GULFPORT, MS — Amid bare wooden beams and the echo of hammer against nail, Sandra Bradford, wearing gray work gloves and a blue T-shirt, resembled a construction worker more than a homemaker as she tugged on electrical wire.

Sandra Bradford

Thanks to volunteers like Bradford, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Aurora, IL, a construction site in one of Gulfport’s oldest neighborhoods will soon give rise to a new three-bedroom home.

The new house will replace one trashed by Hurricane Katrina as it tore through the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, obliterating nearly every structure up to half a mile inland.

More than a year after the storm, Bradford was one of an army of Presbyterian volunteers from across the country that continue to answer the call to help rebuild homes and assist with other post-Katrina needs all along the hurricane-ravaged Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“When I watched the devastation happening from my home in Illinois it broke my heart,” Bradford said, recalling the day the powerful storm made landfall. “I asked the Lord to make a way for me to come down here to just love people and give them hope and put my arm around them and sit and cry with them. I just had to come.”

It wasn’t long before Bradford, 60, had her prayers answered.

In November 2005, accompanied by friends from Georgia and Michigan, she made her first trip to south Mississippi to help with the relief effort.

“We did come down just for the purpose of ... being with the people and meeting with them and trying to bring hope,” said Bradford, adding that assistance of any kind is welcomed in the devastated region.

Later, as the response shifted from relief duties to long-term recovery work, Bradford was back on the Mississippi coast last October with her husband, Jack, and about 15 other volunteers from First church. The pilgrimage was coordinated in cooperation with the Mississippi Presbytery disaster recovery office.

The house Bradford worked on in Gulfport’s Handsboro neighborhood was being rebuilt from the ground up thanks to funds donated to the presbytery by Presbyterian churches nationwide.

The project will put a new roof over the head of Hazel Conner, a 55-year-old Baptist who grew up in a house ruined by Hurricane Katrina, which had been home to her family for more than 80 years.

Hazel Conner

“They bring the Spirit with them,” Conner said of the Presbyterian volunteers. “I know it’s done by the core of their being. Plus it’s spiritual as well. I know they do it because God sent them here. I look at it like this: This is the house of God’s building even though they’re providing the labor. I appreciate every bit of it. It’s been absolutely fantastic.”

The single woman, who considers herself disabled, will continue to reside in a FEMA trailer until early April when her new home is expected to be finished. Until then she finds herself among the thousands of south Mississippians coping with cramped living spaces after Katrina destroyed their homes.

Compounding matters, Conner underwent open-heart surgery last May and suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system turns against the body and harms healthy cells and tissues.

With the FEMA trailer on loan for only a limited time, Conner anxiously awaits her new home, which she said would not have been a reality anytime soon without the help of Presbyterian volunteers and Presbytery of Mississippi.

“Replacing this house would have been impossible on my own because of me being disabled,” Conner said. “I didn’t know which way I was going to turn after FEMA stepped in and reclaimed their trailer.”

In addition to helping with Conner’s new house, Bradford said her trip to the Mississippi coast marked the beginning of a new partnership between the Illinois congregation and two Gulfport Presbyterian churches: Orange Grove and historic Handsboro.

“These are our brothers and sisters down here whether we’ve ever met them or not,” Bradford said. “They are children of God who are in need. Like a Good Samaritan, you see someone in need you must come down and help.”

Before Hurricane Katrina, the Orange Grove and Handsboro churches, which recently yoked and now share a pastor, were struggling, with Orange Grove on the verge of closing for good.

Orange Grove Presbyterian Church is home to a PDA-operated volunteer village in Gulfport, MS.

Then the storm, which damaged more than a dozen Presbyterian churches in Mississippi, hit with large-scale destructive force. Suddenly the two waning congregations were transformed into bustling hurricane relief centers, housing a steady stream of volunteer work teams from across the nation. New church members soon followed as well, drawn in by the bustling relief activity.

