Sunday!!!!

Mt. Pleasant UMC Turkey Hill area (first service Sunday morning)

St. Paul's ( second Sunday service and equipment base camp)

Vicente showing us his pictures from his previous trips

Bay St. Louis /Waveland area

This is all that remains of a church. The steeple dropped
straight down and survived the storm.

The bottom half of this house washed away the rest has
been standing like this since last year

Here I am Lord, Is it I Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.


I am here in MS for the next week hoping to accomplish something that will make life easier and better for someone who has suffered a lot since Katrina hit.

You would think that by now things would be decent but they are not. The grass that has grown over some of the lots that have been cleared can be deceiving for many people that have not been here before. They look beautiful in some cases, until you learn that someone used to live here. Even though you don’t know the individual, it still hurts. Sometimes it is the remaining stairs or some hints of a foundation, it still hurts. Some of these places I had seen in my many summers of vacationing here so I remember the beauty that used to exist. It will come back, in many places and for many individuals it already has. Hopefully I will help my team add one more.

Vicente Garcia

Today we visited 2 churches for service. First we went to Mt. Pleasant UMC in the Turkey Hill area. Rev. Moses typically preaches there but today we were blessed with having Tomas True from Indiana preach. It was a wonderful service full of praise and song. Next we headed over to St. Paul's UMC for a second service. Again typically Rev. Moses preaches but today we heard from David Schrader from Indiana. Again another great service.
After lunch we sat down and Vicente showed us pictures from his previous trips along with his sons power point presentation. ( Great job Gabriel! ) After seeing the photos a group went over to the areas of Bay St. Louis & Waveland. There has been a small amount of progress in these areas. While driving down the street all that's left of some homes are the slab of concrete they were built on. Some of the houses appeared to be untouched from over a year ago. Some of the houses and shops have been torn down while others have been reopened or now have people living in them. It's still devastating to see these historic buildings in disarray while seeing others that have been restored is very uplifting.
Tomorrow we will be back at our houses we are working on. We have a game plan for each one and high hopes to make some major changes.
We hope you are enjoying hearing about what we've been experiencing in these few days. We've learned that the more we tell the story the more people want to help, so please help us tell the stories and help this amazing community get back on it's feet.