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Status of the Project. - Completed
It is now nearly 18 months since Katrina made land
fall. The demand/need for storage has fallen to nearly zero. While we were at
Shoreline, we built and delivered over 350 pods for the community. Since
April, we have built and delivered over 400 pods from the Pathfinder
location. With every pod we gave a bible to the family and since September
we also gave them a copy of
the Purpose Driven Life.
Now our focus has shifted from building pods to rebuilding
homes.
How it Started
In December 2005, a local resident came to the
Shoreline camp to ask for help. She told me that she had watched as 8
dump trucks hauled her home away. Now she has an empty lot and a
trailer, but no place to store her belongings. She asked if we could
help her build a storage shed. After she left I discussed the request with
our team and the fact that anyone with a FEMA trailer would have the same
problem. We agreed that we needed to do something to help.
Conrad Velasco, a volunteer in Pearlington, MS was already building storage
containers so we visited him, modified his design slightly and opened the
application process.
We had no idea that building sheds would have such a powerful
impact on the lives of so many people, residents and volunteers alike.
A Ministry to Residents and Volunteers
Blessing the residents on the Gulf Coast.
As the residents move back to this area (at last
report, 18,000 plus of the pre-Katrina population of 43,000 plus have moved
back) They were given
FEMA trailers to live in and one of the most common comment we heard was about the lack of
storage space. At the peak there were an estimated
9,200 FEMA
trailers (representing 9200 families) in Hancock county. Pathfinder is
based in Hancock county. (As of this month there are still over 30,000 FEMA
trailers in Mississippi)
Many residents lost their Bibles in the storm. We
gave them a large print Bible and a copy of the Purpose Driven Life.
We intend to offer 40 Days of Purpose to the folks we delivered pods to in
the coming months.
Mobilizing the Church.
We built the 6' x 8' storage
pods for about $230 each.
The concept was that we will build "pre-fab" components, assemble the
storage pods
at the camp and then deliver them to local residents. All of this with
volunteer labor. Many folks would like to volunteer with us but can't do the heavy
manual labor associated with reclaiming the homes. Since this project
was at the camp and was not so demanding, we believe it will provided more
opportunities for serving. Churches around the country built the prefabs locally and shipped
the prefabs to us for assembly. Other churches, organizations and
individuals provided money to purchase the metal. This proved to be a very effective method for
engaging their church members and distributing the effort of raising funds
for the project.
Volunteers helped us deliver the pods (see the pictures
below). Every delivery and encounter with the families who received
them has had a profound impact on the volunteers.
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