Small MU crew hoping to make big impact

Posted at 9:28 AM

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Ocean Springs, MS—

We booked out of Columbia around 9 a.m., ready for the 12 hour trip down south. We stared looking for signs of devastation somewhere around Memphis, but the closer we got to our Ocean Springs the darker it became. We don’t really know what to expect and there wasn’t much to see when we arrive around 10 p.m. The main drag—Highway 90—shows few signs of what swept through here months ago. Many of us are disappointed, but we keep reminding ourselves that a lot of recovery work has already happened but there’s still more that needs to be done. We’re anxious and ready to work.

There are eight of us that form this MU YMCA group. We’re working out of a basecamp run by Christians Organized for Relief Efforts (CORE), which is set up to accommodate about 450 volunteers, everyone from demolition workers to the kitchen help that feeds all of us. The camp is set up next to the St. Paul United Methodist Church and, according to their Web site, has coordinated more than 115,000 hours of volunteer work for the area since September 2005.

We’ll start our day as soon as church lets out, around 10 a.m. We’ve been told we’ll be hanging dry wall today, but since its Sunday the operation is rather loosely run today. But the kitchen volunteers are here and we had a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage and of course, biscuits and gravy.