Katrina part II

February 5th, 2006 at 02:11pm Brian

Well days after the storm hit Jodi and I started to try to find ways to get down there.  To my frustration we weren’t able to find a group to join up with.  I’m sure being up here in Michigan and the tragedy going on people weren’t much into organizing at that point.  Well a few weeks went by and I was talking with my boss at work about how disappointed I was in not being able to help, when he said “John is leading a group down there”.  So he picked up the phone gave him a call and just like that I had a connection.  Know I don’t really ever talk about religion (all though I strongly believe) I thought wow thanks God!!!!  So in the coming week I meet with John and discussed what to expect and make sure that I really wanted to do this.

I just knew it was something that I needed to do even knowing that I don’t have a ton of experience in this kind of work, I thought hey I will just go and do whatever I can.  So I Jodi took me up to work on that Thursday evening, I loaded up the pick up truck from work and headed to the church to meet the rest of the guys.

 When I arrived I felt a little out of place but by the time we were in Ohio I felt like part of the group.  The trip down there seemed to take forever (18 hours to be exact) and all of us were eagerly waiting to arrive.  I was amazed that we were over 200 miles away (north) of the coast and already we started seeing all of the devastation from the hurricane.  There were tons of trees down, highway signs twisted and destroyed.  As we got close we made our last stop in Hattisburg Mississippi (home of Southern Miss U.).  The damage was really starting to show as we headed for Gulfport.

 I had only gotten about 2 hours off and on of sleep on the way down there, but as we rolled into town I was so ready to hop out of the truck and start working.  I had no idea what I was going to be doing, and I was not ready for what I was about to see, and experience of the next couple of days.

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