Christian Missions: This week, the epidemic that had the world holding its breath affected Pearlington in a most unusual way. With the Swine Flu virus sweeping across Costa Rica, First United Methodist Church out of LaGrange, Georgia changed their travel plans at the last minute, leaving behind the Caribbean Islands for hurricane relief work in the heart of the South. They met up with a YoungLife group out of Illinois and Main Street United Methodist from North Carolina at Pearlington to help finish up the last projects of the summer.

Since it was the second to last week of the summer, the Experience Mission staff was thrilled to have the extra help.  Even though work has flown by each week, there were still several key jobs to be finished before both the Bennett’s and Nick could move into their respective houses.  Because of this, one of the most exciting parts of this week was the amount of quality work that got completed throughout the city. From cranking out electrical projects to demolishing houses, teams tore through any and all tasks they were given. The Bennett’s saw their massive porch cover finished, kitchen tiles and electrical installed and Nick’s crew finished roofing, siding and decking. All the while, other smaller groups finished up incredibly crucial jobs at the O’Neal’s, the Crepeau’s, the Ackers, the Vince’s and the Vincent’s.

However, it wasn’t the work ethic that stood out on these youth mission trip teams, but their willingness to do anything and everything to help those in need. These teams left a fantastic impression on every family that they worked with this week. The community adored the servant’s hearts that they worked with, and many went out of their way to thank the volunteers over and over again. The week was a huge success, and Team Pearlington is praying for one final great week to wrap up all of their projects and end the year with a bang. And if God needs to use Swine Flu again to make that happen, then we are all for it.

*This summer wraps up 3 years of rebuilding in Pearlington, MS. The town is 85% rebuilt! Stay tuned for our new Hurricane relief locations, and check out other locations that we serve in, at New Orleans mission trips.

Christian Mission Trips: Team Pearlington reporting again from the heart of the south where our short term mission trip teams continue to take huge strides in the post-Katrina rebuilding effort. This week, First United Methodist Church of Dallas and Roseville Christian Church made significant progress on five different worksites, while making a lasting impression on the community.

The Bennett house continues to take shape before our eyes. Where only six weeks ago there was only interior framing, there is now beautiful hardwood flooring, an enormous front deck with a split staircase and porch cover, and exquisite interior tiling. However, perhaps the most stunning of all the work at the house so far is the brilliant orange and pink stripes that make up Miranda Bennett’s room. The Summer Staff is thrilled with the progress that has been made on this house, and we are pushing hard to finish it in our two remaining weeks in Pearlington.

The other “top-to-bottom” project that we have been working hard to finish this summer is Nick Narvaes’ house. This week, the team at this site put up siding, finished the deck and handrails, built a hip roof and nearly finished shingling. Nick’s vision is finally starting to come to life thanks to the hard work of this summer’s teams.

This week, we also had a youth mission trips team at Phillip Willis’ house, painting a shed, building porch covers, planting a row of shrubs and staining two decks. Mr. Willis works at Stennis Space Center, where he helps manufacture a variety of important parts for integral weather watching systems. He was deeply grateful for all of the love and support that the teams were providing for the community and for him.

This group also started working with Joe Vincent and his daughter, Jessica. The Vincents are a passionate family who haven’t let personal tragedy bring down their commendable character. The team that worked with the Vincents helped by completely demolishing the interior of Jessica’s home, which hadn’t been restored since the floodwaters nearly completely destroyed her home in 2005. The Vincents are excited about working with future teams because of the efforts poured forth this week.

Along with all of this, teams spent time all over town putting the finishing touches on several work projects that were started last week. From finishing a porch cover at Billy Raines’ house to painting at Joe Vince’s house to staining a deck for Tommy Joe and his mom, this group made a huge impact on the community of Pearlington this week. We were sad to see them leave, but we have faith that the final two weeks of work down here will be just as amazing and productive as this one.

