Words from Phil

Much More to Do

2006-05-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

I can see a big difference in the number of homes with blue tarps now vs. last December when I first visited the Gulf Coast. There are many fewer homes with blue tarps and more new roofs. But, I continue to be amazed at how much more there is to do. Today proves my point.

This morning we had two men that finished their job of the last four days. They are leaving tomorrow so today was there last day to work. Scrambling around, as is somewhat the case right after breakfast, I called a lady that I had promised a few days ago to go see. When she met us at her house, which is uninhabitable, we saw a home that had been untouched (except for a now severely tattered blue tarp) since Katrina, almost nine months ago. As we surveyed what needed to be done to start gutting the inside of her home and begin the rehab process, she was brought to tears because she had lost hope that her house would be fixed up. So her tears were tears of gladness that help had started and also tears of sadness for the nightmare she has lived for the last nine months. All of this is coupled with some severe personal problems that she is dealing with.

This afternoon I stopped by another home on my list. There was no one home at this other uninhabitable house. I then remembered that I was to call the resident and he would meet me at his house to let me in. It was close to six o'clock when I called and he was unable to come right then. So I set an appointment to meet him the next day. I am sure we will be able to start the rehab process on his home next week by putting a new roof on his house.

The need for skilled workers continues to be strong as the work on the coast has progressed from cleanup to many houses being roofed to lots of work on the inside needed. This is slower work and usually requires more skill.

More later.

Volunteers

2006-05-08T19:46:00.000-07:00

Volunteers come in all sizes and shapes and with different skills. I continue to be amazed by those that come to help out on the Gulf coast.

Last week and continueing on into this week we have a group of 9 from upstate New York (one man can see Canada from his backyard!), a group of 4 from Georgia, a married couple from Illinois, a 23 year old young man from Colorado and 2 bobcat operators from North Carolina! Plus the Georgia group had 7 that joined us for last Thursday through Sunday. This last group-I'll call them the SWAT team-had 4-5 guys that could do anything. They worked long hours and accomplished very much, working on a house in Pass Christian that had over 20 feet of water in itfrom Katrina! This house is close to being ready for the owner to move out of her FEMA trailer and back into her home. Our friends from NY include 2 men with very strong electrical and plumbing skills plus other very good helpers and handyman types. The 4 men from GA, 3 retired with 1 still on "active duty", have tackled many varied tasks including insulation, sheetrock and flooring.

So as I survey the past few days, I continue to be amazed at how God always provides the volunteers with the right skills needed at the time. Why should I be surprised? Our God is a God with unlimited strength and with wisdom that is all-knowing. I fret over the details and how everything will get done. God knows the answer to my problems before I even realize I have a problem. Our God truly is an awesome God!

The Blessing of the Tarp

2006-04-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

Tuesday afternoon I visited with a resident on our list of homeowners needing help. It was my first time to her home. I was puzzled when I pulled up in front of her house. Her old home had a tree crash into her roof from Katrina. Needing help, she hired someone to repair her home. She paid them $4,000 and bought materials with the remainder of her insurance money. For this, they started building a house around her old house. The got some walls up and part of the roof. The new structure formed a horseshoe around her old house. It was very strange looking indeed.

When they found out that they had gotten all of her money, they left. She was left high and dry. Well, not actually dry. For when I was completing my visit, a severe thunderstorm blasted the area. We were inside her house and water started pouring in. I do not mean drips, I mean major streams. She pulled out buckets, pots and pans-anything to catch the river from above. She was very distraught. To make matters worse, the FEMA trailer parked in her driveway has major mold problems from leaks in it. So she can’t live in her FEMA trailer and FEMA will do nothing to help.

Early today (Wednesday), we sent a crew of three people out to her house with a large tart to cover her roof and to put a temporary fix to water flowing into her house when it rains. As they arrived, the rains started again. But they got her roof covered and got soaking wet themselves. After the tart was on, they prayed with the homeowner. She was so thankful, tears flowed from her eyes.

