This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Shannon Blosser, staff writer for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.
It wasn’t exactly what I expected to experience.
Sure I had my expectations when I signed up for my church’s fourth mission trip. It was my first trip with Christ United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, so I was new to the whole mission trip idea of service to others. I thought we would go down, help some people, do some hard work, and have a good time.
We did all of that. But there is so much more to what went on and what occurred that to simply write it off as “doing some hard work” would be a disservice. Ever since returning from Gulfport, Mississippi, where we did the majority of our mission, I’ve been consumed by what I saw and experienced. The images I saw and my experiences there have affected me deeply and will be part of me from here on.
Why? Maybe it’s because I can’t get the images out of my head, or the thought of a father putting on jeans and a shirt to help us on a Saturday afternoon after we had finished working at his home. Perhaps it’s the family of Barby White, who almost broke down in tears at the idea of our group helping her family.
Regardless, I can’t seem to get the images out of my head. Each morning we would see churches gutted and in need of massive repairs. Businesses were in ruins along U.S. 90, a major highway that runs next to the Mississippi coastline. One of our key landmarks driving to our worksite was the Olive Garden on U.S. 90. Just the sign for the Olive Garden. The building was long gone, destroyed by the storm. Businesses in downtown Gulfport were still damaged. Some were in ruins. Through all of this, there were signs in Gulfport of revival as businesses had reopened throughout the town.
But then there was Biloxi.
None of our work was in Biloxi, but a co-worker and I went there to make contacts for a future mission with the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). After making the contact, we were told to take a tour of Biloxi because, to paraphrase, the damage was nothing like Gulfport.
She was right. It was much worse.
If Gulfport was on the road to recovery, then parts of Biloxi looked as if that road to recovery was stuck somewhere between a slow crawl and never started. Some former casinos looked as if the damage was caused more by a bomb explosion than a hurricane. Of course, the most powerful scene was the image of a nearly milelong bridge on U.S. 90. It was nothing but rubble stacked like dominos in a waterway, to paraphrase the UMCOR representative.
I don’t know if my words do justice to the things I saw. Only a camera could do that, and I had left mine behind in the church’s parking lot. But according to my fellow workers on the trip who had been to Mississippi on previous missions, what I saw, as devastating as it was, was nothing compared to the damage in those early weeks and months.
Mississippi and Louisiana will need aid and workers for years to come. This is not just something that will pass after only a few months. There are homes to be rebuilt. Business owners must decide whether to reopen in their current locations or move to property away from the coastline.
With reports this week of mismanaged FEMA funds, I’m sure it may be difficult for some to understand how massive the need is in Mississippi, and for that matter the entire Gulf region. Those who take advantage of the system only hurt those who truly have a need and limit the resources that can be used to help those people. It is going to take a continued effort of work from government, non-government organizations, and volunteers working together to rebuild the region. It will take years, not months, to complete this task to help our fellow man.
Along those lines, emotional healing also must take place. That is as much a part of the recovery as building new buildings. Lives were changed forever. It will take time for people to adjust.
As for me, I’ll never be quite the same as I was before embarking on that trip to Gulfport.
Perhaps it’s a good thing the trip wasn’t what I expected when we left. I changed. I was re-energized with a desire to help others. But maybe John Wesley, who founded what is now the United Methodist Church, put it best. “Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the souls you can, in every place you can, at all the times you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as you ever can.”
I can think of no better saying for those who work to help rebuild Mississippi and Louisiana.