Beyond the Storm

Day 2 – April 2nd, 2006

Most of our second day was spent traveling again south with our sister church from Hudsonville, MI. We were glad that we had walkie talkies to coordinate rest stops, gas fill-ups, meals and that all important ice cream break. The rest of the trip was uneventful which gave us time to get to know our new friends from Hudsonville.

It was so good to see more and more green as we drove farther south – grass that looked like it needed mowing, trees bursting with new leaves, azaleas in full bloom. But as we drove closer to Slidell, we started seeing the signs of the hurricane’s devastation. We saw neighborhoods with campers in the drive ways, blue tarps still protecting the roofs, trees snaps in half or totally up-rooted. And this we learned was not even the worst.



Finally late afternoon we arrived at Camp Hope on the grounds of Lamb of God Lutheran Church in Slidell. We were greeted by Kurtis Smith, camp director, and Arlene, who registered us and made sure we had all our documents in line and tetnus shots taken. Kurtis took us on a quick tour of the camp including sleeping tents, shower trailer for our 8-minute showers, sick bay, mess tent and the ever important porta-potties.


After dinner, we had our official orientation. Kurtis told us just a bit of the impact of the hurricane. Over 1,500,000 households throughout the entire storm area registered with FEMA for aid. Hundreds of thousands of families are still not home after 7 months. Some houses had still not even been entered yet. This camp alone has generated 70,000 volunteer hours which at $17.50 per hour (FEMA) is over $1,225,000 donated hours. But even with that said, not even 25% of the work is completed yet.

Our tasks this week will be - mucking out homes and doing some reconstruction on homes (drywalling, flooring, painting, etc). Tomorrow…..muck-out!