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September 18, 2005
Day Three - Seeking Divine Guidance (and a Wi-Fi hotspot)
We awoke early on Sunday morning and joined the other volunteers for breakfast. We then next spoke with the Chaplin of the volunteers who had been meeting with local pastors. He said that he would try to get us some phone numbers of people we could speak with. A father of a former student contacted us and said that he might be able to locate some potential students as well and would be in touch.
We next attended the church service where the pastor spoke on Overcoming Doubt. After the service, we had a table set up in the lobby to speak with people about the school and our relief effort. Unfortunately, no one had any information that led to finding any displaced families with children in 6th-12th grade.
After lunch a local volunteer gave us a list of numbers to call for contacts in the local board of education. Among the 70+ volunteers at the church, we had one phone line in which to access the internet and then only if you had a dial-up account. Neither of us had one, so that was a hurdle we would face later on.
We hopped in Spirit One and headed to Grace Memorial Baptist in Slidell based on a recommendation we had received. We had been warned that the devastation was much worse than what we had previously seen. Slidell had been hit by a 30ft swell from Lake Ponchatraine during the hurricane. Grace Memorial was one of the few, if not only church, that had not been affected. Upon arriving, we saw a flurry of activity by the volunteers. We located the youth pastor who directed us to his office through a fellowship hall that had been converted into a warehouse of supplies. My heart went out to the tired looking pastor as I saw the condition of what a few weeks before had been his nice office. It too now held supplies and was in disarray. We told him about our mission and asked if he knew of anyone that we might contact. He had none at the time other than recommending that we head over to 1st Baptist of Slidell. It had been flooded by 4ft of water, but was also a relief station for victims. We gave him our card and he said he would call us if he had anyone that we could speak with. Before we left, we asked the pastor where he had been during the storm. He said that the church had brought some of those in hospice care from the congregation to the church. Grace Memorial Baptist was built to resist up to 200mph winds. So he rode out the storm there with them. He also mentioned that he did not know what would happen to their town. Economically, they were dependent upon New Orleans. If people did not return there to work, he did not know what would happen.
We said our goodbyes and headed to 1st Baptist. Our directions did not seem that difficult, but we got very lost. We stopped and asked for directions at a gas station and became more lost. Then all of a sudden, we looked to our left and there was the church. Divine Guidance. The church was very large and had two mammoth tents set up on the front lawn. Under them were clothing supplies for all ages and supplies of food. We found one of the pastors, covered in sweat, busily working with the boxes of supplies. He asked if we were volunteers, stating that he had work to be done. We told him we were from FUMA and that we were looking for families that we might help. He sent us to find the head pastor. We found another church employee that said that the head pastor was not on site then, but directed us to the youth pastor. Steve and he immediately hit it off. The pastor was impressed by our offer, but also did not know of anyone. However, he took our card and said that he had a meeting with the head pastor in the morning and would give us a call if anything came up. As we were leaving we smelled a strong stench. Steve looked down and noticed the ground was covered with dead fish.
We headed back to 1st Baptist of Picayune for the night. I really wanted to get out my first two journal entries, but did not have access to the Internet. My laptop has a nice Wi-fi Internet finder on it, so I activated it as soon as we drove into Picayune. We quickly got a hit and drove closer to the signal, which was coming from a business RV that was set-up to help the victims. I quickly jumped on the signal and sent out the email. Then we headed back to the church for dinner and rest. Tomorrow we would head to Gulfport and Bay St. Louis.
Posted by thompsod at September 18, 2005 02:37 PM