In the year following Hurricane Katrina, slightly more than 24,000 volunteers worked through Presbyterian channels in South Mississippi to assist in relief and recovery, according to George Bates, disaster-recovery coordinator for Mississippi Presbytery.

George Bates

The faithful legions of responders came from all over the United States and even other countries, staying at Presbyterian churches dotting the Mississippi coast that started housing volunteer teams shortly after the hurricane. Others are piling into volunteer villages operated by Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA), the relief and recovery arm of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The sites are part of a massive, long-term Presbyterian recovery effort that has been helping to get the Mississippi Gulf Coast back on its feet.

“We see progress everyday,” Bates said. “Some days it’s just a little bit of progress. Some days it’s a lot of progress. But I think we’re definitely making a move in the right direction every day.”

Six Presbyterian churches, working in cooperation with the Presbytery of Mississippi, are currently hosting regular work teams. These congregations continue to offer their classrooms, fellowship halls, libraries and sanctuary floors to volunteer crews. A tool shed at Handsboro church was home for Bradford during her recent visit.

They sleep on cots and air mattresses or in sleeping bags and bunk beds.

“We felt a call,” said Presbyterian Terry Jordan, a repeat volunteer from Valley Falls, NY, who was staying at one of the church sites recently. “I think mission is incredibly important to the church. When you feel the call to serve you just have to do it.”

Jordan, a member of Stillwater (NY) United (Presbyterian) Church, said he was touched most by the indomitable spirit of area residents as they face a long recovery from Katrina.

“They have been through a terrible hardship and yet they are also eager to rebuild,” said Jordan. “They are happy to have us here volunteering and hearing their personal stories.”

PDA’s volunteer villages in Pearlington, MS, Gautier, MS, and at the Orange Grove church in Gulfport, are part of the agency’s biggest-ever domestic-relief response, which includes two more volunteer sites in Louisiana with plans to open a third.

The PDA villages and Presbyterian churches provide room, board, work assignments and tools for volunteers — mostly Presbyterians — that travel solo or with schools, work outfits, congregations and other nonprofit groups.

“A lot of volunteers come down to help people and what you hear at the end of the week is, ‘We came down to help but we are leaving with forever changed lives,’” said Virginia Turnage, PDA’s Gulf Coast financial manager who’s based at the volunteer village in Gulfport where work teams sleep in temporary housing called “pods.”

“When they hook up with the homeowners, and with what the homeowners have been through the past 18 months, volunteers are going away saying, ‘We need to come back. We need to go home and we need to tell people what is going on down here.’”

Together volunteers are working to accomplish the primary objective along the Mississippi Gulf Coast these days: getting residents back in homes.

Volunteers are taking to rooftops all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast to repair hurricane-damaged homes.

With that in mind, Presbyterians have pitched in by helping put roofs on houses along with dry walling, insulating, painting, performing electrical work and installing new plumbing.

Bates estimated that Presbyterian volunteers have worked on at least 1,000 homes from Pascagoula to Pearlington in the months since Hurricane Katrina, making everything from minor repairs to complete overhauls.

“We have helped in the neighborhood of a thousand families restore their homes and their lives,” he said.

Presbytery of Mississippi is currently building three new houses along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, including Conner’s home. Last month, Presbyterians and a cadre of Mennonite volunteers teamed to build a new house for a Pascagoula family in a lightning-fast 13 days, Bates said.

Though most are Presbyterian, volunteer workers staying at Presbyterian-related sites have spanned the religious spectrum. While some can work in the region for just a few days, others stay for weeks. New volunteers arrive daily. Many have returned home and recruited others to assist more families.

They go to work on severely damaged homes in south Mississippi’s hurricane-devastated communities, often donning blue PDA T-shirts with white lettering, like one worn by Bradford, that have made Presbyterian volunteers a visible fixture along the Katrina-altered landscape.

At Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gulfport, another volunteer base camp, Jan and Gene Carpenter unraveled Sudoku puzzles before turning in for the night on an air mattress they set up behind the pews.

The longtime married couple from First church in Crown Point, IN, drove down with 10 other volunteers in a church van, hauling their supplies in a trailer. A youth group at the Indiana church helped cover expenses with $350 they netted from holding a carwash.

“We’ve only been down here for three days and I’m already a pro,” Jan Carpenter said. “I know how to take off roofing shingles. I know how to lay down the felt paper. I know how to use a power gun now. I didn’t know a thing when I walked in here, but now we’re getting fast.”

At one work site, Gene Carpenter used a power saw to cut through boards that were used to fix a hurricane-battered roof.

“Yes, it really makes you feel good to do these things for someone,” he said. “And they appreciate it. The people truly appreciate the fact that we’re here trying to do something positive.”

Becoming a volunteer nerve center has spurred an image makeover for Westminster Presbyterian Church, a congregation of about 250 members that didn’t particularly view itself as mission-oriented before Hurricane Katrina.

But in a stunning departure, members now find themselves as responders to a vast mission zone in their own backyard.

“This has altered the nature of the church,” said Martha-Lee Bohn, Westminster’s disaster-recovery site manager. “For [members] to come in and see people sleeping in the sanctuary was a little jarring at first. But I’ll tell you most of them look at it and go, ‘This is what a church should look like. It’s inspiring.’”

Other than using the sanctuary and fellowship hall to house volunteers inside, Westminster can accommodate up to about 60 volunteers outside the church in temporary housing such as trailers, pods and a bunkhouse.

The rigors of hosting more than 7,000 volunteers since Katrina struck has served to both energize and drain parishioners at Westminster, according to church leaders.

The Rev. Karen Bullock, associate pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gulfport, MS, right, shares a moment with longtime member Loraine Simpson following a recent worship service. Looking on is Martha-Lee Bohn, the church’s disaster-recovery site manager.

“The congregation is excited,” said the Rev. Karen Bullock, associate pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church. “They want to do things, they want to update the church and do all kinds of new and exciting things. But at the same time I sense a certain weariness from all that they’ve done already. Fixing their homes, welcoming volunteers, putting the church up in good shape. There’s just a level of weariness.”

Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, the body of Christ resonates from church walls in hard-hit Long Beach, MS, a town of about 17,000 people before Hurricane Katrina.

Many volunteers who pass through Long Beach Presbyterian Church, especially younger ones, scribble their thoughts or a few inspirational messages across white hazardous material suits. These post-Katrina canvases, which line a wall inside the church, are jokingly referred to as “bodies of Christ.”

Volunteers leave messages like these on hazardous material suits at Long Beach Presbyterian Church in Long Beach, MS.

One inscription said: “We came, we saw, we helped! Now we go home and count our blessings every day!” Another stated: “Dear God — Stay Close to Long Beach.” Yet another conveyed a simpler message: “Hope.”

Though exact figures vary at times, the Long Beach church houses an average of nearly 100 volunteers each week from across the nation, according to Chris Barnhardt, Long Beach site manager.

“I think that’s the greatest gift,” he said. “[People] being able to come down here and just do whatever is asked of them whether they know how to or not. They come down here and they do the best they can.”

Barnhardt said the struggling coast was slowly being revived by the sight and sounds of building and rebuilding. “You’re seeing more reconstruction of businesses,” Barnhardt said. “You’re starting to see more businesses coming to the beach, redeveloping their properties and opening back up. I think that’s a very positive step for the community.”

The other area PC(USA) churches hosting volunteers, according to Bates, are First Presbyterian Church in Bay St. Louis; Diamond Head Community Presbyterian Church in Diamond Head; and First Presbyterian Church in Pascagoula.

Since the relief effort started, the churches and PDA villages have hosted work teams from as far away as Ireland, South Korea, Brazil, Indonesia, Venezuela and Canada.

