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January 24, 2006
Students from Traverse City Christian depart Temple Baptist Church early Monday morning in Moss Point, Miss., to help in hurricane reconstruction efforts. See our Moss Point photo gallery for more photos of the mission trip. Students get a close-up glimpse of storm damageThey're in Miss. for a 7-day relief mission
Al Frank takes a break from yard work at his residence in Pascagoula, Miss., Monday afternoon. Frank’s 2,200-square- foot house was demolished by Hurricane Katrina. See our Moss Point photo gallery for more photos of the mission trip. Gamalski, 17, found the work far more rewarding than a day at the beach. "At first you look at some of the houses and think it isn't that bad, but then you go inside and see that the water was up to my ears," said the senior from Traverse City Christian School. "The residents are so welcoming, and you get to see the person and talk to the person." Gamalski is among 118 Traverse City Christian students who arrived in Moss Point, Miss., Sunday afternoon for a seven-day mission project to help with ongoing relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina. The seventh- through 12th-graders will spend the week cleaning, painting, drywalling and roofing in lieu of midterm exams, and will work in teams of three or four students and one adult. The volunteers started their morning with a 6 a.m. wake-up call at Temple Baptist Church - their temporary home for the week - followed by breakfast and a 7 a.m. departure to nearby Pascagoula, where they received their marching orders. Gamalski's team worked on a home in Pascagoula, near Moss Point. Its owner, 68-year-old Libby Boudwin, said the volunteers' help gives her hope for recovery while she lives in a FEMA-issued trailer in her front yard. At one point, the storm surge brought the water level in her house to 18 inches, and she's been living in the trailer since Nov. 7. She had taken refuge with family deeper inland when Katrina hit. "This means more than I can ever explain," Boudwin said. "If it weren't for the volunteers, it would take forever to get this done." Moss Point, located about six miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, flooded when Katrina came ashore Aug. 29. The community of 15,318 wasn't hit as hard as some other coastal cities, but eight out of every 10 houses in the city were destroyed or sustained damage. Inland neighborhoods of Pascagoula endured a similar fate, while the storm largely obliterated the city's beachfront homes. The volunteers' rollicking 22-hour bus trip set off from the Traverse City Christian parking lot around sunset on Saturday. They left behind well-wishing family members in a chilly 29 degrees. Freshman friends Keri Romberg and Mackenzie Renshaw endured the long ride by sharing a flick on their portable DVD player and munching on treats through the night. It was the first trip to Mississippi for both. "It will be fun to help people, and especially in the warmer weather," Romberg said. Riders awoke at daybreak to a misty morning near Huntsville, Ala., but the skies cleared and temperatures warmed by the time the three buses rolled to a stop for a break about three hours from Moss Point. A handful of students donned shorts and booted a soccer ball around the rest stop's parking lot. Leigh Bump accompanied her ninth-grade daughter Sarah on the trip and said she expected to be stunned by scenes she saw during their week in Mississippi. She predicted it would be an eye-opener for the volunteers, most of whom have not experienced severe weather outside of northern Michigan snowstorms. "They've seen the pictures, but pictures don't really show the effect," she said. "They're going to get to meet people and have a good feeling that they helped someone." The buses reached Temple Baptist Church around 4 p.m. Sunday, welcomed by temperatures in the mid-60s that elicited whoops and cheers from the volunteers. The workers quickly settled in at their temporary home, received a welcome from the local church's pastor, camped out in sleeping bags and eventually calmed enough to rest for the early wake-up call. Timothy Forton, 17, was eager to get started. "I'm kind of excited and nervous at the same time," he said. Students tried to survey Katrina's damage through bus windows during the trip, glimpsing piles of collected debris and temporary "blue roofs" that mark scarred buildings. Parent Dave Friedlander arrived one day before the bus caravan that carried his 15-year-old daughter Anne. He discovered that building facades in the Gulf Coast region don't tell the whole story. Homes that weren't destroyed sustained major water damage, especially in communities like Moss Point that are farther from the Gulf Coast. "There's a lot of insidious damage," he said. 
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