A call from the gulf

Chrissy Jones hugs her 7-year-old son, Alex, and whispers words of comfort only they can hear amid the commotion outside Columbia’s First Presbyterian Church. On Saturday, Jones and 14 other volunteers embarked on a one-week mission trip to New Orleans. That will be the longest Jones has ever been away from her son, so as she said goodbye to Alex and her husband, she appeared oblivious to the excited chatter and bustle around her.

This week’s trip to help with the rebuilding of New Orleans is the third of its kind for First Presbyterian Church, but the first one for Jones.

“I really don’t know what to expect,” she said. “I’ve seen pictures, but I know pictures probably don’t even say half the story of what’s happened down there.”

Others, like the Rev. Kathie Jackson, have already seen the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. In November, she and a group visited New Orleans during a two-week trip to Thibodaux, La., 70 miles southwest of New Orleans, to help sort donated goods for residents.

“It will be different, I’m sure, because we’ll have more exposure to the heavily damaged area,” Jackson said. “That’s a little bit more stressful to deal with. I think we know a little bit what to expect, but I think it’s going to take more debriefing time.”

The First Presbyterian volunteers are part of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, a national organization

overseeing the denomination’s mission trips to the region. Volunteers stay in villages along the Gulf Coast, where church groups from all over the country rotate in and out in a relief effort that is expected to last at least another seven years.

Upon arrival in the village, each group is assigned to a different job, depending on its size and the skills of its members, said Kathy Montgomery, a Columbia volunteer and former village coordinator. Some volunteers gut houses, leaving only the frame standing; others have renovated schools or built new structures.

The Columbia Presbyterians will be in Luling, La., a suburb of New Orleans. As they were leaving Saturday, they did not yet know specifically what they would be doing, only that they were needed.

Last month, Jackson described her impressions of New Orleans from her first mission trip.

“It looked like something from a war movie,” she said. “And it was just such a stark contrast, from a city that was alive to the land of the dead.”

Jackson is not sure if the city will have changed much. The Presbyterian youth group that volunteered in July brought back photos and stories of the devastation that were similar to what they had witnessed during earlier trips.

At Montgomery’s invitation, three Missourian reporters — Isabelle Roughol, photographer Samantha Clemens and videographer Jenn Jarvis — are accompanying the First Presbyterian volunteers to Luling this week to record their efforts and to see how much New Orleans has changed in the past year.

Their reports, which will be updated several times each day, can be seen and read throughout the week at this Web site.