His name is Paul.  He is a 74 year old, crusty, stubborn, self-made man.  A few years ago he lost his wife after a long illness.  He is estranged from his only daughter and not particularly close to his brother and sister.  All of his family lives in other states.

When Katrina hit, Paul’s house was flooded with nine feet of water.  He lives on a canal, which feeds directly into Lake Pontchartrain, and his property was simply washed away.  His house and yard were full of debris, sea grass and lots and lots of mud.

Paul lost hope about life.  He told Ron that he had contemplated suicide, but knew that that would leave no one to care for his three dogs.  They are his life and he didn’t want to leave them alone, so, he finally asked for help.

Our team received his name from the relief effort, which operates out of First Baptist Church of Slidell.  This is where the 16 of us (from Safeharbor Christian Church in FL) joined with two other churches to stay, eat, shower and take calls for assistance.  There were 45 of us altogether.

First Baptist is also near the lake and received three to four feet of water which did massive damage to their property, but they immediately opened their doors to the relief effort and have become the center for clothing, food, water, and first aid for the community as well as opening up their gym to workers.  They have housed teams for the last two months.  Their own people and other Christians in the area have worked tirelessly to prepare three meals a day for workers and anyone in need.  An Oklahoma construction company provided a wonderful shower trailer which volunteers kept clean and well stocked with fresh towels and toilet articles for us.  I can’t express how grateful we were for that after a day of working in toxic muck.  Many of these volunteers were retired and had lost their homes, but they served us with a very sweet spirit.

But, let me get back to Paul.  A team from the week before had gone in and spent a day removing all of his earthly possessions, shoveled several inches of mud out of his house and pulled up the carpet.  So, our team arrived on Monday morning to complete the “mud out”.  We literally deconstructed the house down to the studs.  The walls and ceiling were black with mold.  Then we pulled out every nail from the studs.  The next process was to pressure wash the inside of the house and bleach everything to kill the mold.  By the time we were done there was a pile of all that was Paul’s life 6 to 8 feet high and over 100 feet long.

            When quitting time came, most of the team only had enough energy to turn in their gas masks, take a shower, eat a bit of dinner (from the First Baptist food line) and climb into our cots (donated by Bass Pro Shop).

This “mudding out” is happening all over the city of Slidell and volunteers have become the only hope for the elderly, single moms or the poor.  Everywhere we drove we viewed these massive piles of debris.  Two months after the hurricane people are still in the beginning stages of recovery and the disposal company cannot keep up.  So, rotting piles of the lives of people just set there like mountains of memories.

One person from each team was asked (or in our case elected) to focus on ministering to the homeowner we were helping.  We elected Ron.  He spent considerable time talking to Paul and the others we assisted.  Paul asked Ron to walk with him through his neighborhood and meet some of his neighbors.  This was a beautiful neighborhood.  The canals or bayous had docks, which housed lovely large boats.  While they walked, he talked about his life and his lack of hope and Ron shared his faith.  Paul told me that “Ron is quite a charming fella”.

When we finished, Paul expressed his gratitude with a lot of emotion.  He said that he had never known anybody like our group and he prayed with us about his life, his neighbors and his city.

Some days we “mudded out,” and some days we did yard clean up with chain saws and a skid steer loader.  We helped a family that had the junkiest yard I have ever seen.  We helped a fireman who had been unable to get his own yard cleaned up because of his job.  We helped a teacher at the First Baptist Christian School that had lost her home and an aunt and uncle.  In their 80’s and in ill health, they drowned and their bodies have only recently been recovered.  We worked hard, but our main goal was not the physical work but to share with each homeowner our love for Jesus and His love for them.

On Thursday and Friday, we went into a church in New Orleans.  This is the next place that relief efforts will be set up and they needed the church cleaned out so they could begin the task of setting up operations there after the first of the year.  This church campus, which includes a large Christian school, consisted of three main buildings.  The entire campus had four feet water that sat there for three weeks.  No utilities are operational as yet.  We worked mostly in the dark under very slimy conditions.  We just had a couple a light units powered by generators.  It will be a long process to reclaim this facility.  Another group of volunteers and our entire team of 45 worked on the worship center, gym and surrounding classrooms in the activity building.  The major school building is still untouched.  We walked through it with tears in our eyes.  You can see some of the pictures of what we saw.  Words simply cannot describe the sight.

The area surrounding the church is a ghost town of beautiful homes.  No one is back.  No clean up has even been started.  When you look into the windows of those houses, it looks like the family might return at any moment.  Life has happened in these homes, but was abruptly interrupted.  And then you see that everything is wet and muddy.  Mold is King.

We have had some preconceived notions of the victims of Katrina.  The people that we saw on the news were sometimes people with which we could not identify.  The terrible tragedy of the bridge and the Superdome (which, by the way, both look pretty normal now) was to us just another reality program on TV, but the people we helped looked just like us.  They live in neighborhoods that look like ours.  They are families.  They had jobs, their kids play Little League, they vote and they pay taxes.  But their lives have been destroyed.