So how'd you spend Thanksgiving? Seventeen OUMC members have a story to tell about their adventures in Biloxi, MS. Hear their story of hope in the midst of utter devestation. View photos from their mission and see a video of their experience. Check back for more as we follow their story and add new elements as they become available.
"Thank You!" Video link
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Photo slideshow
Want to join them on their next adventure? Contact Matt Burton at 510-9298 for more information.
Here is an excerpt from an article one of our team members wrote for the chattanoogan.com
Startling, Heartbreaking Scene In Biloxi
Biloxi devastation |
I was blessed recently to be part of a mission team that traveled from Ooltewah United Methodist Church to help the relief effort underway in Biloxi, Miss. What we found was at once startling and heartbreaking, a story not adequately being told in the media.
As the Christmas season begins, "three months after" Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi looks more like "three days after." When we delivered food to work crews on Thanksgiving Day, we were quickly turned back from relief sites out of respect for the dead. On Thanksgiving Day, relief crews were still removing human remains from the piles of debris.
The local folks say that what we see on TV is like looking at the disaster through a straw. It is an apt description. There is no way to comprehend the miles of destruction and debris and muck unless you stand in it. How to describe the landscape? Imagine putting every material thing you own in a blender, turning it on high and removing the lid. And your neighbors have all done the same. Imagine five homes turned into kindling, piled up against a small brick home that has traveled several yards off its foundation. Or a large multi-story casino carried inland by the storm, flattening the small apartment building where it landed. Many roads remain closed, choked with debris, while others have obstacles. Like the small house dropped strangely intact and Oz-like into the middle of a neighborhood street by the force of wind and rain.
In the debris are heart-wrenching reminders of how so many people lost everything they own - from the Winnie-the-Pooh staring woefully from the splinters of destruction, to the photos, books and personal items strewn for miles upon miles. Many of the city's proud live oak trees survived the storm, but their branches are filled with the tangled remnants of people's lives. Bedspreads, clothing, and shredded plastic rattle in the wind like the bones on a Halloween skeleton. No one has time to get a cherry-picker and remove them - not with so many basic human needs to meet.
Imagine 4,000 people of all means forced to live in tents or wherever they can find shelter, as the nights drop down to the thirties. Some tents are pitched in public parks because the family's property is littered with debris so many feet high its impossible to find a clear spot of ground.
People were grateful to the point of tears for a home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner. Some said they were enormously blessed just to eat - for the first time in three months - on real stainless steel silverware. Others were grateful just for a plastic bottle of water, which they immediately gave to their children because the city's tap water is contaminated and undrinkable.
Imagine if your church sustained a million dollars damage, and half your congregation lost their homes completely. It would be tempting to wait, hands outstretched, for help. But the people of the church where we slept, roped off their most damaged areas with yellow caution tape and began serving as the hands and hearts of Christ to others. It is humbling to see their efforts, seven days a week, without pay, working even through the holiday weekend. Rather than worrying about the $56,000 deductible on their damaged roof, the church instead dug into its pockets to put in showers for relief workers, and began hosting the church mission teams that have arrived from as far away as Ohio. Their Sunday school rooms are converted into "suites" where mission teams can catch a night's sleep on the floor. Their kitchen hosts volunteers who peel small mountains of potatoes and cook up meals for other volunteers helping to remove debris for families who can find no labor to help them. And church members feel compelled to share the amazing fact of why the church, though damaged, still stands. It was protected from the biggest storm surge and worst winds by a literal wall of crumpled automobiles that blew into its parking lot, forming a strangely protective mountain. A sign, they say, that they were meant to stay and minister to others, trusting God to provide the means.
As you speak with the people of Biloxi, they have a need to share their stories. Stories of roof-top rescues, heroism and neighborly compassion. Of the family of five whose house crumbled around them, who clung to a railing to say good-bye before letting go. Three died and two lived to tell about it. The railing is all that stands. The story of watching as bulldozers plow down streets, disregarding the pleas of those who knew the bodies of neighbors and friends lay amidst the rubble.
And the stories of those unable to sift their former offices for records or family photos, chased from the debris by snakes that have made a home there.
Some of the people we spoke with say they feel abandoned, that people have forgotten about them. What is frightening is that it is not a far step from feeling abandoned by mankind, to feeling abandoned by God. So it is fortunate that the relief aid that does trickle in comes almost entirely from unpaid volunteers through faith-based organizations. This divinely-inspired human connection has helped fuel the hope that remains, a hope both dim and tenuous. A hope as incongruous as the brilliant yellow flowers that bloom on shrubs amidst the rubble. A hope that clings to tradition, as those in flood-damaged homes reverently hang a string of Christmas lights on the occasional house still standing.
How much hope will Biloxi hold this Christmas? It depends largely on those of us who consider ourselves the body of Christ. It relies largely on our willingness and ability to give direct aid to those who need it most. To “Serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received,” as St. Peter wrote to the early church.
Kathie Pascal
Ooltewah United Methodist Team Member
Wrytter@aol.com
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