Rebuild Lakeshore

Our friends from Rocky Bayou Baptist Church put together this great video from their recent trip to Lakeshore.

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Courtesy of the NOAA Satellite and Information Service

Hurricane Katrina regional imagery, 2005.08.28 at 1515Z.
Centerpoint Latitude: 26:13:59N Longitude: 88:08:03W.
Observation Device: GOES-12 4 km infrared imagery.
Visualization Date: August 28, 2005 12:03:14
See this higher resolution image.

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Amanda, from Michigan, reports on her mission trip to Lakeshore last month. Thanks so much Amanda.

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Nearly half of May has past and I have not yet posted the list of teams for last month. We praise God for the teams that worked with us in April.

• Augusta Baptist Disaster Relief Team – Augusta, GA
• Decatur Baptist Church – Decatur, AL
• First Baptist Church – Madisonville, TX
• First Baptist Church – Merritt Island, FL
• First Baptist Church – Tullahoma, TN
• First Congregational Church – Kingston, NH
• Jackson and Margret Lewis – Penson, AL
• Journey of Faith Church – Byron Center, MI
• Oak Grove Baptist Church – Monticello, KY
• Pleasant Gap Baptist Church – Charlotte, NC
• Providence Baptist Church – Franklin, MA
• Riverside Fellowship – New Port Richey, FL
• Roswell United Methodist Church – Atlanta, GA
• Southside Baptist Church – Huntsville, AL
• St. Luke Lutheran Church – Ann Arbor, MI

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As temperatures rise on the gulf coast, folks in Lakeshore have been coming by our our church property looking for help with clothing their kids and themselves for the summer. The bare shelves of our distribution center have not been able to keep up with the need. At one time we had to turn away clothing, because of limited storage availability. While I’m a little reluctant to open the flood gates with a clothes request, we do need summer clothing, in good condition, to provide for the families in our community still struggling to get on their feet. We especially can use clothes for men and children, like short pants, blue jeans, short sleeve shirts, T-shirts etc.

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, please do not send winter apparel at this time. We do not have space to store clothing during the summer months. We also want to be good stewards of your transportation costs and our dumpster fees, so we would greatly appreciate culling out moldy garments, threadbare pants, and shirts with holes or stains before sending them this way.

Many churches have found clothing drives very successful. Set aside some space to receive donations of clothing in your facilities. Promote the drive in a number of ways. Local newspapers often receive press releases for charitable efforts like this gladly. If you belong to an SBC church, contact your association and ask if they could spread the word to the sister churches in your area. Other denominations should have similar channels of communication. In your announcement, do not forget to point them to the Rebuild Lakeshore web site (rebuildlakeshore.com). Enlist volunteers to sort through the clothes, labeling according to gender and size. Fold clothing and place them in shipping boxes. Make the sorting date a church wide event as you pray for those in Lakeshore benefiting from your generosity. Investigate the most cost effective way to transport the clothing to Lakeshore. You may find someone willing to drive the clothing down more economically than commercial shipping. If you have a team coming this summer, perhaps they could carry the boxes with them. If you do need to mail the packages, you can find our address on our contact page.

On behalf of our community, thank you so much. Know that your donations will help clothe a person in need this summer, for the glory of God. (Matthew 25:31-46)

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Yesterday I posted the first part of the Cunningham Lakeshore trip report. The second half picks up with Monday morning:

Like all missionary endeavors where the work is handed off like a torch, only with hands unseen, it was taking the better part of our morning just trying to figure out where each one of us should be in order to optimize our days. If there was a frustration to be endured, then we hit pay-dirt within our first two hours! And then, of course, God came, right on time! Although not all jobs were defined, some organization was beginning to surface. However, I had yet to find my niche and just as I began to speak to Jesus about this, dear Julie Robie, nudged me and suggested that maybe we could better use our time if I drove us back to the Church property – the “campus” – and prepare lunch for the entire group – 25 of us. I was grateful for a job even if it was feeding a gaggle of folk – clearly not a natural gift of mine. Anyone who knows me also knows that I’m not a cook - I often refer to this task as “fixing” something, like it’s broken! But God had plans for Julie and me, and preparing meals, cleaning out the huge refrigerator, organizing the room of cooking pots and utensils and that huge pantry, became our heavenly assignment. We even made a couple of “go for” trips for our construction team. We embraced it all, literally “dancing” through the next three days.

