MOBILE, Ala. (BP)–As thousands of volunteers descended upon the Gulf Coast region after Hurricane Katrina’s destructive winds and storm surge leveled entire communities, members of Dayspring Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala., decided the best way to help people start to recover was to walk house-to-house and knock on any doors that remained intact.
Church members canvassed neighborhoods in hard-hit Pascagoula and Moss Point, Miss., in an attempt to show people they had not been forgotten and provide reassurance of hope for the future.
The church went into the neighborhoods “because we don’t want to just provide food” but meet other needs as well, said Ken Whitton, student pastor at the church. Most people, he noted, for example, had lost their Bibles in the flooding.
The idea is overwhelming that nearly every church along the coast lost all its Bibles, Sunday School material, places to worship and other things it needs to function, Whitton said.
“The one thing I’m finding we really need here is Bibles,” Whitton said. “Just imagine if you were to close your eyes and all along the coast every single church lost all they had. I met a pastor the other day that had been an associate pastor for 50 years, and in the storm he lost his Bible.
“So, going door-to-door was just another opportunity, to replace the Bible he had lost and watch the man weep that he got the Word of God back in his hand.”
Whitton recalled the firsthand accounts people shared of finding themselves in the midst of the storm surge when they had thought it would be safe to ride out the hurricane in their homes.
“They tell you they were sitting in their living room trying to ride out the storm and they see the water rising outside and the next thing they know the water is up to their ankles and then up to their knees and then up to their stomachs and then over their heads and they’re swimming out of their houses, and it’s just been incredible,” he said.
At one point, Whitton came upon a family with children ages 14, 11, 9 and 8 living in the starkest conditions beneath an overpass in Moss Point.
“What little bit they had to begin with, the water destroyed,” he said.
So Whitton and his wife and three children invited the family to stay in their home until they could gather the resources they would need to make it on their own again.
“God has just done incredible things with meeting the needs of this family,” Whitton said. “They’ve really seen the body of Christ be all over them. For instance, a 14-year-old girl who babysits to earn money came over with her mom and got the 14-year-old girl and took her to the mall and spent all her babysitting money on this other student — just lovin’ on her.”
Many students from Dayspring were drawn to the family and decided to pitch in to help in some way.
“We had a college student who bought pillows and pillowcases for each of the family members,” Whitton said. “Some have been buying Bibles out of their own pockets. It’s just been a really, really cool experience, and that’s just one story.”
Dayspring, with about 1,500 regular attenders, served as a food distribution center for Pascagoula and Moss Point, and Whitton was grateful for the large numbers of people who traveled great distances to do whatever they could to assist the staff in meeting needs.
“There are countless people who have volunteered their time — coming in after work, stacking boxes, packing boxes, unloading tractor trailers,” he said. “Churches from all over the country are here — even people from California headed here to do missions work.”
And because it didn’t seem right to continue with the ski trip the youth had planned for this fall, Whitton replaced it with a special DiscipleNow weekend emphasizing what happened in the surrounding area in the wake of the hurricane. This is a time when students’ hearts are tender toward the subject of helping others, Whitton said, and he hopes some valuable lessons are learned.
Whitton also expressed concern for the thousands of shattered lives along the coast, particularly those pastors whose lives have been so drastically altered by such a powerful act of nature.
“All these churches are just devastated,” he said. “Kind of a big thing is we preacher boys live off of tithes, and when your community is not working, there are going to be a lot of pastors that are going to be at the mercy [of someone’s kindness] just as anybody else is. What do you do?”
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This story was originally published by Purpose Driven at www.purposedriven.com.
