The three trucks and trailers pulled out of the Winter Park Presbyterian Church parking lot at 2:40 pm on Sunday, October 2nd, twenty minutes ahead of schedule. For the two weeks prior to departure, church and community people had brought requested items, all of which had been carefully sorted, packed and loaded into trailers. Now brimming with supplies, the 1,200 mile round-trip journey to the Gulf Coast began. An air of anticipation accompanied the mission. What would we see? Would it be as bad as the news described? And a prayer; "Grant us journey mercies, O God and let these supplies be delivered to a people who needed them."

West of Pensacola the group stopped for the night. The cost of fuel and the vehicle’s thirst for it proved pretty expensive. The next morning we got an early start and made it to our first stop at the First Baptist Church of Grand Bay, Alabama. The evidence of damage from Katrina in the “boot heel of 'Bama” wasn't dramatic, but clearly they had been visited by a strong storm. The Rev. Benny Still greeted us warmly. His church had cooperated with the Red Cross in the early stages of evacuation to feed up to 5,000 people. The old sanctuary had a lot of bedding that was a much-needed commodity. Rev. Still took us across the street to a member's pecan grove where a large storage building became the dropping off place for most all of the clothing we brought. With warm thanks and a few jokes about Presbyterians and Baptists, we were back on the road to Long Beach, Mississippi.

The further we went west on I-10, the more obvious the storm damage. At the exit we began to make our way south and again the intensity of the storm's effect grew greater. Arriving at the Gulf Coast Worship Center, our first sighting was of a huge parking lot with a large tent, several smaller ones and pallets of food and supplies. Pulling in we were greeted by a volunteer coordinator from Michigan who gave us an orientation to the operation. The church had been converted…to a collection and distribution center with a clinic and pharmacy. In addition the German government had donated a field hospital unit with a fully equipped operating room and its own huge generator. Another volunteer, an engineer from outside Philadelphia, kept it running. In fact, it was all volunteer, using the skills of people from all over.

We unloaded the bicycles first, which were much appreciated. The first one will go to an 11-year old who had been walking several miles, many times a day, to get food for his elderly neighbors. " And we'll throw in a back pack to help him help," we were told. Cleaning supplies were in short supply and much prized.

The volunteers on-site explained their system for distribution. Three days a week they opened, allowing people in cars to drive through a course laid out among all the piles of goods. At each of four or 5 stops they were given supplies: at #1 clothing; at #2 cleaning materials; #3 baby items; #4 food and water. It seemed enough supplies were flowing in and the need was greater for more hands to sort, pack and hand them out. One young woman from Thornwell Orphanage cheerfully invited us to stay and pack food boxes. We had to decline because we wanted to visit the PDA tent village for volunteer teams in D’Iberville back 15 miles east.

Having been given directions by Doug McDonald the PDA volunteer camp director, we arrived at a baseball field only a good stones throw from I-10. Getting out of the vehicles, we heard the clatter of hammers and forklifts in the next field over as Navy Seabees constructed temporary housing for FEMA. Doug briefed us on the way it all worked as we joined him under the shelter of a large tent overlooking some 35-40 tents that housed four persons per tent. Just getting his feet on the ground as the director for October, he explained how teams from churches slept, ate and used makeshift solar showers. Each day the group(s) would report to the city hall for work assignments and then drag back to the PDA tent city at the end of the day exhausted but gratified. It was hot and humid still in South Mississippi. One point Doug emphasized was the amount of work you get done isn't as important as ministering to people who needed someone to hear their story and know they cared.