Related articles and links |  1 of 3

Last August, Travis Todd was wrapping up seven nonstop years of ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ in Southeast Asia. He was looking forward to some down time in Alabama and his hometown of Pass Christian, Mississippi.

Meanwhile, pastor Christopher Colby was poised to launch ambitious fall programs at Pass Christian's wealthy Trinity Church. And hundreds of miles north in Evansville, Indiana, a semi-retired Greg Porter, who had founded a successful maintenance company, was focused on improving his tennis game.

But for all three individuals, God and Hurricane Katrina had bigger ideas.

On August 29, Katrina made landfall just west of Pass Christian (pronounced "Christy Ann") on Mississippi's coast. The 30-foot storm surge killed 22 people, destroyed nearly all business property, and damaged or destroyed 90 percent of the town's homes. Pass Christian is one of the communities most devastated by Katrina. By January, only 1,500 of Pass Christian's 6,500 residents remained. The rest are scattered nationwide, joining 2 million other hurricane refugees across America.

Pass Christian's government is in tatters. Like virtually all Pass Christian residents, city leaders suffered grave personal loss. City Hall is now in a doublewide trailer. The storm set back the city 150 years, to its early days as a rustic resort area. Little of the tax base remains, nor does any meaningful employment beyond contract work for cleanup and debris removal.

The Red Cross has left town, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has scaled back. Other major agencies, such as the Salvation Army, are often outmatched by the size and complexity of the needs. In early January, Christianity Today revisited the storm-devastated Gulf Coast. CT discovered that Todd, Colby, and Porter symbolize the volunteer army of everyday Christians responding to calls for help from Biloxi, Mississippi, to Louisiana towns west of the Mississippi River. They are skilled and unskilled, students and retirees, all playing a part in mobilizing massive resources to meet massive needs.

"We have to rebuild," Colby told CT. "The church in America is mobilizing to help us."

Three days after Katrina, Colby and his wife, Debbie, returned from a safe haven in Mobile, Alabama. They found Trinity's grounds strewn with broken trees, a sailboat, the town's boardwalk, and pieces of its office building. Four police cars landed in Trinity's antebellum cemetery. The sanctuary lost its walls, pews, organ, piano, every prayer book and hymnal, and half of its stained-glass windows. A water line 22 feet up, almost to the organ pipes, marks the inundation.

Colby says his was among the town's fortunate churches: No one died, and no one is missing. But the congregation of 270 households has shrunk to 50. Many now live in FEMA trailers, drinking only bottled water because the water supply has tested positive for 250 kinds of bacteria and parasites.

Christians who spoke with CT recounted the days after Katrina when they sensed a powerful call to help. But how? The overwhelming circumstances stymied them.

Travis Todd, no stranger to dealing with mission emergencies through Campus Crusade, got on the phone right after the hurricane's landfall. He learned that the only thing the sea didn't steal from his childhood home was its slab foundation and a bathtub, now full of nasty water. Fortunately, his family had safely evacuated.

Todd called Campus Crusade's global headquarters in Orlando, Florida, and asked a simple question: "What should my role be?"

next page... |  1 of 3

March 2006, Vol. 50, No. 3