With Love,

Team Pearlington

*Note: Check out Experience Mission’s website at mission trips for information about upcoming Summer 2010 mission trips.

Hurricane Relief in Mississippi: We’re Alive! Team Pearlington survived a youth mission trip team of 150 people this past week and we had an awesome time!  Houston First Presbyterian Church is our largest group of the summer. Literally, our entire summer has been in preparation for this short term missions trip.  We have been making sure that things are lined up to accommodate this many people.  It was interesting to see how God worked this week because we found that even with all of the preparation we had done, problems still arose. The first work day we awoke to torrential downpours and it seemed like the week was going to be disastrous because the majority of the work projects we had lined up were outdoors.  We also had some last minute worksite cancellations.  We were sweating it out and praying that things would turn around.  

However, God helped details to fall into place and the week was a “home run”. He presented other opportunities for work projects and blessed us with eager and high spirited students and leaders who were flexible and energetic.   We were also blessed with beautiful weather on Thursday and Friday.  It is truly amazing how our Lord works even in the difficult times. This was definitely a lesson on trust in Our God, and it became very obvious that sometimes it is so hard to let go of all control in a situation and just give it over to Him. This team from Houston was a huge blessing to the community of Pearlington, Mississippi and the hurricane relief work, as well as to the Experience Mission Staff. We were very encouraged by the entire group’s positive attitude and dedication to work hard. There was never a moment when this team wasn’t asking how they could help whether it be in the kitchen or on the worksite. This team worked in a total of 15 worksites doing various things such as shingling, siding, demolition, flooring, decking, interior & exterior painting, staining, porch covers, and general cleanup and yard beautification.

Something that was very unique to this mission trip team was their tight knit community, which is surprising considering their large size. Their evening programs were very exciting and intentional.  We had fun dance parties each night and moving talks given by Brune, Scott, and Tim.  They have an interesting approach to missions.  They use it has a tool for evangelism.   About 2/3 of the students that came on the trip with First Presbyterian Church did not necessarily have a relationship with Christ.  The philosophy this group has about short term mission trips is to show students what it means to live out a Christian lifestyle through serving. Their theme for this week was in 2 Corinthians 5:20 and being “Christ’s ambassadors.”  Many lives were changed this week and many relationships were built both within the team and the community.

-Jim and the Pearlington team

*Interested in joining in the work of Experience Mission? Check out our website at www.ExperienceMission.org for more information and to sign up for upcoming 2010 mission trips!

Short term Mission Trips: The restoration project in Pearlington has become a national affair. With the four year anniversary of Katrina making land coming up in August, Pearlington is still in need of volunteer efforts to completely recover. In the last two weeks, youth mission trip teams from California, Chicago and Houston have come to Pearlington to play a part in the rebuilding effort following Hurricane Katrina. The groups have made significant progress on houses for four deserving families in the community, including an elderly woman who looks to move into her finished home in three weeks.

The mission trip teams have been working hard on insulating the walls, installing hardwood flooring, tiling the bathrooms and getting the electrical outlets up and running. In the two weeks that teams have been over at the O’Neal house, the site has been transformed from an empty house that had just been walled in, into a beautiful home that is a couple weeks of touchup work away from being completed.

Every week, Ms. O’Neal, a vivacious 76 year old woman who doesn’t look a day over 50, stops buy to offer her encouragement to the teams and tell them how inspirational they are for the community. On Friday the 19th, Ms. O’Neal and her fiancée cooked up 30 pounds of turkey necks, an enormous pot of sausage as well as corn on the cob for lunch for the mission trip team from Chicago. We ate and laughed and talked about the future of Pearlington and the importance of a continued rebuilding effort. Ms O’Neal had to fight legislation for nearly three years before her plans for a house were finally approved and properly funded. After partnering with community member Glenn Locklin and Experience Mission, her dreams are finally coming to fruition. She told us that “without people like y’all, we wouldn’t ever have our homes back.”

