Called to Rebuild Homes and Lives

God uses volunteer’s skills to help others

By Adam Miller

For now the small brick ranch on Dreux Avenue is quiet, except for the scraping of the puddy knife Andy King is using on some recently hung dry wall. That and the intermittent explanation of what it takes to do a good drywall job.

“It’s tough work and very few people want to do it,” says Andy, a 66-year-old retired pastor, farmer, and drywall specialist with the Baptist Bricklayers of Tennessee. He works his puddy knife along a rough ceiling seam. “You want the mud to flower out like this so you don’t have any rough spots.”

Andy has hung drywall since he was 24, but farming has been his day job for most of his life. Andy still farms but now his day job is hanging drywall and making sure it’s well mudded.

He’s worked this job for two and half years through Operation NOAH Rebuild. This house in New Orleans is King’s 24th renovation project and reflects how far Operation NOAH Rebuild has brought hundreds of residents and churches in three years.

Since Operation NOAH Rebuild started in the spring of 2006 in response to the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina, more than 23,000 Southern Baptist volunteers have rebuilt 148 homes, made 1,200 more homes livable, and helped 13 churches become operational again.

King started on his first rebuild project in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in March 2006 after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the Gulf Coast in Mississippi and Louisiana. He’s also worked in Slidell, Louisiana. He and wife, Charlene, have lived out of their RV for most of those two and a half years, traveling back to Tennessee occasionally to help with their son’s harvest on the family farm.

“I’ll go home to help with the soybeans, and then we’ll be back here again,” says Andy.

Charlene does administrative work at the NOAH headquarters on the Mississippi River’s west bank, while Andy is currently the only drywall specialist on the NOAH team.

“God wants us to go wherever and whenever He wants,” says Andy.

“Skilled volunteers are an essential part of our work down here,” says David Maxwell, Operation NOAH Rebuild’s project coordinator. “Having someone who can do plumbing work or skillfully set drywall, those people are hard to come by. What we need are crew chiefs who can do sheetrock, plumbing or electrical work and teach others.”

Andy King, with his attention to detail and a seemingly untiring work ethic, is the perfect example of how God can use any skill to glorify Himself and to bring others closer to Him. Andy’s and Charlene’s life tells the story of a couple who looked around them—in their Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria—to see where in the world God was at work. And they joined Him in New Orleans! OM

Adam Miller is associate editor of On Mission.

First on the scene

In an event like Katrina or the more recent Hurricane Ike, more than 85,000 trained disaster relief volunteers are ready at a moment’s notice to be deployed. They provide physical, emotional, and spiritual help to victims by providing meals, helping with clean up and child care, and offering counseling. Volunteer teams respond to disasters within their own state and work cooperatively with other states in larger emergencies.