Rebuild Lakeshore

Shortly after the storm our friend, Stephen Ake, began makeing simi-regular trips to Lakeshore. After graduation from Georgia Tech and getting a real job, he has not been able to visit in about 10 months. He recently used his vacation time to return to Lakeshore. He reports:

There are a lot more commercial stores open now than were last time I came down. The church started building its 27th house while I was there. The process of building houses runs a lot more like clockwork now. The church even has a floor plan for the “Lakeshore House” - a small two bedroom, one bathroom, utility room, and combined living/dining/kitchen area that they are building for elderly people, people on fixed income, and others who can’t afford to rebuild their house after FEMA turned up its bureaucratic nose at them and the insurance companies left them high and dry. In some cases, the church will help people who have some money build a larger house - since all the volunteers work for free, the homeowner can use their money solely for materials and let the volunteers build it. In any case, Lakeshore, and the communities of Waveland, Bay St. Louis, and the rest of southern Hancock County are not going to run out of people needing new homes anytime soon. It’s been two and a half years after the hurricane, and there are still countless people living in FEMA trailers with formaldehyde who currently don’t have anywhere else to live. Don Elbourne, the pastor of Lakeshore Baptist Church, told me that they expect to be doing rebuilding for at least another 3-5 years, so the opportunity to help out down there isn’t going away anytime soon.

You can read his full report, “Back from Lakeshore.” As always, Stephen brought his camera and snapped loads of great pictures. Visit his Lakeshore photo gallery for pictures from this and previous trips.

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A hard working team from Senaca Pennsylvania snapped some great pictures when here on their mission trip last month. Check out their Lakeshore photo gallery.

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Three of the most recent houses we are building in Lakeshore have pretty high elevations. This week volunteers kept busy building entry stairs. The stairs also give a unique character to the otherwise almost identical homes.

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We moved a lot of dirt this week. At one house a team moved dirt from one property to another, to fill in the hole where a house used to sit. When the demolition crew removed the house, it left a mosquito breeding ground. Filling the dirt and smoothing out the lot will give the street one less reminder of the storm.

At another lot, a second team spread dirt in preparation for our next house we plan to begin in the very near future. The ground proved too soft for our equipment to maneuver, so a determined group of volunteers tackled the mound.

At the church property, a third group moved even more dirt. The storm drastically changed our landscape and water that used to flow one way, now flows in others, or not at all. The dirt work on the church property will make our real estate a little more livable.

I thank God for groups willing to come and do the dirty work to see the overall picture of recovery move forward to the glory of God.

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Our distribution center reopens today, after being down for a week. If you have been to Lakeshore recently you know that the floor had been giving way under the load of thousands and thousands of feet flowing through in the past couple of years. We redid the floor of the quonset hut on the right last month, and then the one on the left followed this past week.

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A volunteer crew from Oklahoma started setting the pilings for another house this week. If I counted correctly, this makes number 27 from the ground up as we rebuild Lakeshore to the glory of God. We were able to use our new Skid steer auger attachment for the first time. It worked very well. Up until now we have been renting a less powerful auger to drill the 24″ holes to set the 8X8 posts. The new equipment investment will save us in rental fees, make your contributions to the efforts go further, and increase efficiency of volunteer time.

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I love it when teams come to Lakeshore with the “whatever it takes to get the job done” attitude. God has graciously gifted some guys to think outside the box, to show innovative determination, and see a task through to completion with a mixture of brute force, strategic planning, and cooperation at its best. Once such group, our friends from the Limestone Baptist Association of Alabama demonstrate these characteristics on a regular basis as they continue to come and work in Lakeshore to the glory of God.

The above series of images shows the crew hoisting an air conditioner unit up to a 9 foot platform for one of the homes volunteers have constructed. Local building codes require for the air conditioner unit to sit above the flood plain and equal to the height of the sub floor of the house. Come south Mississippi August heat - the Cox family will be high, dry, and cool.

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In an article posted to reformation21, Phil Ryken observed that “Some theologians do not see how vital mercy is to the credibility of the gospel. And some mercy ministers do not take the time to go very deep in their theology.” I pray that Lakeshore Baptist Church, and those that come work with us would avoid both of these pitfalls. As I’ve often said, I believe that the deep biblical roots of sound theology will produce the life giving fruit of mercy to others. For those of us who have been ill-deserving recipients of God’s sovereign grace, how can we not overflow with mercy to those in need? The grace that flows from the cross of Christ drives Rebuild Lakeshore forward for the good of our community and the glory of God.

In his short article, “A Reformed Theology for Mercy Ministry,” Ryken flies through the doctrines of God, creation, man, sin, the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection, and the ascension. He touches on the doctrine of election, and the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. He looks at adoption, the doctrine of sanctification, and the theology of the final judgment. In the quick overview of each topic, he insists that from beginning to end, a gospel saturated Biblical understanding of the theology we profess requires a bold mercy outworking in our lives.

Ryken concludes, “it is not just part of our theology that calls us to mercy ministry; it is everything in our entire theology. We must never forget that every doctrine that is taught in every part of Scripture from creation to the final judgment compels us to show the mercy of God to lost sinners, in the gospel of His Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit.” May we in Lakeshore strive for sound doctrine and to embody the gospel of Jesus Christ in tangible acts of mercy to our community in both word and deed, for the glory of God.

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