There were 45 adults and youth from First Presbyterian Church of Newark who flew from Philadelphia, PA to New Orleans, LA on June 17. The first impression upon landing in New Orleans was the emptiness inside the airport terminal. I had been to New Orleans many times and it had always been bustling.

After getting our rental vans and truck, we loaded up and headed up I-10 for the 75-mile trip to Gulfport, MS. We saw mile after mile of middle class town homes and individual homes just sitting there empty. Occasionally one would see a POD sitting in the driveway and rarely we would see a FEMA trailer in the driveway. The real impact of this really didn’t penetrate until the return down I-10 on the following Saturday only to see that nothing had changed.

After getting to the Handsboro church that we would call home for the next week, things didn’t look too bad. It was only the next day when we headed out to see the devastation after the church service, that the real impact hit us. US Route 90 from Gulfport to Biloxi was completely destroyed. All of the office buildings, churches, restaurants and university were completely uninhabitable. A year later all of these buildings look exactly like they did on August 30 – the day after the storm. This really made an impression on all of us.

The brightest spots were seeing all of the royal blue Presbyterian Disaster Relief T- shirts as well as volunteer churches own personalized T-shirts all over greater Gulfport. (I was never so proud of being a Christian/Presbyterian.) There was a realization that it was the Christians and other service groups from all over our country that were responding to God’s people in need. These folks are people like you and I, and I think that made it more difficult for me – realizing that it could easily be the Jersey shore that was wiped out. Most people seem to think that it is only the poor whose homes have not been rehabilitated, in fact it is everyone.

With that thought in mind, please offer us a listening ear when we express our thoughts and feelings about Gulfport. We all know that billions of dollars has been spent for Katrina relief, but one does not see the money in action. Billions of dollars just do not go far enough towards rebuilding from the mass destruction that has occurred.

However, people are still not in their homes, services are very limited, people do not have proper health care, but kindness was always in their hearts. From the time we landed in New Orleans and throughout the week when we were in the Home Depot, K-Mart, the grocery stores or just in church, we heard over and over – Thank you for coming to help us! That is what makes work camps worthwhile.

This is a letter from Patricia King whose home was worked on by our UPY on their trip to Mississippi.