So, another home on the list of many that still need help. Another person bilked by someone taking advantage of another’s misfortune. Also, another opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

What We Need

2006-04-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

If you read this blog and know of people with plumbing, electrical, carpentry and/or drywall skills, please have them contact ReConstruct at www.reconstruct.org or 1-800-485-2038. The unskilled volunteers have come in great numbers and have done tremendous work. We now need skilled volunteers that can spend time completing the work. Please contact those you know that can help and have them contact us.

Thank you and may God bless you.

Week 3

2006-04-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

I have just completed week 3 on the Gulf Coast. Last Friday I made my first trip to Bay St. Louis, which is near Waveland. I have been told that this area was near where the eye came ashore. After seeing the homes and businesses there, I believe it. It looks like a war zone. House after house vacant with no activity and very little sign of life. I was out in the "country", not in the town area. I can only imagine being closer to the water with more houses, more buildings.

The home we are working on there had water up to the ceiling. The homeowner decided to ride the storm out in his house. Bad decision. He lived 2-3 miles inland and had survived other hurricanes. As the water rose in his house, he knew it was time to leave. But all his doors were stuck because the water had swollen the wood, making them impossible to open. He tried to kick out a window. No luck here either. Finally, with water shoulder deep and rapidly rising, he started squeezing out of his bathroom window. This was the side of the house away from the ocean. But the window would not stay up and was clutching/trapping him as he tried to escape. To save himself, he had to twist around and exit face up, so he could hold the window open with one hand while using the other to push his way out. Oh, by the way, he was carrying his small dog with him while navigating his exit. He is not a little man - 6'2", 200+ pounds.

He did escape to spend the next six hours in a tree with his dog.

He had left his other 2 dogs on the roof of the house. He had no other choice. After 6 hours outside and as the water receeded, he went back in his house, with the water still several feet deep. He opened the door to a bedroom to see his 2 "roof dogs" floating on top of a mattress. No one really knows how they got back in the house.

His mother, who lived nearer to the coast, died in the storm. Her body was not recovered until 4 weeks later.

As he told me his story, I could tell that it was therapy for him. Here it is, almost 8 months after the storm and I am sure it seems like yesterday and also in another lifetime, simultaneously.

Yesterday, I found myself complaining about some minor inconvenience I was experiencing. How dare I complain about anything! I stopped and counted my blessings. My home has not been flooded with 8' of water, my possessions washed away, my loved ones swept away. God, let me always be thankful for your goodness, grace, protection and mercy.

Working Together

2006-04-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, something neat happened. We went to a house that was on our list of homeowners needing assistance. When we arrived, we discovered that the lady (Ms. B.) who owned the home had paid a contractor to put a new roof on. The contractor did not finish the job, so we are going to complete the work for her.

While we were there, we met a group of five students and their leader from Washington state that were moving furniture inside Ms. B.’s house. They were on spring break and had come with 50-60 students and leaders from their church in Washington state to the Gulf Coast to assist homeowners. Their group was staying in Bay St. Louis at a church. They were getting rooms cleared of furniture so that ceilings and walls that had water damage could be torn out. (Ms. B. is living in a FEMA trailer next to her house.) They were done moving the furniture but didn’t know what they should do next and asked if we could give them some guidance. And we did. We took them to each room and gave instructions of what to tear out. Then we told them we would be back after lunch to check on them and show them what to do next.

So, we had two guys from Tennessee working with one faith based organization that had been able to connect with six guys from a church in Washington that were working with another faith based organization. All had landed at Ms. B.’s house in Gulfport, MS for different reasons but with the same goal - to help someone in need.

Before we left we all joined hands and prayed. As we were leaving, Ms. B. said, “If it was not for the churches, we (people on the Gulf Coast) would all be in trouble. They have been our saviors.”

“There’s a sweet, sweet spirit….”

2006-04-11T19:27:00.000-07:00

How can you remain positive in the face of adversity? How can you smile when you feel sorrow for those around you in need? How can you see hope when your home has been damaged so badly that it is uninhabitable? How, how, how…? When I see and talk to the people here in Gulfport and surrounding communities, I ask myself, “How can they cope with the greatest natural disaster in the history of the US?”