I was hooked! I found that as Peter and I drove away from Lakeshore on Thursday afternoon, I began thinking of things we could prepare next time; Lord willing He sends us back next year and then again after that. Will He call me to the kitchen again? I don’t know, but this thing I do know, one of my sweetest memories, besides ministering alongside Julie, was meeting some of the dear ones of Lakeshore Baptist Church and having the privilege of taking a hand in mine and praying with a sister; sometimes face to face, and sometimes in her ear; just hugging and knowing that our time together was recorded somewhere beyond time, and I have been enriched and grown by their bravery. Our sisters are Miss Betty (whose home some of our team worked on), Miss Bee, Miss Lynn, Miss Linda and Miss Ruth.

Pastor Don is their gifted Shepherd, and his gift of preaching evidenced itself during Wednesday evening’s Worship. We were told that this humble young man has earned two Master’s degrees and a Doctorate of Divinity degree. I’m quite sure that his formal studies did not prepare him for milling fallen trees off the Church property to be used to construct the floor of the temporary Meeting House and other portions of the standing structures that now make up the whole site.

Our talented team functioned as one in God’s hand, as they worked on two homes, furthering the progress that anyone else could have done but that God reserved just for them with which to be blessed!

I forgot to tell you about Margaret and Jackson Lewis. They travel regularly down from Birmingham, Alabama, to paint, install light fixtures, ceiling fans, and painstakingly collect and deliver furniture; even refinishing a piece when that is necessary to complete the look of the finished room. Margaret said to me that she never imagined that God would thus employ them in their “retirement” – they encourage me to believe and expect God to likewise employ Peter and I for His Kingdom!

Peter is hooked too – albeit we both were glad that we included some muscle relief tablets in our suitcase!

If you read this far, then you have indeed proven yourself sturdy – sturdy enough perhaps to join our little band next year! Pray with us for our brethren there in Mississippi. They will be rebuilding their homes and their lives for years to come.

And not the least - you who filled our Prayer Chart with your promise to pray for us and for this endeavor; we are blessed to have been able to physically labor on your behalf in Jesus’ name as you also labored where God has assigned you to serve Him! Oh, let’s do it again next year!

Loving you with prayers of thanksgiving,
Helen Cunningham
(and Peter too!)

If you did not catch the link yesterday, make sure to check out the Cunningham ’s great pictures.

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Mrs. Helen Cunningham sent out the following report of their recent trip to Lakeshore. I’ll post it in two parts. You can also view their great pictures at their Mississippi photo album.

Mississippi, April 27-May 1, 2008

My reflections – Helen Cunningham & Photos – Peter Cunningham

Arriving late Sunday afternoon, the sky was gray and it was raining. As we drove along the narrow road to the Church where we would be staying, we saw much evidence of the devastation that our brothers and sisters endured since Hurricane Katrina nearly three years ago. Then way up on the left, we came upon an eerie sight indeed – what seemed like a Church steeple was sitting on the side of the road. It was the very Church steeple of Lakeshore Baptist Church that the congregation retrieved from among the debris that once was the Meeting House. They had lovingly placed it so that it is clearly visible as you approach the Church.

The Church grounds are scattered with box cars and truck trailers that have been assembled to make up the sleeping quarters, showers, toilets, and laundry. A large opened screened dining hall, industrial kitchen, and very large pantry has been constructed on a cement slab that had once been the floor of someone’s home. The ceiling is made up of tarpaulins fastened to tall tent stakes placed along the center of the screened structure, and from this ceiling and all along the perimeter, hang T-shirts representing every Church that prayerfully sends their teams to minister in their name for Jesus. We all proudly added our names to the T-shirt that represents our fine Church body in Kingston! The front of our T-shirt displays our Church as drawn by our beloved Pastor Wendell Irvine.

