Imperishable Inheritance

I had the glo­ri­ous oppor­tu­nity to go down to Gulf­port, Mis­sis­sippi to aid in the relief effort from Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina. When I went to fall retreat a cou­ple of weeks ago, they showed a video of a team that went down; and it com­pletely grabbed my heart and atten­tion. I remem­ber that exact sec­ond decid­ing I would head up a team from WSU to go down with the stu­dents from Miami, and sure enough I went through with it (when I make up my mind it’s going to hap­pen). I do have pic­tures, but I hope you’ll also take a short time to read through this to become more famil­iar with some of those who struggle.

Well, I was the only one who actu­ally went down from WSU, but it was a bless­ing. I was afforded the oppor­tu­nity to meet many Miami stu­dents I had not met before, and I did meet quite a few of them. I showed up on Thurs­day to ride down, and I was going to ride in a big van; but I got the oppor­tu­nity to ride down with three other girls instead. They were three soror­ity girls (they talked about all the Greek life, and I had no idea what they were talk­ing about), and it was a bless­ing. They were Kris­ten, Robin, and Claire. So we started our 13 hour drive on down south.

For some rea­son (and it’s a won­der how this stuff hap­pens around me!), but the Calvinism/Arminianism issue was brought up. It was brought up, because I sum­ma­rized my tes­ti­mony a lit­tle bit; and that is usu­ally how it is brought up any­more. Well, we talked for 1.5 hours about it. I didn’t real­ize until the end, that Claire was a non-believer and I felt really bad. I told her to put aside all I said and focus on the gospel. We switched off dri­ving all night, and made it down to MS at 8 a.m. CST.

We got there just as the teams were being assigned for the next day. We were sent, along with another car load of four, to work with Con­voy of Hope. They assigned us to a house that had been sub­merged with 6 ft. of water from the hur­ri­cane. We started work on Caroline’s house. Our job was to pull all the dry­wall and insu­la­tion out to pre­vent the mold from get­ting into the frame. We worked for 8 hours straight, but we got the whole house done. By the end of the day, it was ready to be rebuilt. Let me say that I have a new-found respect for those that do that for a liv­ing! I was also inter­viewed on cam­era by the Amer­i­can Bible Soci­ety about my work down in MS. They asked me if there is a Bible pas­sage that I would share to impart hope, and I responded by quot­ing John 6:44 (such a Calvin­ist). We then went back to the church where we were stay­ing and slept in the sanc­tu­ary. (Sanc­tu­ary pews are sur­pris­ingly comfy!)

We then woke up for the next day of work. We were assigned to go down to the beach, and it was here that I saw the extent of the destruc­tion. We got to go down and visit Bar­bara. We weren’t there long, but we got to help her pull out some of her belong­ings that were sal­vage­able. She told us her story of how she stayed through the storm, and she had to stay on a leather couch for four hours that was float­ing in 5 feet of water before she could escape the house. The pic­tures show how God prov­i­den­tially saved her. She was in the only part of her liv­ing room that wasn’t com­pletely destroyed. Amaz­ing. The girls spent some time talk­ing to the FEMA con­tract work­ers. They flirted pretty heav­ily with them, and after we left they joked on who would marry who. I felt like after leav­ing that house that we did the most in pro­vid­ing encour­age­ment, and that is a very pow­er­ful mode of min­istry. Some of our group mem­bers even talked to the fire­fight­ers, and they gave us a huge box of bananas!

We then went down the beach to another house and worked for a woman named Gale who was help­ing rebuild the area. Appar­ently she wasn’t the per­son we were orig­i­nally sup­posed to work for, but God prov­i­den­tially pro­vided for us to be there. The girls cleaned out the inside out, and the guys did yard work. Even­tu­ally we all worked together to fin­ish the yard work. We cleared a spot in the yard for a FEMA trailer to occupy. By the way, FEMA has done some great things for these peo­ple. I don’t care what the media says. Also, both days the Red Cross drove through (and we were in two sep­a­rate areas), and this day we accepted a meal from them that is meant for sur­vivors and vol­un­teers. It was sur­pris­ingly good. In fact, they should mar­ket those lunches! The Red Cross is doing great things there as well.

Well, that was offi­cially the end of our work; but we decided to go over to a neighbor’s house to extend a help­ing hand. Her name was San­dra, and she let our girls use her restrooms in her FEMA trailer. We thought it would be good to go and fin­ish off the day serv­ing her. She had knee surgery right before the storm, and she had just come back to her house 10 days before we were there. So, her phys­i­cal con­di­tion inhib­ited her abil­ity to work on her house. How glo­ri­ous it was to be on the other side of God’s pro­vid­ing for oth­ers! We helped clean out some of her house (it was really bad, I didn’t even go in at the sug­ges­tion of other mem­bers of my group). We cleaned some of her fur­ni­ture, cleaned her yard, and pro­vided some encour­age­ment. (By the way, the pic­ture in this post is all of us at Sandra’s house.)

While I was mov­ing her boxes, I noticed books by Carl Gus­tav Jung, lib­eral the­ol­ogy books, and com­par­a­tive reli­gion works. It prompted me to ask her about it. She said she just retired from being a Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter to write about women’s issues in the Bible. As we talked it became very evi­dent how much post­mod­ernist phi­los­o­phy had reeked havoc on her. She was evi­dently quite bril­liant, but told me clearly that God man­i­fests Him­self in many tra­di­tions. When I asked her about the exclu­sive claims of Christ she said it “wor­ried” her. She asked me what I thought, and I told her about my his­tory of Bud­dhism, New Age, etc and how the exclu­sive claims of Christ didn’t make God smaller but much big­ger. What caught me off guard even more was the fact that many of Chris­tians in my group agreed with many points of hers! I was com­pletely taken aback. It was a point of dis­cour­age­ment for me, but it’s good to know the con­di­tion of all those in the group.

Well, we then drove back to the church, and we were the first group back. The other car decided that they were going back, and I con­vinced our car to go a head and head back. We drove all night, and made it back today at 8. I then drove back from Miami, and got to enjoy Waf­fle House (man, their waf­fles are good) and a shower which I had been with­out for 3 days. I just woke up from a 7 hour “nap.” I was thor­oughly exhausted.

What a joy this was. I encour­age every­one if the oppor­tu­nity pro­vides itself to go down and serve. If any­one is inter­ested, Miami stu­dents are going down again so let me know if you’re inter­ested. Please pray for them. We got to pray with each of the women we served, and they were all encour­aged and their faith was strength­ened. I heard after the first day of what oth­ers had also done. This syn­op­sis is only of our group, but there were other groups who went with us who did great things as well.

We were given tracks for the prob­lem of pain/evil, and it was less than God glo­ri­fy­ing. The Cru­sade tract said that suf­fer­ing was not an orig­i­nal part of God’s plan/design, but human’s sin was the cause of suf­fer­ing (because the hur­ri­cane had so much free will right?). God did cause the hur­ri­cane to unleash His wrath, but His pur­poses will stand. We know that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called accord­ing to His pur­pose” (Rom 8:28).

“I am the LORD, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me; That men may know from the ris­ing to the set­ting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other, The One form­ing light and cre­at­ing dark­ness, Caus­ing well-being and cre­at­ing calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.“
Isa­iah 45:5–7