T -6 Days till Blast Off

I leave for Gulfport, MS Saturday April 1. I will be helping to coordinate the repairs of homes in the Gulfport area that were damaged by hurricane Katrina in 2005 by using volunteers from churches from all across the country. There is another organization, Church Building Ministries, Inc. (CBMI) that has been in Gulfport since right after the hurricane. They have done a great job meeting with residents in need, lining up homes to be worked on and coordinating the volunteers that come down to work. I will be working alongside the CBMI folks and doing whatever I can to assist in the process.

So, how did I get here? Well, I work for a Christian nonprofit called ReConstruct. ReConstruct uses youth groups from churches to do home repairs for low-income homeowners. The bulk of our work has been done in Nashville, TN. So I am used to meeting residents, assessing what work needs to be done and working with the volunteers when they are in town for a week long project.

In 1999, God called me to work for ReConstruct. I left my accounting job in industry where I had worked for 22 years. The song "Dive" by Steven Curtis Chapman was a song that spoke to me back in '99 because I really was diving into something new and trusting that God knew what he was doing (of course, He always does!). Now I am diving into a new challenge.

Back to the present. After the hurricanes hit last summer, one of ReConstruct's shower trailers landed in Gulfport at Grace Memorial Baptist Church, which as it turned out, was where CBMI was housing volunteers that had come to help the hurricane victims. So we got to know Joe Brewer at CBMI and see the work they were involved in.

In December 2005, my home church, Brentwood Baptist Church in Brentwood, TN, collected a missions offering, a major portion of which is to be used to assist hurricane victims. Brentwood Baptist has committed a portion of the missions offering to be used for building materials and to help ReConstruct work along side CMBI in getting more homes repaired.

So here I am, headed for the Gulf Coast.

Later.