I have visited the Gulf three times since August of 2005 to do mission work with Zumbro groups, but it wasn’t until this week that I really saw Hurricane Katrina for the first time. I’ve seen homes destroyed, foundations left empty, and once bustling beach communities turned into ghost towns. But this week I saw Hurricane Katrina through the face of Sue, the homeowner of the house my work crew is working at.
Fellow chaperone, Sue Jenkins, and I had the chance to meet Sue on Wednesday. Immediately she apologized over and over again for not coming out to thank us sooner for the work we had been doing. “You must think I’m the rudest person in the word,” she shared. We assured her that we were simply happy to be there, and so she led us to the swing in the front yard. As we sat together and visited, Sue told us how hard it was for her husband and her to have workers at the house; how ashamed they were that they couldn’t fix it themselves.
Sue paused as we were talking and looked in the house where the kids were sanding the walls to perfection. As tears formed in her eyes she looked at me and told us that she went into the house and sobbed and sobbed the night before after we left. For the first time since Katrina she saw real walls in her house and had hope that she would be able to move back in.
Quickly, her tears of joy turned to tears of fear. “Have you heard of the storm that is way out there now?” She told us of how her friend had just told her about how there could be another storm starting up in the Gulf again. She didn’t need to tell us how scared she was; we could see it in her eyes.
During Katrina and for many days that followed, Sue and about 8 other members of her family, including young grandchildren, took shelter in this bus that was buried in their yard (top two photos). For days they stayed in that bus together fearing the unknown. When they came up from their shelter they found that the winds had ripped the roof off of their home, and that the rains had subsequently ruined all that they had. Eventually they received a FEMA trailer, but after an unknown amount of time FEMA took the trailer back because they weren’t allowed to have two dwellings. The other dwelling, besides the FEMA trailer, had been their home that was without roof and destroyed on the inside.
Following that Sue and her husband of 38 years lived in this storage container on their property (bottom photo). They rigged up air conditioning and lived this way for several years. Today they are living behind their home in a trailer provided by LESM and
Please continue to pray for those living along the Gulf. They have such deep scars, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, from all that they have survived. We must all be reminded that there is still great work to be done in this region. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8
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