Saturday - Pearlington

Our final work day of this mission trip.
Many of the groups that were in camp when we got here on Thursday night left yesterday or today,so we were the only group out working today. We went back to the same house that we started yesterday and continued hanging sheetrock. We made more progess today than yesterday and by the end of the day we had finished the kitchen, the pantry, a small closet, one low wall in the entry hallway and one wall in the great room. All in all we think we did a pretty good job. It certainly looks different than when we started on Friday morning.



We got Pat and Jamie to tell us their story of the hurricane. When the water started rising and coming in the house, they thought it might only get a couple of feet deep. As the water continued to rise, they moved to the upper level. They have a beautiful german shepherd named Zeke who was about one year old at the time.



As the water rose, he was sitting on the sofa as it started to float around the living room. Since he had never been taught to climb the stairs, they had to carry him upstairs. As the water continued to rise, they made their way onto the roof over the garage and from there to the second story roof. They were on the roof for about an hour, when a neighbor who had a boat picked them up and carried them to a house in the neighborhood that is on stilts. It is also on a slight rise, so it was higher than their house.The house had been for sale for four years and was vacant so they broke a window to get in. About 35 people, 15 dogs and 1 cat spent the next three days in the house before the National Guard brought them meals ready to eat (MRE) and
drinking water. (The flood waters had receded in about eight hours.) When the police showed up in five days, they told them that there was food,water and ice in Waveland which is about 15 miles from Pearlington. The survivors explained to the police that no one had a working vehicle. The police took their two cars to Waveland and loaded them to the top with food, water, and ice and brought it back to the residents. Makes our day to day problems seem kind of insignificant.

Pat and Jamie have been 'recovering' for the last eight months. Jamie admitted that it was often discouraging to see the slow pace of recovery, but that the only way to make things better is to just keep working and to not feel sorry for yourself. They were very appreciative of the work that we did for them and even offered us the use of their trailer to take showers or to sleep if we were uncomfortable at the PDA camp.

When we got back to camp, a group of eight ladies from New York city had arrived to work for a week, so we had company for dinner (hamburgers on the grill). As this is being written (about 8:45 pm local time), we are under a severe thunderstorm/tornado watch and may have to evacuate to the local elementary school which is about three miles away. It appears that the storm may be going north of us, but we will just have to wait and see. Most of us are sitting in the main food tent waiting for storm updates. We have already had one short but very intense rain storm.

Now at 9:30 pm we are told we are being evacuated to the school so we pack up all our stuff and drive to the school. It was converted to a relief center after the storm and is still functioning as that today.



We are sleeping in the auditorium on cots and it is actually pretty comfortable. The gym was converted into a distribution center for free food and clothing and other supplies. They named it 'Pearl Mart'. One of the signs in Pearl Mart said 'We will not be undersold'.



You just never know what adventures await you on a mission trip!

Check out tomorrow's posting to see how we did.

Good night from Pearlington!