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BY JUDY SMITH YOUNG

Special to the UMConnection

In August 2005, hearts all over our conference were broken by the devastation and loss from hurricane Katrina. Many of us felt called to respond.

Six people from our church were joined by five people from the town of Washington Grove, to rebuild a home in the Gautier area of Jackson County.

The idea that the small church of Washington Grove, with attendance of 40, could send a team to the Gulf Coast, started at the ROCK 2007 retreat. Bishop Schol challenged the youth to lead the way to convince their churches to send teams to help the rebuilding effort in Louisiana and Mississippi.

They came back from ROCK enthused with the idea. "Let's go this spring," we all said. But wiser heads alerted us to the reality of the time needed to plan a mission a thousand miles away, and we decided to shoot for the spring of 2008 instead.

Two women in the church organized a silent auction to raise funds at the end of February, and the town offered its hall.

Washington Grove is something of an artist's colony, so contributions for the silent auction included hand-made pottery and original paintings, carved wooden bowls and sculptures, and small items of furniture. Musicians played for the browsing crowd. We raised close to $5,000.

With other contributions, our fund raising totaled close to $7,000. It was more than enough. We bought plane tickets and rented cars, covered the few meals not provided, and purchased all the construction supplies and tools we needed at a nearby Lowe's.

We had discussed that we would not be working on homes of middle-class people like ourselves. The African-American homeowners of "our" house were, in fact, a struggling family that had built their house with the help of many extended family members. They could not afford to pay for their house to be gutted and rebuilt after it was destroyed by the flood from the bayou.

When the 11 of us entered the home, we realized others had worked there before us. There was new drywall on the walls, and everything was clean, but the house was simply empty - it was a house stripped bare. Out back there was a crushed shed to be pulled onto a burn pile, and a whole line of trees that had fallen like dominos to be cleared.

Those who actually knew a lot about construction took over. Ed and a skilled teen created and installed kitchen cabinets. It was particularly delightful to see our three teens show a willingness to work, learn and stay until the job was done, tired or not.

One day we explored some of the sad sights of empty stilts, where cottages had once been. George took pictures of clothing that still hung from some of the trees, lingering memories that stood as testimonies to the tragedy.

But they are offset today by the "after" sight of the house that became a home as we worked. At the end of the week, we had installed tiling or wooden flooring in nearly every room and all the cabinets were hung. Best of all, the homeowners will be able to return to a rebuilt home in only a few more weeks.

Women of the Vancleave UMC and surrounding community fed us, and almost 50 other volunteers breakfast and dinner, six days a week, every week since the hurricane in August 2005.

Our hosts led devotions after the meals. Before reading the Bible, each presented a short reflection and song then moved to the practical planning of the day's work. Nearly every one first mentioned their gratitude to God for our willingness to give up vacation time, to spend money and work hard in order to come and help their community.

Homes that lost a roof often ended up having more than a roof replaced. No team was willing to just repair a roof and leave without bringing that home to a livable standard. Some homes had never been in good shape.

A member of one United Methodist church team from Frederick, expressed pride in his team's work with their homeowner. He mentioned that many in his own community were also from a low-income background, so it was especially meaningful to help someone in that same situation, bringing a whole family from having no indoor plumbing or safety railings on porches to a much more livable home with running water.

Pondering the week, the song "Lord Prepare Me to Be a Sanctuary," which we sang daily, came to my mind. It seemed to me that as the people on these Volunteers in Mission teams were rebuilding homes, they were turning them into sanctuaries from suffering, for folks who had started suffering long before Katrina. And those affected by the storm were also building soul sanctuaries in us, by giving us the privilege of helping in this work.

The work in the Gulf is unfinished; only about 20 percent of the rebuilding is complete, despite the hard work of some 65,000 United Methodist volunteers, working in Mississippi alone, since Katrina.

And now that we have come home, the 11 of us are wondering what we can find in our local community to help with next year. Our church and our town felt such satisfaction in this effort, it surely won't be long before we collaborate again.

Rev. Judy Young is a part-time probationary Elder leading Washington Grove UMC.