year before the storm and had left him the house. The name of the prayer was simply ‘Advent Prayer’. ( the irony wasn’t lost on us).

Most Holy God, as we prepare to celebrate your coming among us, help us to open our hearts to your presence, this Advent may we discover you in those with whom we live and work, especially the struggling and the needy. May we find words of gratitude for what we have and words of encouragement for those who despair. May we desire the coming of your kingdom, not just as a final fix at the end of time, but as a renewal of our hearts this very day. Amen.

When we found this 3 x 5 piece of paper, laminated to a board by filth and debris ( Matt’s house had been submerged up to the gutters for 3 weeks ) we had to pause and marvel at the miracle of this one piece of paper surviving volumes of water and being found 19months later by us, a group from Advent, 600 miles away, who were there simply to help.

Our other home was a single mom who was out of money. She said that just before the storm she had recommitted her life to Christ, walked away from 27 years at Kmart to start working with children. She said the temptation to get a better job at times was over powering. She said that she had kept praying that God would send her laborers to help her. She said over and over what an answer to prayer we were.

I encourage you to intentionally seek out anyway you can to help those who have many years of struggle ahead of them in this devastated area. As a local pastor said at church service we attended “ God has given us the opportunity to do a new thing, with our neighbors and our city”. I agree. Go, serve, give, pray.

An organization that regularly leads working teams is:

http://www.missionarysupply.org