Building the Kingdom, One Home at a Time

This Saturday morning I took a trip out to the warehouse. The warehouse is where the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana stores all of the supplies that they use to do gutting, restoration, and relief work. As you wander down the rows of storage you see foam mattresses, Sheetrock, insulation, pallets of bottled water, and the list goes on. Perhaps, if you come on a weekday, you'll also get to see Deacon Hackett scooting around on the forklift, complete with clergy shirt and collar.

On this Saturday morning the occasion for my trip was not Deacon watching, but to meet with Katie Mears whose office is located in the warehouse. She originally came down to New Orleans with a volunteer crew but decided to stay on and help the diocese with its relief efforts. After a while they decided to hire her on as their site coordinator. I met with her to find out how the Diocese goes about doing disaster response work and to see how that plan works itself out on the ground.

Katie explained that the Diocese began their work by gutting houses. (To date they've gutted more than 800.) After that effort was under way for some time they decided to move into offering rebuilding assistance. The plan was to help people use the money that they received from the federally funded Road Home program (http://www.road2la.org) to obtain building materials at cost. The diocese would then provide volunteers to help do the work that needed to be done so that homeowners could get the maximum value for their dollars. As it turns out, the Road Home money has been slow in coming, so the diocese is fixing the houses now and homeowners are repaying them as their checks come in. They are committed to offering real choices to the homeowners instead of taking a cookie-cutter approach. This attention to the needs and concerns of the individuals permeates that work that they do.

After our conversation, Katie offered to take me out to one of the sites so that I could see the actual work that was being done. When we arrived the crew was hard at work. I was anxious to see the progress that the volunteers were making, but Katie suggested that I let the homeowner show me herself. We walked up to the FEMA trailer parked in the front yard and Katie knocked on the door.

"It's open baby! Come on in, " called a voice from inside.

We entered and sat down with the homeowner. She was a congenial, middle-aged black woman, seated at her kitchen table. After offering us refreshments, she told us about her situation. After evacuating during Katrina and moving through five shelters, she was finally able to make it back to New Orleans. Her house had been under seven feet of water, so she had to move into a trailer. She said that she was overwhelmed with what she was supposed to do and disheartened by how far she had to go. One night, at her wits end, she cried out to God and asked Him to show her how she could start rebuilding her life. As she prayed, she looked up at her television and saw the number for the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana's Office of Disaster Response. She wrote down the number and called them early the next morning. She was able to get in touch with someone who put her on the path to recovery. The crews of volunteers sent by the diocese helped her gut her house, get the plumbing and electrical work done, hung Sheetrock, laid tile, talked, laughed, and cried.

"I just thank God for what the church has done for me. I don't know what I would have done without them," she told me.

After our conversation, she walked with me around her house. Inside volunteers were painting the walls with bright, cheerful colors, such a marked contrast from the drab interior of the trailer. The bright colors of the room were mirrored in her eyes and a smile split her face. Watching her house being resurrected before her eyes transformed her as well.

"Doesn't it look so good?" she asked.

That the house looked "good" was an understatement. In the midst of the decaying lots that lined the street, her home looked like a little slice of heaven.