Rebuild Lakeshore

Another great video comes from way up in Maine this time. A determined team from Southcoast Community Church worked from early in the morning until late at night while here this past month. they made great progress on Kyle and Jennifer’s house, Mrs. Bonnie’s, Mrs. Dedeaux’s, and Mrs. PeeWee’s. Mrs. Bonnie and Mrs. Peewee have now moved into their homes thanks to the generous hard work of volunteers.

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Harvest Community Church of Charlotte, North Carolina made another trip to Lakeshore last week. One of their team members, Erik Haviland, took some great pictures. Check out his Mission Trip to Lakeshore Gallery.

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Park Valley Church of Manassas , VA worked with us in Lakeshore April 2006 and they head our way again next week. I was attending the Together for the Gospel conference last year when they made their first trip. I look forward to meeting and working with this energetic team. They made this great promotional video for their mission trip. You can also check out their Park Valley Church Missions blog.

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Volunteers just erected two more quonset huts to expand our housing capacity in our ongoing relief and rebuilding efforts.

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Our friend Stephen Ake, from the Atlanta area, has visited Lakeshore more than a dozen times since Katrina. He almost always brings his camera with him to collect images of his trips. The two above photos represent his first and most recent treks, respectively. the top picture, from October 2005, shows our steeple set out by the road in front of the blue tarp we stored food and worshiped under for the first couple of months after the storm. Stephen snapped the second image of a worship service in Lakeshore on his recent spring break trip in March of 2007. Check out his ever growing picture gallery.

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We praise God for the teams that continue to grace us with help and encouragement each month. In March alone, nearly 500 volunteers worked with us in the recovery effort. We saw a packed camp site almost every night last month and so much progress made throughout the community. The following groups made mission trips to Lakeshore in March 2007.

• Calhoun Baptist Association – Calhoun County, MS
• Crossroads Community Church – Naperville, IL
• Deloris & Joe Fry – PA
• Edgewater Christian Fellowship – Grants Pass, OR
• Faith Crossing Church – Oklahoma City, OK
• Fellowship of Christian Athletes – Ocean Springs, MS
• First Baptist Church – Elm Mott, TX
• First Baptist Church – Keller, TX
• First Baptist Church – Toccoa, GA
• First Baptist Church – Tullahoma, TN
• Grace Bible Church – Canton, GA
• Harmony Baptist Church – New Albany, MS
• Heartland Community Church – Kansas City, KS
• Hebron Baptist Church – Dacula, GA
• Koinos Christian Fellowship – Troy, OH
• LaCrosse Baptist Church – LaCrosse, FL
• Lakeview Baptist Church – Belton, TX
• Northwestern Oklahoma Baptist Association – Woodward, OK
• Oklahoma State University
• Round Lick Baptist Church – Watertown, TN
• Sierra First Baptist Church – Alta, CA
• Smithville Baptist Church – Smithville, MS
• South Coast Community Church – Scarborough, ME
• Trinity Lutheran – Joppa, MD
• West Congrigational Church – Haverhill MA

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We continue to praise God for the flood of volunteers he sends our way, eager and willing to do the unglamorous things that contribute to the relief, recovery and rebuilding efforts here in Lakeshore. I wish I could tell about all of them. I can write about only a fraction of what takes place any given week. For example, yesterday alone we had eight different groups broken up and working at twenty-one different locations. Teams from Ohio, Maine, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina were out clearing property, installing appliances, sanding sheet-rock, painting, preparing to pour a slab, running a sewer pipe, putting lattice skirting around a house, doing electrical work, building a porch, and so much more. all for the glory of God.

For example, I’m humbled by the willingness of the Florida team to spend their entire day yesterday installing a sewer line. After an early breakfast they went to the site, measure and put together a material list, scrounged through our plumbing shed for stuff we had on hand, drove into town to buy other supplies, used shovels and picks to dig the necessary trench through the mud and picks to break through numerous roots and stumps in the way, set the pipe, took great pains to get the drop just right, fought with monster mosquitoes and marsh gnats, and tied the house into the sewer, all before the sun set on the gulf coast last night. They saw a very long day’s work accomplished so that a local widow simply could flush her toilet when she moves into her new home; a home built by dozens of other like-minded selfless volunteers from across the country who don’t seek glory for themselves, but instead work hard, sweat profusely, and push forward to see the fame of God’s name continue to spread through our storm recovering community.

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