Mr. Wayne… Ms. Diane… Dakota… These are real people who lives were changed when Hurricane Katrina came through their coastal town of Bayou La Batre, Ala. The youth group at Mariner’s Bethel church in Ocean View, Del., stayed in their town, went out into the community and helped to rebuild their homes and lives. They recounted their stories at a recent “stockbroker’s” dinner and slide show presentation held at Mariner’s Bethel.
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The Mariner’s Bethel youth group spent time in Bayou La Batre, Ala., with the locals, helping to rebuild the hurricane torn community.
Upon arriving in Bayou La Batre, they were divided into six crews from the three churches — 150 people — that were there. The different crews were each assigned jobs for different days. One day they might be painting, tearing out insides of a destroyed house, working at the “kids club” or within the community center. They also had jobs within the community center such as preparing the meals they would have and cleaning up.
Mr. Wayne
Going out into the community and seeing and talking to the people, they learned that a lot of them would be losing their temporary trailers from FEMA that they had been living in 30, 60, or 90 days. They helped gut the house of a man named Mr. Wayne, because everything in his house needed to be re-done.
In telling his story, Pastor Woody of Mariner’s recalled that Mr. Wayne told them that if the storm hadn’t taken his boat, he would have made $14,000 — his best year ever.
“We can spend $14,000 a year on clothing,” said Pastor Woody. “This trip really allowed the kids to come out of their comfort zones. This was one of the most Christian communities I have ever been in,” continued Pastor Woody — a theme repeated by many who shared their stories. “Most people were saying my family is alive — thank God. There was a church on every corner and they would meet in them, even though some had no roof. And the people of Bayou La Batre would meet all day on Sunday.”
Ms. Diane
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Volunteers work on the exterior of a home damaged by Katrina.
Mary Harmon, one of the adults who went on the mission trip with her children, James and Kelsey, talked about going to Ms. Diane’s house and buying her new chairs for her porch after they were finished doing some painting.
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A crew hangs outside the Coden Community house.
“This is a woman who had nothing — she gave up everything so she could buy that house (for $150), and she had nothing and she still brought out food and drinks for all of us who were working on her house.” Harmon recounted that this is a woman, who never leaves her house, on the last day they were there came to the community picnic and told them. “I may not have much, but you come back here and stay with me. You can sleep on my floor.” With tears in her eyes, Harmon told how Ms. Diane then gave them T-shirts from her church.
“These kids knew why they were down there, said Mary Harmon. They knew it was more than just, ‘Here’s a paintbrush.’ They learned incredibly meaningful lessons and their lives were changed by it.”
“One of the neatest things,” said Jill Taylor, “is being part of the hope that God gives to people. It’s easy to think that God works in some earth-shattering way all the time. But to become part of a community like this for a week to see the people who were poor physically but rich in faith, it’s great to be just a small part of that hope – helping people one hand at a time.”
Dakota
Kelsey Harmon talked of Dakota, a vibrant young boy who was the life of the party. She told of how it was hard to tell him that he could only have one DVD of the stash they had brought for the children to enjoy. “He was going through the box saying ‘I lost this one in the storm, I lost that one…’ But it wasn’t like he was very sad — it was just a thing — like he was throwing them over his shoulder going, ‘This one,’ ‘That one.’”
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A house is being gutted to be redone, a year after the damage took place from Hurricane Katrina.
Dakota’s attitude or acceptance toward his loss was illustrated over and over in the children’s stories of the people they met. The overall theme of the evening was that the people who they met were so grateful for their presence. There was not a lot of “woe is me” in the small shrimping-industry coastal town of about 2,500 people. There were a lot of, “Thank God for what I have. Thank God my family is alive.”
Don’t forget the dogs
James Harmon, one of the children who went on the trip, recalled that it was sad to see the pets that were around the town. “It made me sad to see that the dogs were skin and bone because I have a dog at home. So we would try to get some extra food at meal time so we could give it to the dogs.” “He’s being modest,” interjected his mom, Mary Harmon. “What they did was give their lunches to the dogs.”
In fact, on the board that was hanging during the slide show presentation, they had the names of the people they met and talked with on the trip, plus the names of two dogs. “When we went down, we kept saying we wanted to help the ‘victims’ of Hurricane Katrina,” said Youth Pastor Christina Wilson. “When we came back, we brought this board back to show that these people have names.”
The Youth have names
Kelsea Wilson, Tyler Valliant, Mason Mills, Bethany Mills, Stephen Jacobs, James Harmon, Kelsey Harmon, Katie Gichner, Bradley Clark, Jennifer Clark, Maggie Eckrick, Morgan Kerns, Taylore Kerns, Lucas Kerns, Carol Linde, Nicole Gallant, Evan Jarmol, Chrissy McCabe, Christina Trager, Kira Buck, Koz Phillips, Morgan Downing, Caleb Wilson, Taylor Mushrush, Woody Wilson, Christina Wilson, Jill Taylor, Sheila Parham, Brian Mushrush, William Mills, Mary Harmon, Joanne Gichner – These are the names of the young people and their adult counterparts who were brave enough to step out of their comfort zones, to go to a small town on the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama.
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This house was torn apart by the hurricane and is in need of repairs.
They decided they wanted to go there, they raised the money to get there, and they had their lives changed by being there. These are the names of the people who will never buy shrimp in the same way or watch the Weather Channel the same. These are the names of the people who would rather say they are just letting Christ work through them than have their names in print.
These are the names of the people who were so moved in telling their stories and the stories of the people they met that they were often moved to tears and had to stop. These are the names of the people who know that of all the things that we accumulate in life, little is actually needed, beyond love and hope, for our survival.
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This house was torn apart by the hurricane and is in need of repairs.
CRASH, which means Creating Revolutions and Saving Hearts, went on a mission last year to Mon Valley, Pa., and upon returning, did not want to stop helping people and building community with them. So, they decided they wanted to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. That started their year-long quest of organization and fundraising.
Associate Pastor Woody Wilson, and his wife, Youth Pastor Christina Wilson, are “old friends” with YouthWorks, a non-profit corporation created by a youth minister in 1994 to provide “life-changing, Christ-centered youth mission opportunities.” YouthWorks has grown from their first summer in 1994 of 400 participants brought from 35 churches to most recently having almost 38,000 participants in over 82 different communities.
So, in talking with YouthWorks, and telling them that Mariner’s youth wanted to help victims of Katrina, they were sent to Bayou La Batre, Ala., a rural, coastal city on the southwestern tip of Alabama, located on the Gulf of Mexico.
In preparation for the trip, each child had to raise $400, They did so by having fundraisers, which included Mother’s Day geranium sales, community services days, working at ACTS (Atlantic Community Thrift Store) and getting donations in return. They had soup sales, yard sales and a talent show. In addition to that, they sold “stock” for $25 a share to anyone interested in becoming a stockholder for their trip in exchange for an invitation to the recent stockholder’s dinner and slide show presentation of their trip, a postcard sent from Bayou La Batre, and a personalized thank-you and follow-up letter.
And that is just the beginning. Upon returning, Pastor Woody received a call about some houses in Seaford and Dagsboro and surrounding areas that need some work stemming from floods in the area recently. So, they accepted 41 homes. CRASH will be out there every Saturday that they can, crawling under houses, replacing insulation, painting and building community — right here in their back yards.