This morning we enjoyed a traditional Presbyterian church service at Westminster Presbyterian here in Gulf Port. Westminster has also been at the center of many service projects within the community. There projects have been made possible by a generous congregation and many volunteer groups that have come to help. At any one time they can house and manage work for as many as 150 volunteers.

After the church service we met up with Mark White from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Mark prvided us with a guided tour of the area in Biloxi where PDA is performing a great deal of work. Mark has a lot of stories of the people who live in the community, most from people he has met and shared meals with. One great story was of the family that waited out the hurricane in the attic of their home. This little home, with a little attic was the refuge for a small family of five. The water rose up to the attic. A small child that was in the attice mis-stepped and fell through the roof into the water, and behind him was a mother and infant. The father went after them. The family survived and eventually the father ended up rowing his boat from home to home saving neighbors from their attics and trees.

There were many strange sights that we saw during our tour with Mark, and he gave us many more stories. We took some pictures of some of the more spectacular pictures we could capture, though it remains immpossible to capture the vastness of the damage. One of the stories we heard was told at the sight of this picture below. This piano once found its home inside of the only shelter for the homeless on the Gulf Coast. The shelter was opperated by the Methodist church. It once was a beacon of hope in this small coastal community. The shelter housed six people during the storm, of which only 3 survived. The work of this shelter will continue, although likely at another site.


The Gulf Coast will obviously never be the same. Neither the landscape or its inhabitants will ever live down the day the Katrina took their jobs, homes, and for some their families. Many of the folks we spoke to whom are long time residents told stories of "Camille", a hurricane that swept through this same region in 1969. The residents spoke as though it was yesterday.

All in all, the observation is that the people who live here in the Gulf are rather resiliant people. They appear to be determined to pick themselves up and start their lives all over again, as though they never lost their jobs or homes.

Our tour with Mark ended and we completed our evening with dinner at a local restaurant. We returned to our housing at Handsboro Presbyterian, which though is not home for us, is a far greater accomodations than the residences of Biloxi have been left with.

We ended our eveinging with high spirits as we look forward to rejoining our families at home.