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Greetings & Salutations faithful Stapleton Blog Readers.

Well I have finally got around to posting a report on my mission trip to Gulfport Mississippi. First of all I feel the need to give some background information on how we found our way down to the Gulfport area. Last year about a week after Hurricane Katrina struck our Church which is packed with engineers and medical personnel (so if you need to build something we are there and if we get hurt doing it we have staff on hand) felt compelled to do something to help in the aftermath of Katrina. So our church got in contact with a medical group that was working in the Hurricane area just inside Mississippi. So the Church through generous donations and offerings were able to pack a few trucks and trailers with medical and other supplies. The first group left a little under 2 weeks after Katrina hit. Once our first group got to their destination they were told that no one knew they were coming and that their help was not needed but they knew where they were needed. So the group headed further south into Gulfport, Mississippi not knowing what to expect or what they would find. While the team was driving through Gulfport they came upon St. James Baptist church located just about 4 blocks from the gulf. This church is lead by Pastor Eddie Hartwell and had fashioned itself as a disaster recovery & supply distribution center. So our team stopped there they set up a clinic and those who were not medical personnel started taking care of other needs in the community. Our first team stayed about a week and the following week we sent in another team that did pretty much the same work. We have stayed in contact with Pastor Hartwell since then and learned he had setup a non-profit corporation and had started through donations to rebuild housing in the area. Our Pastor Greg Creasy wrote a grant to the National Baptist Convention to aid in the Disaster Recovery Ministry. So our church and several other churches in West Virginia are sending down several teams this year to aid in the reconstruction, that’s how I ended up in Gulfport Mississippi for a week in May.

So here’s my part of the story I cannot begin to tell you the destruction and devastation that still exists in the areas where Katrina struck. Things are just now getting to the point where people can begin to rebuild. Communities are still in recovery mode, there was a 38 foot storm surge in the Gulfport area. Houses were literally washed off of their foundation and moved inland. One person, one organization, or one government agency is not going to be enough to help this area recover we all must do our part to take help others make this area livable again. We are better together and can accomplish anything if we all just do a small part to help out. If you are a Christian I ask you to please help in Christian love if you are not a believer in Christ I would ask you to help out of shear human decency. There are still people hurting everyday where Katrina struck. In fact there is one facility called Katrina’s Kitchen that is still serving 1000’s of meal daily, just because this is no longer front page news does not mean the problem has passed. People are trying to help themselves but in many cases they are unable to. Most of the employment centers for the area were along the ocean front and were obliterated. Just a little bit further west of Gulfport there were 2 towns called Wayland & Past Christian. These towns were in the path of the eye wall of the Hurricane and were literally wiped of the face of the earth. They have merged in an attempt to draw people back in and generate enough of a tax base to start rebuilding.

With all this destruction what did I do to help? First all of I did not go alone I was joined by Pastor Greg Creasy & Lynn Hudson from my church, Ron Alyestock, Pastor Mark Jarrell, & Becky Vandergriff from Genesis Fellowship Church, & Daniel Beiling from Fist Baptist Church of Ravenswood. We went down for a week to work with the St. James Baptist Church Disaster Recovery Ministry. While we were there we helped in finishing out a house and did some other odd and ends. Like I said in an earlier post “Using power tools for the Lord it doesn’t get any better”! We had a good week of fellowship and very tiring work. When I set back and think about all that we did in the grand scheme of things it really did not amount to a hill of beans for what needs to be accomplished in the area. I believe that Mrs. Adkins will love her new home and she will likely not know that I had anything to do with it and that’s ok. This is all about living for the lord and helping his children, hopefully the work that we did that week brought the lord some small amount of glory. One of the hardest things that I had to get over when I became a Christian is that “it’s not about me”. That’s still a hard one that I must work at every day and frankly sometimes I fail miserably. But I get up the next day and try it again. There is one thing that I can be absolutely positive of however. A small group doing their part to aid in the recovery of Katrina made a small difference in a life and if we all try to do that just some of the time, the world could be a much better place.

Thanks for stopping by to read, that’s the news and I am outta here.

Link to a write up on the trip.

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