The Meeting House itself is a very large Quonset structure with some storage rooms, two shower rooms, and a large room that has become the collection area for all manner of tools, building supplies, shovels and other handy items. This area also houses the stairway that leads to a large attic where many of our brethren who have labored before us, slept on army cots. Needless to say, our little sleeping pods with bunk beds, comfortable mattresses, wash basin, and both air conditioning and small portable heater, were sweet indeed!

Also on the property are two tool sheds, one of which one houses a table saw – quite impressive. There are four walk-in storage sheds and two large Quonset structures housing goods where folk can come Wednesday through Saturday to collect some of what they need. Three or four of our dear sisters of Lakeshore Baptist Church regularly volunteer four days of their week to serve their neighbors, helping them choose what is needed for that day. I was blessed to watch from the kitchen sink as some folk happily carried away a quilt made by our brilliant “My Brother’s Keeper” quilters – what a blessed sight! And what beautiful gifts these dear women provided in the name of Jesus!

Because the site understandably lacks an overseer for all the necessary activities associated with such a large rebuilding project that Lakeshore Baptist Church has had Divinely thrust upon it, the areas described were amazingly functional in spite of the seeming disarray.

But on the rainy Sunday afternoon that we arrived upon a scene that to me seemed quite abysmal, Peter and I were greeted by a delightful young woman, Jennifer Ryan, who had already been ministering there since the previous Wednesday with six other members of her Church from southern Massachusetts, Pastor Rob, Linda, Christine, Joshua, Amanda, and her sister whose name sadly escapes me. We enjoyed sharing our stories of conversion and how good God is, and then our New Hampshire team arrived. Although the daylight was almost gone and the rain continued, there was “light” in our midst!

When we were all settled in, then the whole Team comprised of the Massachusetts and New Hampshire folk along with Jamie, the resident missionary, and two other young women, Liz and Brittany, who dedicate weeks of their lives to this mission, gathered in the dining hall. We shared and then made our way along the many sheets of ply-wood that had been laid down in order for folk to traverse the area. This wooden pathway connecting all the pods, storage and work areas, were like “streets of gold” that kept us “Mississippi mud” free!

That was Sunday, and then came a sunny and warm Monday morning and the remaining days:

Tomorrow I’ll post part two of their report.

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I was reading John Bunyan this morning and the following passage struck me as very helpful. Bunyan explains that in time of suffering and pain, God grants us sweet grace that we would not otherwise taste if it were not for the bitterness of our affliction. He writes:

There is also a patience of hope; a rejoicing in hope, when we are in tribulation, that is, over and above that which we have when we are at ease and quiet. That also that all graces can endure, and triumph over, shall not be known, but when, and as we are in a state of affliction. Now these acts of our graces are of that worth and esteem with God, also he so much delighteth in them: that occasion through his righteous judgment, must be ministered for them to shew their beauty, and what bravery there is in them.

It is also to be considered that those acts of our graces, that cannot be put forth, or shew themselves in their splendour, but when we Christianly suffer, will yield such fruit to those whose trials call them to exercise, that will, in the day of God, abound to their comfort, and tend to their perfection in glory (1 Peter 1:7; 2 Cor 4:17).

Why then should we think that our innocent lives will exempt us from sufferings, or that troubles shall do us such harm? For verily it is for our present and future good that our God doth send them upon us. I count therefore, that such things are necessary for the health of our souls, as bodily pains and labour are for [the health of the body.

Alas! we have need of those bitter pills, at which we so winch and shuck: and it will be well if at last we be purged as we should thereby… I see that I still have need of these trials; and if God will by these judge me as he judges his saints, that I may not be condemned with the world, I will cry, Grace, grace for ever.

– John Bunyan in Seasonable Counsel; or Advice to Sufferers (1684)

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Folks from across the country have demonstrated incredible willingness to aid in our on going disaster relief on the gulf coast. A group of high school students added innovation to their generosity with a robot Tech Valley Exhibition fund raiser in collaboration with other schools. Their themed event “Making a Difference” raised money to contribute to the Rebuild Lakeshore efforts. Check out the Team 20 website and one of their youtube videos. On behalf of everyone in our community, we want to publicly thank the robotics teams for their great work.

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This week, our hard working friends from Providence Baptist Church, Franklin MA moved lumber to several locations. We plan to frame up another new house on this site in the near future.

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