Members of 18 West Coast churches are building houses for hurricane victims and shipping them to the Gulf Coast.

Just sending money wasn't going to cut it for the people of Community Presbyterian Church (CPC) in Danville, California. They wanted to do more.

After Hurricane Katrina hit last August, CPC missions pastor Dick Sanner headed to Mississippi to answer a distress call from a former colleague working in the devastated area.

"We wanted to do something that would have a long-term effect on the region, and so we began to focus on the idea of redevelopment," says Sanner. First they recruited other churches in California to assist and urged members to give through World Vision. Next came the big idea.

The West Coast and Gulf Coast teams met with the city council of McComb, Mississippi. "What impressed us about McComb was that it had been the recipient of about 5,000 refugees but was up and running barely two months after the storm. We knew they knew what they were doing and would be a good ...