Ms. O’Neal has been an inspiration for the Experience Mission staff in Pearlington, and her incredible attitude is a driving force for every group that comes to her house. We are excited to finish her house soon, and look forward to seeing how God uses her testimony as an example of hope for the community.

*Note: Check out our website at www.ExperienceMission.org for information about upcoming Summer 2010 mission trips.

Summer Mission Trips: Team Pearlington has truly been tasting Southern culture during Prep Week.  During this week we have been prepping a home for inspection so that the first of our summer mission trips team is able to legally work on the house.  It has been a ton of work!  We have learned so much construction and worked ten hour days.  The house is being built for the Bennett Family.  The hospitality of Stacey, Eddie, and their thirteen year old daughter, Miranda, has truly stolen the hearts of the EM summer Staff. They constantly come to the work site to chat and offer help or a cold drink.  We have truly gotten to know them and now consider them friends. 

The Bennetts have lived in Pearlington their entire lives and survived Hurricane Katrina.  Unfortunately, their home did not survive.  Stacey, Eddie, and Miranda evacuated from their home and took refuge at NASA for about a week.  After the storm the Bennetts realized that they had lost everything.  The Bennetts lived in a FEMA trailer for a period of time, but the mold negatively affected Stacey and Miranda’s allergies and asthma.  They currently live in a trailer that is too small and also affects Stacey’s allergies.  Another local community partner, Glen, feels very strongly that this family is well deserving of this home.  They do a lot for others in the community and truly have servant hearts.   On Friday night, the Bennett family took us to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. What a great meal!  Afterwards, we went to Miranda’s softball game with Stacey and Eddie.  We had a great time watching the game and talking. It was a much needed break from all the construction.  Team Pearlington is already amazed at how much we have been served and blessed in the short time we have been here. 

We look forward to see our relationships with the Bennetts continue to grow as God reveals his plans for us in Pearlington this summer. 

Note: Experience Mission will begin the third year working in Pearlington to help families rebuild their homes and lives after the devastation of hurricane Katrina. Summer volunteers from youth mission trips and adult mission trips will provide over 500 energetic workers. If you’d like to join a mission trip with EM for 2010, visit us at our website www.experiencemission.org

Though Hurricane Gustav was played down as a near-miss storm that largely spared the Gulf Coast, the flooding and consequent damage did deal a devastating blow to the morale of many residents who had finally begun to regain a sense of stability for the first time since Katrina struck in 2005.

Some are calling it quits, including residents of Pearlington, Miss., an Experience Mission partner community. While Gustav’s damage was light in comparison to Hurricane Katrina and newer structures withstood the storm, a general sense of discouragement is sinking in among those who have twice suffered significant property damage.

Janyne Evans, 52, owns the popular Turtle Landing restaurant in Pearlington. She said two good friends of hers—who are also good customers—are choosing to skip town.

“They’re going to pack up and they’re moving out. They can’t handle losing everything continuously,” Evans said during a telephone interview. She said she had just gotten back to the Turtle Landing to find the bottom floor flooded with water and was assessing the overall damage.

As she spoke, she said, she was awaiting an evacuation order for Hurricane Ike.

Other residents who suffered through Hurricane Katrina, however, had cause to be thankful. While 137 homes in Pearlington suffered water damage due to Gustav, those built in accordance with more stringent new building codes remained largely unscathed.

Many of those homes, which are raised on sturdy posts to sit at least 15 feet above sea level, were built by EM volunteers in partnership with the Pearlington Recovery Center (PRC).

“All the new houses are fine, because they’re all on posts. None of them got water, none of them lost a single possession,” PRC Director Glenn Lockin said. “All the houses are perfect, which is just a blessing.”

Locklin said that while the storm set community restoration work back about 90 days, the return to normalcy seemed streamlined, and just days after the residents returned from a mandatory evacuation, Pearlington was up and running as it had been before. Still, he said that rather than the optimistic sense of community that has fueled much of the Katrina recovery effort, many people appear downtrodden.

