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PrayerPoint archive

The order to evacuate came as Hurricane Katrina drew closer to New Orleans. Elsie Clark packed up her belongings and left the neighborhood that she had called home for nearly 30 years.

Ms. Clark had watched the news reports and knew this could be a devastating storm. But as she headed for her daughter’s house in Jackson, Mississippi, she had no idea how it would impact her life. She was still living with her daughter more than three years later.

“Everybody thought we’re going to leave for a little time and then we’ll come back, but it didn’t happen that way,” she said.

Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst disasters ever to hit the United States. The storm made landfall on Aug. 23, 2005, as a massive Category 3 storm. The high winds and widespread flooding claimed at least 1,836 lives, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since 1928.

The most severe damage occurred in New Orleans, where the levee system failed catastrophically. As much as 80 percent of the city was under water—including Ms. Clark’s neighborhood.

“You really can’t describe the way it was,” she said. “The water, and the way everything was turned around. The mud and the odor were horrible. It’s kind of hard to describe.”

Her house seemed ruined. Her neighborhood was uninhabitable. Although it seemed helpless, Ms. Clark never lost hope. She prayed that she would somebody be able to return home.

“For some reason, I always felt that I would be coming back,” she said.

Her prayers were answered through a new Samaritan's Purse program called the Neighborhood Rebuild Project. We are helping some of the neediest people who still haven’t recovered from the storm. Over the next two years, we will be refurbishing existing homes and building up to 50 new homes from the ground up.

Ms. Clark’s home was the first to be completed.

“It is magnificent,” she said. “I have to thank you. I really, really appreciate what you all are doing.”

Our staff is working with local churches to help identify recipients. Pastor Fred Luter of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church introduced Ms. Clark to Samaritan's Purse, and we agreed to rebuild her house.

“The house is sentimental to me,” she said. “It was my mother’s house. It means a lot to me. My house is right behind the church. All I have to do is scoot across the street, and I’m at church. I like to be active there, to serve wherever I can.”

The work in New Orleans is being done by teams of volunteers from around the country.

“I’ve been very blessed to meet quite a few of them,” Ms. Clark said. “They’ve been absolutely beautiful. When people give up their own time, and travel across country to come to do it, that’s the thing that touches you. These people have sacrificed to come here to help someone they don’t even know. The pleasure they’re getting out of it is unbelievable. It’s magnificent. It’s great.”

Ms. Clark has no doubt that the rebuilt house is an answer to prayer. She can see God’s hand guiding the whole process.

“I know it’s Him,” she said. “It’s nobody but Him. There’s no way that I would have been able to get back into my house without Him. There’s no other way to say it. It was all in His plan.”

The Neighborhood Rebuild Project is one of many volunteer-driven construction programs Samaritan's Purse has recently undertaken.

We built nine homes in Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina victims who had no insurance and didn’t receive help from the government. We rebuilt several homes destroyed in a fire that swept through the remote Eskimo village of Hooper Bay, Alaska, and then returned to help the local evangelical church expand its facilities and construct a youth center.

Volunteer team helped rebuild the African Bible College in Yekepa, Liberia, and made renovations to the Kokrine Hills Bible Camp in Alaska.

This year, Samaritan's Purse is sending volunteers to work alongside our staff for several more construction projects. In addition to homes in New Orleans, we are building a chapel on the campus of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a base camp and a chapel in Alaska, and a chapel, dormitories, and faculty housing for African Bible College.

As the volunteers work, people like Ms. Clark will see tangible expressions of God’s great love and concern.

“Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1a, NIV).