The Catalyst

3 years ago come august 29th, a fierce lady by the name of Katrina came ashore. Now this was my birthday and the graffic pictures just plum tore my heart out. Jan, my wife and I first tried the American Red Cross and found that you must be trained prior to going. The Lord put a powerful calling upon us and about that time we were preparing the convention center for incoming evacuee's from new orleans. Helping where we could and waiting for the training dates I kept trying to find an avenue for this calling from the Lord. After much prayer I stumbled upon the Arizona Southern Baptist Disaster Relief tab on the Arizona Soutern Baptist Convention web site. Alas - more training, and they had already deployed to the area, so training would have to wait until they returned from the active disaster. Months passed. Training occured with the ARC and the DRT. Our searching continued including looking in the yellow pages for Baptist Churches in Mississippi. All the press was covering was New Orleans but having spent a goodly portion of my youth in Mississippi that was where the calling was for.
I stumbled again upon Lakeshore Baptist Church in the yellow pages and they had a web site listed. Hot dang, thank you Lord! Welcome to Lakeshore Baptist Church and Pastor Don Elbourne's web site. Wow, what a mess, you called me Lord, I responded as best as I could figure how, I still wanted to go, badly, so Lord its in your hands and you need to make it possible.
I was able to put together a 5 person team. Jan & I, our eldest, Brandy and Jans brother, Stanley and his wife Pam. So 3 from Tucson, and 2 from Missouri head towards Lakeshore. Now I want to take the time here to thank several folks, cause I skipped some important points. Now the 1st christmas in Lakeshore we were blessed to lend some small assistance to Pam Lackey from Georgia, and had started sending small care packages via Office Depot to the church in Lakeshore. The training from the ARC and DRT were very helpful. But as the trip got closer the more excited we were. Thank the Lord for cell phone technology cause coordinating the travel from 2 different directions and keeping Pastor Don's wife informed of our progress was almost easy on the road. After a good steak dinner in San Antonio with an old lost friend, Sally and her daughter Trini and a good nights sleep the 5 of us met up in Slidell, LA on Saturday the day before Easter.