It’s been almost five years since Hurricane Katrina ran rampant through the streets of New Orleans, but many people are still waiting for their homes and lives to be rebuilt.

In 2008, Samaritan’s Purse launched a Neighborhood Rebuild Project to refurbish existing homes and build new houses for people who still hadn’t recovered from the storm. Fourteen homes are complete, and another 13 are currently under construction.

In all, 28 homes will have been completely rebuilt or refurbished when the program ends later this year.

“It was living the parable of the Good Samaritan,” said Jason Sutherland, director of North American construction projects. “In my view, that’s disaster relief. In the story, the Samaritan says, ‘I’ll be back.’ We want to complete the parable.”

The houses in New Orleans fall into one of three categories. Category one means the team is purchasing property to build a brand new house. Category two means the team is purchasing property that already has a house on it. The house will be torn down and a new one will be rebuilt and given to a needy family. Category three means the homeowner owns a house ruined by the hurricane, and the team will rebuild it from bottom to top.

The first task was a category three house that belonged to Elsie Clark. Some work had been done on it, but it stopped when the money ran out. Samaritan’s Purse completely refurbished the house.

Since that first project, the team has worked on several more houses in New Orleans’ Eighth Ward. The homeowners are sometimes skeptical of the help at first.

“It’s like they’re holding their breath,” said Steve Gahagan, construction supervisor. “So many people have told them they’re going to do stuff, but they never do. But they see Samaritan’s Purse does keep their word.”

Samaritan’s Purse staff and volunteers have spent a lot of time in the neighborhood near Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, our church partner. They have worked on both Helen Vigne’s and Joan Bundy’s houses, neighbors and lifelong friends, and spent time with Bundy’s next-door neighbor, Kingsley Roy.

It was clear that Ms. Bundy’s faith was strong, but the construction supervisors weren’t sure about the others.

“I was scared to approach him at first because he looked like he might bite your head off or just knock you out,” Gahagan said of Roy.

As time passed, Roy got close to a construction manager named Billy. Roy had grown up in church, but he had drifted far from his faith. As Billy talked to Roy, he started to change. He even thanked our team for cleaning up his neighborhood.

Volunteer coordinator Erinn Ford said that Vigne never talked about God, so she doesn’t know about her relationship with Him. But during a recent visit, Vigne constantly talked about the blessings she was receiving from God.

The people who are most affected by volunteers’ work are often the neighbors of those being helped.

“They set out on their porches and watch people from all over the country come,” Ford said. “They see how hard people work even in the heat, and some of them wouldn’t do that even if they were getting paid.”

Volunteers are taught that the spiritual work they are doing is more important than simply building houses. They are encouraged to approach people.

“We stress talking to the neighbors and bringing them to the eternal things, not just the temporal things,” Brown said. “We want the neighbors to ask, ‘Why in the world would you do that?’”

And they do ask. Ford said that one neighbor asked to pray with our team every morning. Even though they weren’t working on her home, she felt the love of God through their actions.

The Neighborhood Rebuild Project reached the halfway point when Sharon Dokes’ house, a few block away from Bundy and Vigne’s neighborhood, was the 14th to be finished. It was dedicated on May 29.

“Ms. Dokes just prayed her house would get done, and God answered her prayer,” Ford said.

God is answering many prayers in New Orleans, from getting houses done on time to giving new believers an eternal home in heaven. He doesn’t always do it like the volunteers anticipate, but in the end He exceeds expectations.

“The faith lesson is overwhelming,” Ford said. “He took the whole process and did it at His own pace. Every step seems like it has been perfect, although from where we were sitting, we were impatient and just wanted to know when it would start.”

God has worked through Samaritan’s Purse and the volunteers to unite a community that was torn apart by the hurricane. Families are interacting and rejoicing with each other, attending the dedications as each house is completed.
“The biggest impact on me was how the community is really getting to know each other through the project,” Ford said. “The whole community is coming together to celebrate somebody else’s day.”

Brown, Gahagan, Ford, and Woody Woodsum, another construction supervisor, live in New Orleans, and have built relationships with the people they have helped. They all said that’s the biggest blessing of all.

“It’s one thing to believe in God, but it’s another thing to see and feel the hearts of the people you’re serving,” Woodsum said. “It’s not just pounding nails; it’s seeing what their issues are.”

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