Thank you, Minnesota Helpers!!

It's crazy really.. that even we really didn't know just how bad things were over here in Pascagoula. Yes, crazy. We knew that the news reports stated that almost 90% of the residences of Pascagoula flooded.. a good chunk of those were totally destroyed. But even though we knew that.. we hadn't wrapped our minds around it yet.. I suppose we hadn't really grasped the implications of it. The enormity of it -- perhaps the only way to deal with the enormity of it -- is to make it something distant and unreal in our minds. It was only recently that it hit us - and hit us hard - that this wasn't about statistics and damaged homes: For every one of those homes - there is a family struggling to put their lives back together.

Yesterday, we drove through the neighborhoods just around us. It wasn't the first time... We have driven up and down those roads countless times. But this time we were not looking for signs of destruction or gasping at the power of that wave that crashed through here... This time we were looking for people. We stopped periodically and went out knocking on trailers.. asking them if they needed anything - did they know anyone who needed anything. Dave kept coming back to the car saying 'Nope - they say they don't need anything...' Just then, my mom had the idea of maybe at least leaving our number with them - in case they thought of something... So we cracked out the notebook paper and wrote some notes and left those here and there throughout the neighborhood. The phone started ringing within the hour... So many people and so many stories to tell. One lady said, 'Honey, of course we need things... it's just that I don't even know what to tell you we need. We need everything! How can I narrow it down?'

Boy do I know that feeling!

So this afternoon when Mary Gray, founder of MinnesotaHelpers, gave us the thumbs up for going out into those neighborhoods and distributing whatever we could from what we had at the house -- we couldn't wait to get back into the car again. The drive took less than a minute before our first stop... and it took less than two hours to distribute every last blanket or quilt we had stuffed into the back of Mom's car. There were so many people... so many.. When we would stop the car to talk to someone -- people would emerge from their trailers.. timidly at first.. and then all start telling us their stories. One young family and their elderly grandmother had just gotten their FEMA trailers today (Mom stopped to talk to one of the drivers from Runge Trucking to tell him that her name was 'Runge'...) and they were so excited already... They were even more excited when they saw the beautiful quilts in the back of the car. House after house we all giggled like schoolchildren while we wiped away tears and exchanged stories of cooking dinner on camp stoves and tips on how to remove mold. We told them all about their new friends in Minnesota - told them about the hand-made quilts and the hand-tied fleece blankets for the children. Every single one of them offered to help in any way they could. And they meant it.

What can we say but THANK YOU, MINNESOTA! Thank you, Mary Gray.. Thank you, MinnesotaHelpers.. Thank you so very much for Operation Vanessa. You have touched so many lives and brought so much light to a desolate place. We love you.

I took some pictures today from our drive through the neighborhoods. I had wanted so much to get pictures of the people we were meeting, but every single time we would stop the car and start talking I would get so enthralled I would forget about my camera. *blush* But just remember as you scroll through the pictures - the thing we finally grasped just yesterday - for every trailer - for every gutted house - there is a family and they have a story.

Trailers abound. This and the following several pictures were all taken in the neighborhood we visited today.



Completely gutted. The house doesn't look so bad until you realize that the back of it is gone.

As if the water didn't do enough damage -- then it burned -- most likely an electrical fire.



I don't think this one has been cleaned out yet. I wasn't able to tell from where we were - but I'm pretty sure this one is missing at least part of its back wall as well.

When we were out of blankets - we drove home to get some diapers to deliver to a couple ladies who said they needed them... but on our way we decided to take a look at the neighborhoods just to our north -- scouting for our next expedition.

Trailers as far as the eye can see. I suppose it would all be normal if this were a trailer park....

A severely damaged and flooded apartment complex. This place once housed an awful lot of people. I wonder where they all are now?

A tree that quite obviously also met Katrina frames yet another flooded and abandoned apartment complex just down the street... Housing here is at a premium.



This one was actually taken as we turned back into our own neighborhood. Every house here flooded as well -- but I'm afraid that the brunt of the force of the wave that battered Pascagoula was taken by our neighbors to the south and to the east. One young woman who spoke to my husband yesterday smirked as she quipped sarcastically, "My house slowed down the wave before it hit your house. By the way - you're welcome."