MDS Trip

On November 1, I (Brian) left Kidron for a short term mission trip in Pass Christian, MS for a week. We left at midnight on Saturday and drove straight there, which took 17 hours. We took a walk on the beach when we got there and here's some pictures from the beach.

I was amazed at the amount of destruction that still exists in Pass Christian. Here is a pier that once extended far into the Gulf.
This was called the "stairway to heaven." This was a fairly common site. A lot of houses were swept away by the water and all that was left were the pilings and the stairs. Where we were, the water was about 25 feet high (2 miles inland.) At it's highest point, the storm surge was estimated to be 30-37 feet high. The water travelled 5 miles inland and caused most of the destruction. In the small town of Pass Christian (about 8,000 homes), all but 500 were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Only about 40% of it's resdients have come back to the area.
A local artist was making carvings out of trees that were killed by storm. This was one example.

Here is what our Mennonite Distaster Service (MDS) site looked like. There was one trailer for the dining room, one trailer for a women's dorm, and one for a men's dorm. They had a nice setup and had things well organized.

Here is the dining hall. They had three cooks on staff who cooked a hot breakfast and supper every day for us. They also laid out all of the food for us to pack our own lunches. The food was great and we had a great time chatting and getting to know others. There was another group of 8 from the Souderton, PA area, and 12 long term volunteers there, so there was plenty of people to talk to. Here we are taking our afternon break. We discussed all kind of things on our breaks and got to know each other better.

Will Gerber and I worked on siding this house for most of the week. Here is some of the progress we made about half way through the week.

Wednesday morning we took a tour of the area. This is a tree that survived the storm, and it is estimated that it is over 500 years old. It is a southern live oak tree that is native to the area.

Here is the second house that I worked on. Will and I helped Hank, one of the long term volunteers, hang trusses. We finished in about a day and a half.

This is (l to r) Will, Mike, myself, and Hank. Mike and Hank were both from Canada (New Brunswick and Manitoba.) They were both great to work with and kept work very fun. We learned a lot and were so greatful for the wonderful teachers that we had.
Here is a picture of the bayou on the way home from one of the worksites. It was beautiful and it was quite hard to leave when the time came. I am very happy that I decided to go on this trip and would like to do something similiar again. The residents of Pass Christian were so nice and very welcoming. On Friday afternoon, the owner of the house that we were building made us all lunch. He had boneless ribs, chicken, smoked green onion sausage, mac and cheese, salad, and garlic bread. It was amazing!