PrayerPoint is a bimonthly prayer digest of Samaritan's Purse that was created so you can join us in this essential aspect of the ministry. A subscription to PrayerPoint is free with your gift of any amount.

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PrayerPoint archive

When Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on the Gulf Coast, Marion Dorn packed a few days worth of clothes and drove with her brother to seek safety elsewhere.

When she returned, her Waveland, Mississippi home was three feet off the ground in what was supposed to be a no-flood zone. Water had damaged every part of the house. Nothing was salvageable.

Marion is a 72-year-old widow who was working as a dish washer at a local school cafeteria when the storm hit. She had lived in the same house for 45 years, but after Katrina home ownership seemed impossible. She did not qualify for government loans nor could she afford to pay insurance on a home.

Marion’s sister, Gerry Casabat, went everywhere looking for someone willing to help. She found it at the Samaritan's Purse base camp in Kiln, Mississippi.

“Samaritan’s Purse came along and said, ‘We want to build you a house,’” Gerry said. “It was an answer to every prayer we had ever prayed.”

Marion received one of nine mortgage-free houses we built for Hurricane Katrina victims as part of our Samaritan Homes project in Mississippi.

“The volunteers were blessing the house as it was being built,” Gerry said. “There’s scripture all over the framing. It’s just beautiful.”

When the last of the nine houses was completed and dedicated in March, it capped our 2 ½ years of working in the Gulf Coast communities near Kiln. In that time, thousands of volunteers from around the country logged more than 137,000 hours mudding out homes, cleaning up debris, repairing residences, and building new homes. In total, more than 13,000 volunteers have worked out of our seven sites in Katrina-affected areas.

Samaritan’s Purse didn’t just respond to physical needs. During our time in Kiln, there were more than two dozen commitments to Christ from residents, members of the National Guard, and volunteers sent from churches across the nation.

These are people like Sandy Higdon and her family. We built a house for Sandy, a 54-year-old single mom with no insurance and little income who lives with her two children. Last July, one of our volunteers invited Sandy’s 20-year-old son, Jacob, to attend the church where Samaritan’s Purse workers were based. It was there that he surrendered his life to Christ. A month later, Sandy and her 23-year-old daughter, Ashley, also came forward for salvation.

For home recipients Jack and Jessica Hopkins, working with Samaritan’s Purse renewed their faith in God and in others.

“I’ve never seen a community of any sort that has reached out to us the way the Christian community has,” Jack said.

A Samaritan’s Purse crew shoveled out mud and tore out sheetrock for Kiln residents Willie and Betty Harmon, giving them a chance to salvage their home. Willie, 79, is in a wheelchair and Betty was physically unable to perform the strenuous work. When the team finished, they prayed with the Harmons and presented them with a Bible.

“This is just something beautiful, that’s all I can say,” Willie said. “It’s amazing that they’ve done as much as they have for us.”

All of our work provided assurance that God had not forgotten the needs of people who have lost so much. Even 2 ½ years after the storm, Samaritan’s Purse continues to look for ways to work in Katrina-affected areas to give help and hope in Jesus’ Name.

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock” (Matthew 7:24-25, NASB).