By Keith Manuel

Illustration by Heidi Younger

Emotions are sometimes as raw and tender as the hands of the volunteers still gutting and rebuilding hurricane-damaged homes in metropolitan New Orleans. When looking into the faces of heartbroken homeowners caught between bureaucracy and bankruptcy, it's hard to hold back the tears.

"This is the first mission trip I've ever gone on," says Marc Byers from Center Point Church in North Richland Hills, Texas. "Temple, the homeowner, was sitting across the street crying while we were working. When you see things like that, it changes you. It makes you thankful to be able to come down here and help."

The thousands of volunteers in the New Orleans area have been a constant reminder to the churches and homeowners that God hasn't deserted them and Southern Baptists haven't forgotten them either.

Operation Noah Rebuild, headed by project coordinator Tobey Pitman, a North American Mission Board (NAMB) missionary, has a goal of enlisting Southern Baptist volunteers to repair 1,000 homes and 20 churches. The challenges that overwhelm homeowners are personal for Pitman. Before the storm, he was the executive director for the Brantley Center, a mission center helping the homeless find food, clothing and shelter and overcome addictions. After the hurricane, needs changed, the Brantley Center closed and NAMB reassigned Pitman to help with housing in a much different capacity.

Rebuilding houses
Pitman sees the effects of volunteers and churches working together on a daily basis. The most unique situation he's witnessed started with a phone call from Birchman Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. As they coordinated their trip to New Orleans, they made a different kind of request, "Can we bring the homeowners with us so they can be there while we work on their house?"

Birchman Baptist and First Baptist Church, Hurst, Texas, decided to help Lenard and Celestine Brousseau who evacuated to the Fort Worth area. The Brousseaus attend First Baptist and work with members of Birchman Baptist. So, when they heard the city of New Orleans required homes to be gutted or the city would demolish them they turned to the church. The two churches sent a team with the family to gut their home and help salvage some mementos.

Among those struggling in post-Katrina New Orleans is Marsha McGee, a single mother. She's paying $1,200 per month in rent while continuing to pay the mortgage on her damaged home. She's working over 60 hours a week to provide for her six children. Her story is tragically typical; at least it was until Southern Baptist volunteers showed up.

"Everything they've done, they've done from their hearts," McGee says. "When they left it looked like I could just go inside. All my neighbors came over to help. Before the volunteers came, everyone was just taking care of their own lives, now all the neighbors are helping each other. The volunteers were inspirational. They made an amazing difference in my life."

Rebuilding churches
Just as Southern Baptist volunteers are ministering to homeowners, they're also taking care of churches that survived the storm. According to Joe McKeever, the director of missions for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans, almost half of the churches in the association no longer exist. "These volunteers have saved many of our churches from shutting their doors," McKeever says.

One of those churches is Gentilly Baptist Church. The storm tossed the church's pews on top of one another as if someone put them in a dirty washing machine and spun them around. The church's pastor, who developed health problems, relocated his family to another state after the storm. A sister congregation about a mile away, Elysian Fields Baptist Church, experienced much damage and had to be demolished. Their pastor, Ken Taylor, a professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, wanted to continue his ministry but found himself without a building. The obvious answer was for the two congregations to lean on one another's strengths and merge.

The revitalized congregations, with help from Rosebower Baptist Church from Paducah, Kentucky, and the Arkansas Baptist Convention, held a block party for the surrounding neighborhood. Nearly 500 people came to get away from the tedium of FEMA trailers and home repairs. Volunteers and church members made sure there was plenty of food to eat and great games to play. At the end of the day, the church had 50 new prospects, and two people began a new relationship with Jesus Christ. "It was a real shot in the arm for the church and the community," says church planting strategist Freddie Arnold.

Rebuilding lives
Volunteers are helping discover new ministry settings in New Orleans. An electrical team made up of volunteers from 12 churches in the Kansas Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists recognized that the local building supply store was ripe for ministry. Since the storm, these stores are alive with activity. Contractors are zooming in and out with materials. Hispanic laborers line the streets, waiting to be offered a day job by a contractor. Steve Treaty, a member of Gentilly Baptist who grew up in Honduras, went to the store with a few team members to hand out Spanish Bibles and tracts. Before the team finished for the day, seven Hispanic men gave their lives to Christ. On another trip, 20 more men prayed to receive Jesus.
Jackie James is learning to trust God every day in his role as project coordinator for the Arkansas Baptist Convention's volunteer work in New Orleans. "None of this would be happening without God putting it together. Having 10 state conventions working together and it all being coordinated is a God thing," James says.

As volunteers come to the New Orleans area, some struggle with feelings of hopelessness because words and pictures can't prepare anyone emotionally for the damage that remains. As volunteers come to grips with the idea that they can't help everyone, they suddenly realize their goal is to help one family at a time get back on its feet. Terry Medlin from Shiloh Baptist Church in North Carolina summed up what most volunteers soon discover. "I feel more blessed doing the work than what we are able to do for the people down here. God has called us to do this, and it's just a pleasure to serve."

Keith Manuel is a writer and evangelism associate for the Louisiana Baptist Convention.