I Am So Proud
Mood:  special
The following is a email letter from my 15 year old cousin from this past January(2006). I had to reformat the email, so any "odd" breaks are most likely my doing.


Hello all,

This here letter (or e-mail for the specific) is an account, or something like that, of my past week in Biloxi, Mississippi. I went down with a group of people from our church to help with the relief effort down there. Counting me, there were 18 of us. A couple by the names of (edit) have been orchestrating missions groups for that area through a local church called Trinity Bible. They, the (edit), are founders of a missions team called "Steppin-Out Missions", have been effectual in many groups to the Biloxi area, and have even worked as far as Bolivia with groups. (on a non-Katrina theme, of course) They are missionaries from our church, so a group had already gone from our church in October. (I HAD wanted to go with that group, but I had a prior commitment that week.....stupid Doctor's appointment...)

We left out at 6:30 AM on Saturday the 7th and drove down through Columbus, to Cincinatti, on down to Louisville, Nashville, and then to a city called Cullman, Alabama, where we stayed the night at a motel. It took about 12 hours. The next morning, we left out at 7:30 (central time, mind you) for the remaining 6 hour drive to Biloxi. We arrived
mid-afternoon at the church, passing signs of still un repaired damage the closer we got. Mostly fallen trees and broken signs. (There s one McDonalds sign where the left "golden arch" had been crunched in) The church is a small, light-blue, homey kind of church, and not very big at all. The guys (the majority group) proceeded to setup our sleeping
quarters in the sanctuary and the women did so in one of the small side-rooms. (the nursery, I believe. Only 4 women were on the trip so don't start insinuating any unfairness now)

After setting up, we got back into our vans and Mr. (edit) took us for a tour of the area we would be working in. The church was actually a good 20 minutes from where we worked in an area called Gulfport. When we arrived in the area, the signs of devastation weren't very hard to spot. While some houses only had shingle damage and water damage inside from flood waters, some houses appeared to have been pancaked by their roofs. There was even a house trailer that had been completely flipped upside down by the rapidly
receding flood waters. Throughout the whole first half of the tour, Mr. (edit) continued to say, "This isn't the half of it." After a few minutes, we drove towards the coast (a few miles away) and in doing so,
crossed a railroad track that had large rings of barbed wire along it's northern edge. When asked about it, Mr. (edit) told us that it was placed
there after the storm to dissuade people from crossing over because the body count beyond was so high immediately after the storm. The houses
on this side, huge multimillion ones, were totally ripped apart. The ones still intact were merely staying upright by the support beams. The insides were gone. Big iron gates, once guarding riches, were
ironically left guarding nothing. We got out at one point and walked along a brick path towards the remains of a coastal house. Everything from the Plasma screen TV to the kitchen sink were strewn around the yard, along with pieces of the houses of the neighbors. A large box spring was entangled
within the crest of a tree. A large piece of red fabric was hanging from the trees like a flag in remembrance of the devastation. A few minutes
behind, an American flag had been doing the same. (I would have loved to get a picture of it, but we were driving at the time and disposable cameras aren't all that trustworthy while moving) Then, we drove along
the coast itself, and could see the remains of the once beautiful beach-side neighborhood. The sands were incredibly filthy. Bulldozers had been scooping sand into large sifting machines to cleanse it, so large piles of grimy sand lay near the road for pickup. A Super Walmart had been completely flushed out. NOTHING was left inside. (Clearance sale,
anyone?) After touring the area, we went back to the church for dinner.

The following morning, we got up at 5:30 (central central central......) and after breakfast at 6, were on the road to work at 6:30. It got dark down there around 5PM so it was necessary to get an early start. We drove the 20 minutes to a church there called Bible Fellowship where another group of volunteers were stationed. During the storm, the water outside this church had risen to 5ft and the people inside (yes, people inside) had held the pews against the windows to prevent them from letting water in. This was also a small church so there was only room within the sanctuary for 2 rows of about 8-10 pews each. We only went there to meet the other group of people (from Akron) and then went off to work.
We drove to the home of a man named Davis Hawthorne, a 60-ish African-American professional Sax player. Some of the men went inside to put up drywall, while my little group (the 3 women, 13 yr old girl, and
a 15 yr old guy friend of mine) spent the day cleaning his furniture. It was primarily spent cleaning Bureaus and Dressers where mold had been
growing inside. We sprayed them with bleach and scrubbed them. The next day, we cleaned the chairs and couches, and by early-afternoon the drywall was complete so we painted the inside of the house. Many of us did this so it was almost finished by quittin' time.

On Wednesday, we worked at Bible Fellowship doing, yes, MORE cleaning. We carried all of the pews outside and scrubbed them suckers down, and while the sanctuary was cleared a couple guys put down tile in it. The sanctuary looked really good afterwards and it was really neat because AWANA was starting again that night for the first time since Katrina.

On Thurday, we did a "gut-job." The house looked quite ok 'cause there wasn't any shingle damage or anything........that was because the house had been
completely submerged in water. So, the inside was a total mess. It'd be something to take a picture of, so when your mother starts in to you about how much
your room looks akin to Hiroshima you can just whip that ol' picture out of your pocket, hold it up for comparison, and argue that it looks quite clean to you. Of course, we dragged the whole inside of the house outside to the curb for pickup so it probably wouldn't be wise to let yer room get that crappy. Anyway, after removing all the furniture and carpet
and stuff, we basically just picked up a crowbar (shovel for me) and went to town on the drywall. After that was cleaned up and protruding nails
were pulled, there were a bit too many hands trying to stir the pot (15 of ourgroup and close to 10 others) so I went out to help with yard pickup.
The other team had this Rickshaw looking thing they were using to haul stuff in so I used that for awhile. I had this urge to moo, though, for quite
some time afterwards. At lunch time, rather than staying on site and waiting for Mrs. (edit) to arrive with sandwiches, we went to a place called Katrina's kitchen. It's an entirely volunteer-run food kitchen for survivors and relief effort people in a big tent along the coast. It was some pretty darn good grub, if you ask me. (don't let Mrs. (edit) know,though)

After that, we went to yet ANOTHER gut job. This time, it was Mr. Davis' neighbor. See, it turns out that ol' Mr. Davis had been bragging on us, so his neighbor decided to ask for help as well. We only finished about half of it that afternoon, (we only had about 10 people this time) so we started on it the next morning and finished by noon. So, we went back to the church and showered (I forgot to mention that they had built a little shower house next to the church. 2 completely separated showers. Quite nice after working all day.) Then, after packing up and giving goodbyes, we left for home. We drove up to the same motel as last time, then headed for home in the morning.

All in all, it was a great week. I was glad to be home sleeping in my own bed rather than that fool cot, though. I had brought this old cot that had belonged to my great aunt so it was decades old. I had this fear all week that it was going to collapse in the middle of the night. But, it didn't. My asthma and allergies didn't act up all week either so that was a real blessing not to have to worry about that.

Well, I guess that concludes it. Have a good
hopefully-coming-soon-springtime season.

Later Days.
Chinquapin's cousin.


I am Soooooo proud.

Chinquapin