In February, our church, Valley Presbyterian in Portola Valley, sent 12 people on a mission to help with the rebuilding of a home in the Gulf Coast following the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Five high school students and seven adults made the eight-day trip.
On Saturday, the first day, we flew into Gulfport, Mississippi, and drove to the small town of Gautier, Mississippi, population about 12,000. We went right to our headquarters, Gautier Presbyterian Church, to meet with the staff and get our assignment: to help rebuild the Biloxi home of an elderly widow everybody called Miss Kittie.
We slept in wooden bunk beds that had been built in the church hall. About 10 people slept in the big room. The church made us meals some nights, and we made our own lunches each day.
The next day, our group took a long drive along the gulf, and we saw hundreds of homes and businesses completely destroyed. Six months after the disaster, the area still looked like a war zone, with debris, trash, and clothing everywhere — and some items still hanging from trees.
My friend Josh and I walked to one house and saw just everything the family owned strewn all over the place — even their very personal items. It just made me think: What if I came home one day and saw my family’s house completely wiped out? We saw a picture of the family; it just was so sad.
On Monday, our group started work. Ms. Kittie had a tough story to tell us about the aftermath of the hurricane. Her husband suffered a broken blood vessel during the storm, and he died because they couldn’t stop the bleeding. She didn’t know what to do after that, so she turned to the church for help.
We worked seven to eight hours a day at her house cleaning the floors, installing new insulation, putting in new sheet rock, and painting. We also put in a new water heater. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but we did the whole house, and it turned out well.
Ms. Kittie and the people of the town that we met were so kind and respectful, despite their hardships. It just amazed me.
The people there have nothing. They don’t have the money to move away and start over. Most people who moved away went to live with relatives in other parts of the country.
During our week there, we saw nobody from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The people are depressed and believe that their government has given up on them.
Friday night we drove down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. When we arrived downtown it looked like they cleaned it up pretty well — it was better than I expected it to be. The parade was a lot of fun; we received hundreds of beads. The floats in the parade made fun of FEMA. “Rotten to the Corps” read one sign on a float.
Cathy Paniagua, one of the adults in our group, said that the work we did was like “a grain of sand” in the big picture of the Katrina disaster, because so much work is left to do. But we all felt what we did was important — as small as it might have been.
Going to Mississippi was a great experience for me because I learned that you should always be thankful for what you have and where you live.
About the author: Andrew Preimesberger, 17, is a senior at Menlo-Atherton High School and a pitcher on the varsity baseball team.
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