Helpin Houma La

Well yesterday we were blessed to have the opportunity to be a part of a huge effort to aid in the clean up of the debris left behind from Hurricane Gustav and Ike. It was in a little Parrish just south of Houma, LA. I was amazed to really get to see the church in action. It was great to be able to be a part of such a wonderful event, and very inspirational. All of this came together very quickly. All of the members came together to serve and help in less than a week. The church asked for 1000 and 1300 members showed up to help out these people in need. Most of us drove down the night before and camped at the church since it was such a long trip; overall it was very humbling experience to see the homes and lives turned upside down. It meant so much to them for us to come and help. On several occasions some of the jobs were already cleaned up, this community had such a wonderful charity about them. It seemed they were great at leading us to family and friends. It was very humbling to see them all working amazingly hard to get it all put back together.

Here is our make shift work trailer/ first aid we were blessed to be able to receive donations from some of the ERs here in mobile and take some equipment to help out with the efforts. Thankfully we didn't have to use any of the first aid stuff but the tools definitely came in handy!!

Here are all of the campers in front of the stake center. The place was filled up and went behind the church about a 100 yard or so there were so many that came out to serve.

These guys were amazingly sleeping on a tarp, can you say snakes!!! and bugs!!!!! WOW that's conviction!! We opted for the back of the suburban with a blowup mattress. I'm all for roughin it but you can go a little tooo far sometimes; ya know. Im not quite that committed!! LOL

We ended up all meeting at a unfinished church about a mile or so down the road. The church used it for a warehouse since it was unfinished and it worked great for all of the church's supplies pictured below
I think they had like 10 semi truckloads in this effort it was AMAZING!
Here are some of the places that we saw and helped at

It was amazing to drive up and down the streets and where ever you looked there were yellow shirts helping toward the cause to be honest i had never seen so many Mormons in one place before it was really a neat experience to be apart of! I almost felt like I was back in Idaho minus the swamp!! LOL~It was really neat to see everybody in yellow helping hand shirts; that really set us apart from everybody, and was neat to actually know who was Mormon, and to know we were all there for the same purpose and we all come from the same beliefs.
It was really hard to see these peoples lives on the street. All you could see for miles of road were parts of their lives and holmes taken and dumped on the side of the road. Most of it was pulled out of mud and water that had filled their homes. The storm left these people's homes either gone or gutted forcing them to start over again. It was hard to see for anyone but especially the elderly. These were really poor areas that could not afford to start over and many are not able to start over again without help from FEMA. It was one of the hardest things to see and experince. These are images I will never forget.