“The faith is not here, which I was kind of surprised by,” Locklin said. “They’re nervous, and I do understand that.”

Locklin is trying to stay positive. He himself lost a car to the storm, but said he wasn’t sweating it too much.

“It’s all good. It’s just a car,” he said. “It’s not the same as a house—it’s not the same as rebuilding again.”

Back at the Turtle Landing, Evans said that despite her soaked restaurant and more difficulty on the horizon, she was fighting to keep her spirits up as well, since she had no plans to leave Pearlington.

“I’m going to try to stick it out because I got six years into it, and life savings. I can’t really just walk away from it right now,” she said.

Locklins estimated it would take about two more years to get Pearlington back to normal once and for all. Meanwhile, he’s also attempting to plant a Foursquare church there.

He said volunteer teams serving Pearlington through EM helped speed the recovery process along this year and enriched local youth—including his daughters—by giving exposing them to people from all over the country.

“We had a positive experience with all the groups. The kids had a ball, and we got a lot done. We worked on so many houses, it was scary,” he said.

Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to Pearlington and other locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call 360-732-0986 to learn more.

Sometimes it’s hard to understand why houses take so long to be completed, but with all the different steps – some which require a greater level of skill than others – and multiple inspections that must be passed before moving on to the next step, the lengthy process makes more sense.

It  had been around a month since teams had been able to do any work on Brigitte’s home because we were all waiting for it to pass inspection. Recently we discovered that the house had passed inspection two weeks ago, but no one had been notified. This was both frustrating and exciting news – we wished we could have been working on it for weeks, but we were excited for  our very last team of the summer to begin the drywalling process.

Part of the Tennessee Team spend the entire week at Brigitte’s, and with Cory’s guidance put up sheet after sheet of drywall, and finished nearly all the insulation – a job slightly less than comfortable. When I finally got to see the site toward the end of the week, I was shocked at the progress they had made. I remembered almost two months ago when I had helped hook up some of the plumbing in the bathroom, when I could see every corner of the house from the moment I walked in the door.

Another house that has been a slow but slightly more steady process is Ray’s. We have had a group working on his house almost every week, but for the last month it seemed like each team would redo the same tedious process – mudding and sanding, mudding and sanding. It’s a task that has to be done, is not quick or easy, and takes a great amount of time to get right. The last two weeks have brought an end in sight, however, and our last two teams were able to actually texture both walls and a ceiling after mudding and sanding. On Thursday, EM’s last workday for the summer in Pearlington, we could all tell that Ray was excited, in his quiet way, to see such visible progress on his home.

A sign outside of a church, visible from the main road that winds through Pearlington, sums up where many of the town’s struggles and their faith intersect: “Katrina was big, but God is bigger.”

-Cheryl Knowles

With the summer coming to a close in just a couple of weeks, we didn’t expect to be introduced to many new projects, especially on houses that had barely been touched since Katrina. That’s why meeting Wade came as such a surprise. Wade lives in the same neighborhood as Jeanine and Sonny, but until one of our teams from Texas came to help him gut out his home, he has had no outside aid.

Wade camps out at a pier for now, spending most of his time fishing and getting his home to a point where it can be restored. He comes back to his house to shower in his yard with a hose, thankful to have access to running water. Open about the struggles he has faced in getting back on his feet, he showers volunteers with thanks, provides an endless supply of snacks to encourage throughout the workday, and praises God for His sovereignty. His tearful recollections touch the hearts of the groups that have finally begun work at his home, as well as ours, encouraging each of us to continue serving even when we might feel weary.

Meeting people like Wade makes it difficult for our team to say goodbye, knowing there is yet so much more to be done in Pearlington. Still, we are thankful to become even such a small part of his life, and hope we have been a light of encouragement.

-Cheryl Knowles

By Matt Grager

One of the many obstacles in the recovery of Pearlington, Miss. after Hurricane Katrina devastated the community has been money.