Signs at PDA’s volunteer village in Gulfport, MS, show that teams have come from around the country and elsewhere to help with hurricane recovery.

Presbyterians of all callings — from business executives to ministers to medical professionals to college coeds to retirees — are answering the call.

At PDA’s volunteer village in Gulfport, a crowded signpost of names show that teams have come from all over to help, including Valdosta, GA; Greensburg, PA; Charlotte, NC; Cedar Rapids, IA; Greenwich, CT; and multiple places in Canada. Teams also have traveled from Alaska, Washington state, Tennessee, California and New York.

And the revolving door of volunteers keeps turning.

“The number of volunteers is staying up,” the Rev. John Robinson, PDA’s associate for U.S. disaster response, said of turnout at the volunteer villages. “If you want to come spring break or parts of the summer you better get your request in now because we are certainly filling up quickly.”

Though many south Mississippians are frustrated with the pace of recovery, most volunteers who have made return trips generally agreed that more than a year after the worst natural disaster in American history noticeable progress has been made in picking up the pieces.

The streets have been cleaned up. Washed-out hulls of buildings have been demolished, the millions of tons of rubble trucked away. Many businesses, including a number of casino-hotels, have been rebuilt along with the occasional antebellum mansion.

Still, rows of concrete foundations continue to be the only remnants of entire neighborhoods as a return to life as it was before the hurricane seems a long way off.

There is still so much to do — literally years of toil ahead.

Roger Hoffer

“We’re seeing everything from soup to nuts basically in terms of people getting back into their homes,” said volunteer Roger Hoffer, a Presbyterian from Fort Collins, CO, who recently assessed Katrina-damaged homes for the Presbytery of Mississippi.

“One family I met yesterday, they’ll be moving back into their house next week but then many, many, many homes are still just studs,” the retired university professor continued. “There is a huge amount of work yet to be done here. There’s a long way to go.”

But as the media spotlight fades, hurricane survivors worry that the rest of the country has forgotten about south Mississippi, about the devastation and about the personal plight still ahead as many continue dealing with the storm’s heavy emotional aftermath.

“Don’t forget us just because it’s been over a year,” said Bohn, a transplanted New Yorker who moved to Gulfport in 2003. “Seventy-thousand homes in Mississippi were destroyed, made unlivable in over 70 miles of coastline. Then there (were) another 130,000 or so homes damaged. So you’re talking about 200,000 homes that need to be either completely rebuilt or repaired. It’s going to take a long time.”

The loss of jobs, homes and — in some cases — family members has been a serious psychological drain on residents who may suffer from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, according to volunteers and Presbyterian disaster officials.

People are spending their days trying to get through to insurance adjusters or to FEMA, trying to get utilities hooked up or contractors to show up. Sometimes they’re just trying to get basic information. Then they are put off or ripped off and it causes depression and frustration.

Betsy Friend

“I think the message is don’t stop coming,” said Betsy Friend, a Presbyterian volunteer from Pennsylvania who is a psychotherapist, a clinical social worker and a pastoral counselor. “People here are worried that nobody remembers them now that a year has past.”

Friend, who took a moment away from painting at the Orange Grove church in Gulfport, where she recently stayed at the PDA volunteer village, said that many times hurricane survivors feel down because their lives have not improved much since the storm.

“It’s like the hopelessness enters six months to a year and things are not changing,” said Friend, a member of St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Devon, PA. “It’s like somebody died and they’re not coming back. I think what we do as volunteers is give people hope when we go into their houses and hear their stories and also start working on their houses.”

It is those personal stories in which Friend referred, of grief and loss and about the tumultuous year that has followed the storm, that’s sparking concern that survivors are not getting the mental-health care they need.

