Katrina Relief

Well, its official (and has been I guess for a week or so, but I'm just now mentally getting there).

I'm going with the college to work in Mississippi for a few days. Our group of almost 60 people (appx 1/4 adults, 3/4 students) will go to Picayune, Mississippi on November 2nd to aid in a variety of ways. We return early on the 7th in order for students to attend class and for the rest of us to go to work... or at least "be" at work...

Here is the link to the webpage: http://relief.ist.greenville.edu/drupal/

You can see my picture by going to leader pictures. (though today it wasn't working) If you look at student pictures, you'll see two of my small group women: Amber and Ashley. I'm glad to be taking this trip with them and to have the extra fellowship and learning time with them. There are a number of other INCREDIBLE men and women going as well.

I'm praying for the Lord's glory to be shown through us to the people there who are hurting.

We are helping out in the following ways (I may miss some, so this list is limited):
1) Debris clean up - picking up trees, etc from yards and homes, landscaping as needed (cutting down 1/2 dead trees, etc)
2) Roofing - replacing roofs on houses as needed
3) Construction - various odd jobs
4) Warehouse - the church we are working with is using a shopping mall for a warehouse (I think) and has a TON of stuff there (water, clothes, supplies) to be organized and distributed.
5) Counseling - the primary group we will be working with here are teachers. They were asked to move in before anything was cleaned/repaired and even before the power was turned on. We will be listening to them and encouraging them, as well as praying with them. (this is the ministry that I will be involved with at this point)
6) Delivery - delivery of yard debris to a drop off location and delivery of goods from the warehouse
7) Food - preparation and service of food to our group (two of the leaders also work with Sodexho, our on-campus food service and have volunteered to head up this ministry so that the church we are supporting doesn't have to try to feed us)

Thankfully we have a large group and so we'll try to break up into about 8-person teams with one or two adults on each team in order to facilitate the effective working on those projects. But in reality we are all going to be prepared to do whatever they need.

This weekend (columbus day holiday/fall break) the Free Methodist Church youth group took about 20 adults/students to Kiln, Ms to work on restoration there. They were planning to "mud-out" a school there (literally shovel residual mud left from the storm surges and flooding), however it hadn't been cleared by the EPA yet, so they have been working on mudding-out people's houses. In some cases the water line is only 3-4 feet deep, but they have to demo the walls down to the studs, as the standing flood-water has caused mold and other problems in the structure of the houses. Kiln is on the shore, about 5 miles away from the Northeast side of Bay St. Louis. At one point they were working on cleaning up a house 10 houses from the shore. You can imagine what they are seeing/experiencing. Hannah Groves (our youth pastor's daughter) told her mom that there is clothing stuck in all the trees - there are just shirts hanging everywhere.

Thanks for your prayers for that team, and for ours as we prepare to go.

Love, Tiff