Many of the residents simply cannot afford to rebuild permanent housing and therefore have been stuck in their FEMA trailers or temporary cottages for the past three years. People in these situations have been forced to rely on charity and volunteer work for help. Sonny Wilkinson, 75, a Pearlington native, is no different.

This summer, Wilkinson hopes to finish his permanent house, only a block down the road from where his home of 35 years was completely destroyed. The only thing keeping him from completing it is, of course, money.

“I’ve got a little over $20,000 or so put into this thing, and I’ve got about [$10,000] left,” Wilkinson said. “But I’ve got that stowed away to bury me with.”

Wilkinson’s home is a one-story house raised 12 feet in the air on eight-by-eight posts. The frame and roof are complete, and the siding and wiring each halfway finished. Volunteers, including some from Experience Mission, helped him get this far with their labor.

“If this were 10 years ago, before my heart attack, I could have built the whole thing myself,” he said. “But now, I am blessed with the help.

Though he bought the plot of land and the materials himself, he wonders how he will afford the drywall he needs, let alone the $7,000 elevator he needs for himself and his pals to reach the wrap-around porch and front door.

After the storm, local residents were required to fill out applications for FEMA grants of $26,000 to help them rebuild. Wilkinson complied, understanding he would be receiving a grant. While he was filling out that application, he was asked to fill out an application for a Small Business Association loan as well. Again, he complied.

Because of his good credit, he was offered a $190,000 loan from the SBA, with a $900 a month payment. However, Wilkinson, who lives on a fixed income of $1,000 a month, had to turn the loan down.

“FEMA told me because I was offered the loan and refused it, they couldn’t give me my $26,000. Ain’t nobody in their right mind going to loan a 75-year-old man $190,000,” he said. “It just ain’t right.”

FEMA did offer him $11,000 for the destroyed contents of his home. Later on, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency gave him a grant of $23,000 for the first phase of their Katrina relief grant program. A few months later, MEMA asked him to return the money, saying he had never actually qualified for the grant.

“Six months ago they told me I had qualified for the Phase II grant. I told them to take it out of there if they wanted their money back so bad, because I certainly wasn’t going to give it back,” Wilkinson said. “But I found out last week that they were lying to me this whole time and I’m not getting any Phase II money.”

In order to finish his home, which needs only drywall, paint, flooring and his elevator, he needs about 10,000 more dollars.

“If I can’t get my money from the state, I’ll have to spend my burial money and go find a lawyer. I don’t know what else I can do.”

Last night our team from South Carolina had a joint evening program with another church from their area staying a few miles up the road in Waveland, giving us interns the night off. Rather than take off for the beach or head into New Orleans, we took the opportunity to lend an extra hand.

I met Sonny Wilkinson on my first day here in Pearlington and have had to go back and talk with him almost every day of my stay. Despite his hard financial luck after the storm, the 75-year-old man wears a cheery attitude and wide grin as consistently as he wears a plaid shirt and blue jeans.

Yesterday we noticed that one of our groups had left the vinyl siding on his new house crooked. Cory had the idea to spend our evening bringing him dinner and fixing the siding. We also invited along his two friends Bud and Dilbert to join us.

We brought over a feast of barbeque brisquit, watermelon, strawberries, macaroni salad and a staple of our deep southern diet–sweet tea.

While helping Sonny with his siding was a rewarding task, it was small in comparison to listening to the old men. They shared their stories and jokes with the precision and timing that only years of practice can bring. And they still laughed genuinely at each one.

Sitting there on the porch swing with Sonny, it was clear to me, and I would think to the rest of the group, that these are the most important moments of our Experience Mission work. The homes that are built are a necessity for the community, but they are ultimately temporary. However, the relationships we build with the community are permanent. The vinyl siding at Sonny’s house will ultimately wear down and weather, but his hearty laughter will not.

-Matt Grager