In my one week here, I can truly say that I have not encountered anyone, including residents that have been displaced from their homes, that is bitter. It has been a lesson for me in persistence and remaining hopeful in the face of struggles. I believe that people’s faith in God has given them hope and probably this disaster has caused many to reconsider what is truly important in life. I also believe that since practically everyone has had their life disrupted by hurricane Katrina, the folks on the coast share a much, much deeper appreciation for the trials and tribulations of their neighbors because they have been, and continue to go through, the same experience.

I once heard a speaker say that adversity in a group brings that group closer together. There has been a very large group (residents on the Gulf Coast), the members of which have almost all been severely affected by Katrina. When one homeowner laments to another about the devastation they have suffered, the one that says, “I know how you feel”, speaks those words in truth. They do know how their neighbor feels because they, too, have struggled and suffered.

The stories of individuals and organizations reaching out to help those in need stretches across age, gender, race and religion. I would like to share with you how one church, Grace Memorial Baptist Church in Gulfport, MS, has helped in the rebuilding process in the Gulf area.

Have you ever had a weekend guest that announced on Sunday that they would be staying a “few more days?” You swallow, say OK and then adjust. What if they said, at the end of that week, that they would stay a few more days? Whew! Well, the folks at Grace Memorial have had from 20 to 150 volunteers housed in their church each week for over seven months. And I cannot say enough about how the members of Grace Memorial have welcomed volunteers into their church by housing them in their church home. When I say “Thank you” to the church members for opening their doors to volunteers coming from across the country, they immediately respond with how thankful they are for the thousands that have come to help. The volunteers sleep in the church building in the classrooms and eat in the church’s fellowship hall. Basically, the church is the volunteer’s home away from home for the days they are serving.

The church members are warm and welcoming. They greet all with a smile. They embrace those that have come to help. They are God's people with a sweet, sweet spirit.

2006-04-06T17:37:00.000-07:00

It’s Thursday and I am coming to the end of my first week on the Gulf Coast. One of my first tasks has been to go out and visit the homes of people who have applied for assistance. They have filled out an application with CBMI and its been my job to visit their home, assess the damage and see if we can use volunteers to fix their homes. Many people have received some amount of insurance settlement for the damage they sustained from last year’s hurricanes. But very rarely is it enough to cover the cost of the necessary repairs. That’s where the good folks who are donating their labor (and many times other things as well) come in. Plus many people did not have insurance and are searching for help of any kind.

We start our days with a devotional time after breakfast. One of the volunteers is asked the day before if they will lead the next day’s devotional. After this brief devotional period, the floor is opened up for any thing the group has that they want to share. Usually it involves an interaction with the resident they are helping, the resident’s children or some other personal observation about their volunteer experience. Today a man from Ohio spoke up. He is here with his nine-year-old son, Avery. He talked about how that, years from now, when someone mentions Hurricane Katrina and the destruction it caused, Avery will be able to say that he saw it first hand and that he and his dad helped repair a man’s home that had been damaged. What a legacy!

This weekend a group of about 30 from my home church, Brentwood Baptist in Brentwood, TN, will be here to volunteer. They will stay all next week. While they are here, they will put new roofs on four homes! But more importantly, they will be the hands and feet of Jesus, just as countless others before them have been.

2006-04-04T03:49:00.000-07:00

My day started with my personal devotional time at 5:30 am. Breakfast was at 6:00 am followed by a devotional at 6:30 led by a youth minister from a church in Cookeville, TN. Next we went around the room and voiced the different churches and cities the volunteers were from. Then there was the usual hectic situation of getting groups off and running on a Monday morning.

It’s been a crazy first day in the field! It is a challenge matching the skills of the volunteer group to the jobs available. Also, since they have been short handed down here, there is not a backlog of homes that have been assessed so we can pull just the right job out of the bag for a volunteer group. There is such a great need for SKILLED workers-carpenters, electricians, plumbers, dry wall hangers/finishers. The needs are so great it can be overwhelming.

Tomorrow I will start lining up work for crews coming in next week when I should be working three weeks out. That is my goal-to have the jobs scheduled three weeks out.

But, above all, I must not forget that the main reason to be here is to be a positive witness for Jesus Christ. I must continue to remind my task driven self of this very most important point!

