Phoenix, Louisiana: A Story from the Gulf Coast, by Sarah Wagner

Published: May 4th, 2007

I doubt you've heard of Phoenix, Louisiana.  Don't blame you, really.  People in their own state hardly know that it's there.  But it's there, or I guess what's left of it.  Two years ago, it was a small town of 300 near the Gulf Coast.  Today, it's even smaller with only about 110 residents left.  In case you had forgotten, there were these hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, about a year ago last September in the US of A.  And while most people heard of the devastation of places like New Orleans, I wonder how many people stopped to think of the hundreds of other towns like Phoenix that were hit as well.  Luckily, most of the resident's of Phoenix made it out safely before the storms hit, staying with relatives 15+ hours away in North Carolina or Texas.  But what they came back to was mind-numbingly demoralising. 

I don't know what it looked like back then. All I can tell you is what I saw recently when my church paired up with a few other congregations and an organization called Covenant World Relief. This organization had heard about Phoenix and decided that they wanted to help out.  My church (Metro Christian Fellowship, in Kansas City, Missouri), was blessed to be invited to tag along.  On the organization's third trip down south this March during Spring Break, we added about 70 people to the large growing numbers of participants from Hillcrest Covenant (affiliated with Covenant World Relief) and two other churches.  Late Saturday night, our coach bus rolled into Phoenix after an 18 hour drive from Kansas City with a ragtag group of high schoolers, youth leaders, and the odd parent (or 20).  We practically invaded the small southern community with a total of 240 volunteers from the Mid-West.

We were there for only a few days, getting straight to work Sunday morning. I know, its scandalous that we worked on the Sabbath.  I guess some people would say we should have dropped our hammers and headed for the nearest church, but we figured it was better to build the Church some places to come home to first.  Some volunteers were roofing, others building up framework from scratch, but the project I got to work on was (I think) the most interesting. I didn't work at any of the other sites, I can't really tell those stories, but you can read about them on the Hillcrest Covenant website.

When Sunday mid-morning rolled around, I and a few of the youth group girls were blessed to be in charge of getting whisked away to “the blue house”.  Now, we could tell something was fishy when everyone kept saying, “Oh, you get to work at the blue house?!  Uh... I'll pray for you.”  Mildly disconcerting, to say the least.  So we hop on the back of the pickup truck and get carted out about ½ mile down the main road.  The house, on the outside, looked pretty decent.  Nice blue paneling, marred only by the large green 0 that told rescue workers back in October 05 that there were no dead bodies floating around inside.  We were given gloves, masks, and safety glasses and told to clean out everything inside.  Still minorly clueless, we said alright, and opened the front door....

Next Page: House-Cleaning Calluses, Drill Sargeant Sarah and Loving the Unlovable 

Sara Wagner is a 24-7 Transit(UK) 05-06 graduate.  While she currently lives in Kansas City, her heart yearns to travel Europe.  When not crazily enduring non-stop 18+ hour bus rides with teenagers, you’ll find her hanging out somewhere in the vicinity of a coffee shop or riding her bike through the woods.  To read more of what Sara’s written, or to just get to know her, you can visit her myspace. 

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