SUNDAY: Bible Study - 9:00 AM | Worship - 10:00 AM | PM Worship - 6:00 PM WEDNESDAY: Bible Class - 7:00 PM ~ 8110 Signal Hill Road Manassas, Virginia | Office Phone: 703.368.2622

Well, we are home from Katrina’s calm, after a week of exhausting and satisfying labor. We come home from this labor more refreshed and energized than when we left, as we knew we would.
Nine of us: Mike Woodfin, Scott McKeever, Lezlie Mann, Kristi Mann, Janet Johnson, Deborah Binkley, Larry Houff, Richard May, and I, left immediately after fifth Sunday fellowship, October 30, to work with the Rodenburg Ave. Church of Christ in Biloxi, MS. Two of our original team, Chuck and Jana Leasure, were unable to make the trip because each had a parent in very ill health. Three of us, Deb Binkley, Janet Johnson, and I, returned a day early because John Tucker was in dire medical distress (He has since stabilized and gone home).We had two auxiliary members of the relief team who didn’t plan to travel the thousand miles southeast to Biloxi. David Binkley connected with the Rodenburg Ave. congregation (he and Deb had been members there), and made the preliminary plans for us to go. Lurty Houff loaned us his truck, a faithful steed we used every day.
Mike Woodfin served as our work crew leader, and we couldn’t have wished for better. Mike can do nearly anything, and can figure out the rest. We accomplished more in a week than I imagined we could in a month, and this was largely due to Mike’s leadership and know-how. Lezlie Mann served as unofficial interior design leader. Her creativity on a tight budget left the Rodenburg Ave. church building looking like it had been completely remodeled. Janet Johnson, in addition to working all day in the building, ran the kitchen and kept us all (including a work crew from Florence, AL) full and happy. Deb Binkley was our designated navigator to, from, and around Biloxi. In addition to knowing where to find the best barbecue, she had once served a secretary at Rodenburg Ave, a connection which proved invaluable all week. Kristi Mann put in a full day’s work every day, and kept up with a full week’s school work. Richard May demonstrated that when it comes to painting he is a professional – I’ve never seen anyone tape and cut a room as perfectly, and if you stayed out of sight, you could catch him exercise his chops on the guitar. Larry Houff was our other team member who had the right tools and knew how to use them. He worked uninterrupted (except for meals, he was a stickler for meals) sunup to sundown, with the burden of often being yoked to the preacher on a job. Scott McKeever, minister of the Bridge Street church, in New Martinsville WV, was new to the group, but he immediately became a familiar part of our family. Scott worked alongside Mike all week, and we will always think of him as one of our own – a dear friend as well as a dear brother in Christ.
Running the relief operation in Biloxi is Joe Powers. Joe’s son Bill, you will remember was recently a member here, and deacon of small groups. Joe, though in his early seventies, works 16+ hours a day – distributing help, running errands, unloading trucks, stacking washer-dryers, and doing any of the hundred other things that need to be done each day. He and his wife Melba were such loving hosts that they made Biloxi home for the week we were there.
We spent most of the week working on the church building. Although only about 100 yards from the Gulf (you can see it from the church’s front yard), the building sustained little structural damage. There was a lot of secondary damage to the interior and the exterior of the building, though. After hosting up to a hundred relief workers at a time in their building, the members longed to get their church back. I remember from my times doing flood relief how discouraging it is, week after week, to feel your church (your home) will never be the same again – that there will always be ugliness, and damage, and cases of toilet paper stacked in the hallways. The folks in Biloxi will be doing relief for a year or more, and it was important to give them their church, their home, back. Joe Powers saved that important job for our team, and we were honored to complete all the work we were given, and more.
It may be cliché to say that the devastation was unimaginable, but it is nonetheless true. You could drive and drive and never get away from the houses turned to rubble. Antebellum mansions that had survived the Yankees, and Camille were splintered as if made of matchsticks by Katrina’s force. Every second home was gutted and every third home was gone. We often saw spray painted on gutted houses, “We are fine, thank the Lord.” We saw, even more often, “Will Shoot to Kill.” We saw Janet Johnson (a Cowboy fan) wear a Redskins jacket. We saw Mike Woodfin (a Ford man) drive around all week in a Chevy truck. We saw a full-size freezer 16 feet up in a tree. We saw a pile of rubble topped by a framed set of military medals, and another topped by a family Bible. We heard from the brethren at Vancleave of a family out in the country, just rescued, whose three young children all have dysentery, and are not likely to live.
We saw the power of God - the power of God in nature, and how our best designs and technologies are like children’s toys in the face of natural force – and the power of God inside the human person. We have in us the vital spark, the breath of God, and this survives (anyone who has ever helped Joe Powers stack washing machines knows this to be true). Perhaps that, more so than the joy of being useful, and being together, was the great gift we carried home with us from Biloxi, and Katrina’s calm.

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