It’s now 11:20 pm on Monday April 3, 2006. Nite-nite.

Day 1

2006-04-01T18:56:00.000-08:00

At 8:15 today, I left for Gulfport, MS. When I arrived about seven plus hours later and stopped to fill up the truck, I noticed that there was a group washing cars in a bank parking lot next door to the gas station. Since the truck hood was covered with southern fried Mississippi bugs, I decided to pay my 10 bucks and have the truck washed. As it turned out, the car washers were from a half way house and were earning money for their house. They did a great job! I was so impressed, that I gave them some extra pay for how hard they worked.

After gassing up the CLEAN truck, I headed to Grace Memorial Baptist Church here in Gulfport. This will be my home for the next six months. My room is about 10x10 and has a window! I will sleep there and also set up my office there as well. It is a room not being used by the church as a classroom so I won’t have to clear out or pick up my stuff each week. Plus when I go home for the weekend, I can leave stuff as is and it will not be in anybody’s way.

When I got here there were supplies to unload, my personal stuff to drag in and the task of just trying to figure out who’s who. There are a few people that are here on a semi-regular basis helping Joe out.

Joe has sold his house (he lived in north MS) and was not able to be here today. He had to go home and pack. He will be back tomorrow.

There is group of 30 from FL that arrived last night and worked today and will work tomorrow and then will travel back home tomorrow afternoon. A crew of seven arrived tonight from Cookeville, TN. Part of the team will cook for the 90+ people in next week and the rest will serve on construction projects. This next week there will be 22 folks from Norwalk, OH (about a 14 hour drive), a group of 8 from Fishers, IN, and a group of 20 from Barnsville, GA. There will also be a hand bell team from Michigan (I think) that will be staying at the church as well. Plus I think someone else is coming-I just don’t know who!!

Someone from the FL group came in as I was composing this post and was asking me questions about what they were supposed to do tomorrow. Of course, I had no clue what to tell her, so I just gave her my card and phone number in case I do not see them in the morning. They are planning to start work about 6:30 EDT, which is 5:30 here. So I will try to get up and see them off. Here we go!

T -6 Days till Blast Off

2006-03-26T13:40:00.000-08:00

I leave for Gulfport, MS Saturday April 1. I will be helping to coordinate the repairs of homes in the Gulfport area that were damaged by hurricane Katrina in 2005 by using volunteers from churches from all across the country. There is another organization, Church Building Ministries, Inc. (CBMI) that has been in Gulfport since right after the hurricane. They have done a great job meeting with residents in need, lining up homes to be worked on and coordinating the volunteers that come down to work. I will be working alongside the CBMI folks and doing whatever I can to assist in the process.

So, how did I get here? Well, I work for a Christian nonprofit called ReConstruct. ReConstruct uses youth groups from churches to do home repairs for low-income homeowners. The bulk of our work has been done in Nashville, TN. So I am used to meeting residents, assessing what work needs to be done and working with the volunteers when they are in town for a week long project.

In 1999, God called me to work for ReConstruct. I left my accounting job in industry where I had worked for 22 years. The song "Dive" by Steven Curtis Chapman was a song that spoke to me back in '99 because I really was diving into something new and trusting that God knew what he was doing (of course, He always does!). Now I am diving into a new challenge.

Back to the present. After the hurricanes hit last summer, one of ReConstruct's shower trailers landed in Gulfport at Grace Memorial Baptist Church, which as it turned out, was where CBMI was housing volunteers that had come to help the hurricane victims. So we got to know Joe Brewer at CBMI and see the work they were involved in.

In December 2005, my home church, Brentwood Baptist Church in Brentwood, TN, collected a missions offering, a major portion of which is to be used to assist hurricane victims. Brentwood Baptist has committed a portion of the missions offering to be used for building materials and to help ReConstruct work along side CMBI in getting more homes repaired.

So here I am, headed for the Gulf Coast.

Later.

Phil's first post

2006-03-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

Hey, this is my new blog. At 55, I will be adding comments from my perspective as to family , job and my soon to be 6 month stay in Gulfport, MS. More to come on this.