“I just see it everywhere,” said Greg Boettner, Gulf Coast Mission Volunteer Coordinator for the Presbytery of Mississippi, who coordinates activities of about 14 young adult volunteers assisting with the recovery in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Greg Boettner

“I go to the grocery store and I hear peoples’ Katrina stories,” Boettner said. “I go to the movies and the guy at the counter tells me about his Katrina stories. I bought renter’s insurance and I had to listen to five people tell their Katrina stories. They just need to tell it and they need somebody who’s not Anderson Cooper (from CNN) to tell it for them.”

That is again where volunteers can step in to fill the void, said Bethany Dudley, a 27-year recent seminary graduate who accompanied the work team from First Presbyterian Church in Aurora, IL, where she serves as director of Community Outreach.

Bethany Dudley

“They need people just to come and let them share their story, let them cry, let them build a relationship,” Dudley said. “Let them know that they’re not alone in this. That there is hope, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. That the rest of the country has not forgotten about them. It’s so important.”

Dudley had just stepped off a ladder leading to a Katrina-damaged roof where she and others had been laying new shingles. The thud of hammers and the electric hum of drills and saws in the background are considered the music of progress in South Mississippi.

On a coastline where thousands of structures had been washed away in the great surge that destroyed so many homes, businesses, landmarks, and lives, Dudley summed up the destruction as “pretty complete.”

“All you see is the mat of an old home,” she said. “Or you’ll see stairs that go up to nothing. Or you’ll just see the frame (of a house) and everything else is completely gone. The house that we’re working on, the front of the whole house was torn off.”

Amid the devastation, Mike Riley, a former Mississippi Presbytery site manager at Handsboro, stressed the importance for residents to talk about their feelings.

“It’s about healing,” he said. “They need to tell their story to heal. It’s part of it.”

With so many homeowners “down, depressed and hopeless,” Riley said the first thing he told crews before starting on someone’s home was to “make sure you talk to the homeowners. It’s very vital that they heal spiritually as well as their home.”

But often after crews arrive the homeowner starts “climbing on clouds and cooking dinner and partying and everything else,” Riley said. “That’s what this is all about -- uplifting their spirit and fixing their homes, and that’s exactly our goal.”

That described the scene at the hurricane-damaged home of Mary Wells in Gulfport where Presbyterian volunteers had already removed walls, paneling and ceiling tiles ruined by water and consumed by deadly black mold.

Mary Wells of Gulfport, MS, right, is all smiles when Presbyterian volunteers come to visit.

“Can you imagine them leaving their homes, coming down to help me for nothing?” said an ecstatic Wells, who greeted a new group of volunteers recently with a wide smile, cache of candy and rounds of peanut butter sandwiches and bottled water. “It’s fantastic. I just thank God for them. And I thank God for the relationships that I’m having with them.”

Wells, 63, weathered the category-4 hurricane with a longtime family friend and three strangers at a Seventh-day Adventist church where Wells worships in Gulfport.

After the storm passed “it was just like a bomb had come through here,” she said. “It was the worst nightmare. That was when the reality (about the destruction) really set in, when I saw the houses. It was just terrible. It was something that I will never forget in my lifetime.”

For Wells and other residents working to rebuild, volunteers continue to be the answer as Presbyterians keep coming to the Mississippi coast to assist.

“The Presbyterian Church has helped everybody in Gulfport,” Wells said. “I don’t know where you’re getting these groups from. They’re all over the place and they’re still helping. They are improving things really well. They were just wonderful to me.”

In return there have been plenty of thank-you hugs from South Mississippians to volunteers for bringing their hope, time and labor to the recovery process.

Angela Smallman

“The Presbyterian Church has played a big role in my life,” said Angela Smallman, whose Biloxi home was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina after taking on five feet of water.

Then Presbyterian volunteers stepped in to help her rebuild and also assisted Smallman’s parents.

“I feel like the Presbyterian people are not just friends they are my family,” Smallman said. “God has sent them our way to give us help. Not to degrade any other people that have come and volunteered and helped, but Presbyterians have just been here overwhelmingly from the beginning and they are steadily continuing to come in.”