Back in his hometown of Gulfport, Miss., Jonathan Nave’s parents may have lost everything — he’s really not sure. All he’s sure of is that they are alive.
“I tried to tell them, ‘This is a huge storm; I don’t think you guys understand,’ but they decided to stay anyway. Mom ended up having to break out an upstairs window and swim out of the house to safety after the wave hit, but she called and said she’s alright and so is Dad,” he said. “They don’t have anything anymore but that’s OK. I would much rather be cleaning out their houses than digging their graves.”
Nave, who lives in Clinton, Miss., knows how fortunate he is to have gotten that phone call. When the then-Category 4 Hurricane Katrina wiped much of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast cities off the map, she left utter destruction behind and with deaths numbering in the hundreds.
“There’s really no way to call out from there or know anything about anyone,” Nave said. “And the problem isn’t just the utter devastation down there; it’s in the fact that even up here (in central Mississippi), we don’t have the gas to get us down there or the food or water to take to them.”
Kiely Young, former pastor of First Baptist Church, Gulfport, and fellow member with Nave of Morrison Heights Baptist Church, Clinton, knows what that’s like. In the long days following Katrina’s landfall, he’s spent a great deal of time in prayer — and in line at the gas station.
“Something like this dramatically increases your prayer life,” Young said. “I want so desperately to get down there and do some hands-on help.”
Katrina left his former church building — once a beautiful brick structure — demolished. He hasn’t seen it himself, but the news cameras that captured Katrina’s carnage left no question of that.
“I can’t get through with cell phones or any kind of communication,” he said. “Many people whom my wife and I poured our lives into are down there, and my heart hurts in every direction for them.”
Young said he thinks constantly of people like the 84-year-old wife of one of his former deacons in Gulfport who fell and broke her neck just before the hurricane hit. She was hospitalized in a medical center that there’s not much left of, he said. “I wonder if folks like that are still alive.”
Sitting in line for hours to fail once again at buying gas, it’s obvious he’s anxious to get to the coast to see what’s left of the church, community and friends he invested a decade in.
At press time he was still not allowed in — and even if he was, his gas tank is hopelessly empty.
In an official capacity, Young, who now serves as director of Sunday School for the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board in Jackson, is helping gather an assessment team to head south and begin rebuilding — he hopes — soon.
But missions work aside, as a friend, he simply wants to make sure loved ones in the nearly nonexistent 228 area code made it through. “We can always rebuild buildings — it’s the lives we’re concerned about,” he said.
At press time, only emergency care units had gone to the coast from the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board, and the reports coming back were dismal, Young said. “What you see on television is just minimal compared to what the damage really is. It’s monumental, massive destruction.”
Even so, the scenes on television are enough to provide inner turmoil to the nearly 350 displaced people who have been using his church in Clinton as a shelter.
“It’s a never-ending thing,” said Tim Rowan, a lay leader heading up the Red Cross shelter at Morrison Heights Baptist. “Those who came in Sunday night (Aug. 28) saw the images on television for the first time Monday and had to work through a range of emotions. Those who came in Monday and saw them Tuesday and so on.”
Some refugees — camped out in the church’s gym — are mad at God because of the storm, Rowan said. But others who lost everything have stood up in front of all present and given God honor for what He has done to provide for them through the shelter.
“Many who are Christians in the shelter are saying, ‘I don’t know where my family is, but I know God is able,’” Rowan said. “Many who are not Christians are asking, ‘Why are you doing this for us? You don’t even know us.’ And then we get to share Christ.”
Alan Broome, youth minister of Emmanuel Baptist Church, Ocean Springs, Miss., called the scene in his community “unfathomable” but added that he also sees great opportunity to minister.
“You have all of these really surreal moments when you see what happened to your town. It’s like another world down there,” said Broome, who evacuated to his hometown of Clanton before the hurricane but returned to Ocean Springs shortly after to assess the damage and check on neighbors.
“We had damage to our worship center and education building, but our gymnasium was relatively undamaged,” he said. The church has previously had a food pantry there, but Broome said he hopes that the surviving building can serve on an even larger scale now as they attempt to reach out amid the unbelievable amount of devastation.
“We are trying to start networking with churches elsewhere that might like to send supplies — diapers, juice, anything. People are homeless and need supplies, as well as backpacks to carry those supplies and sunscreen because they have nowhere to get out of the elements,” he said.
The story is the same across much of Mississippi, Young said. Meeting needs there for a long time will come day by day — and from the sacrificial giving of many who have little to work with due to the circumstances.
“It’s hard to put yourself in a situation where someone has lost everything. Down on the coast, it’s monumental, greater than anything we ever dreamed about in a nightmare,” Young said. “But the response to assist has been tremendous — people continue to pour out their heart and help.
“It will simply be days and weeks before these people can think about getting back to their homes,” he said. “We just need to keep praying and keep helping.”
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