St. Andrews and PDA: Our Story

St. Andrews’ first team to the gulf. Photo courtesy of First Presbyterian Church of Kilarnock.

Little did we know, as we began planning in the summer of 2006 for our first trip to the Gulf Coast for PDA, how the work would grow on us.  In its then 18-year history, St. Andrews Presbyterian Church had never undertaken out-of-town mission work.  It had been less than a year since Katrina had swaggered through, leaving its trail of devastation, so the need for help was fresh in our minds.

Eight of us went the first time.  We stayed at PDA’s Orange Grove camp and worked on a house in Biloxi, Mississippi.  One of our group had been on a previous mission trip to Orange Grove with another church and he became the camp cook for the week.  It was August, and it was hot, and most of our work seemed to entail creating dust from sheet rock.   However, during our time in “our house”, we built window casings, strung electrical wire, enclosed a chimney, created a shower, and primed and painted the walls we had created.  We felt a range of emotions.  The massive extent of the destruction made us so aware that our one week of work on one house was the tiniest drop in the bucket.  Yet, at the same time, we had done something.  In response to Jesus’ command to love and serve others, one family’s house was a little closer to being livable again.   What excitement we felt!

On that trip, we slept in “pods”; we quaked through a booming middle-of-the-night thunderstorm with lots of lightning hitting the ground, feeling very vulnerable on our metal-rimmed cots in our plastic-walled “shelters;” and we sweated and drank water in about equal proportions.  All of us ate together under a large open-side tent and felt good knowing we were helping do God’s work.  Evening vespers were held before we took a little social time with each other.  We took an evening to drive over to New Orleans, where we saw the terrible damage done there and dropped a few dollars into the recovering French Quarter economy.  We forged new friendships among ourselves.

Team member Tony at work digging a trench. Photo courtesy of First Presbyterian Church of Kilarnock.

And so a second mission trip took place in February, 2007.  Five people participated.  We were based at the PDA camp in Gautier and worked on homes in Ocean Springs and Pascagoula, Mississippi.  We did electrical work in both locations and had the pleasure of meeting and talking with the homeowners — something we had not been able to do on the previous trip.

The infamous pods were somewhat more comfortable in the wintertime.  However, it was the encounter with a miraculous new object for accommodating volunteer workers that captured our interest.  The group who had been on the previous mission trip had had to cope with a shower tent that simply collapsed when confronted with a Mississippi thunderstorm.  Even when it had been upright, its floors were always dirty.  The temperature of the water—because of pipes that baked in the sun all day—ranged from scalding to uncomfortably hot.

Here at Gautier we saw a beautiful thing called a Shower Trailer, built by Westminster Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina.  Its walls were rigid and strong.  Its stalls were separated by walls, not a sheet of canvas.  It was raised up off the ground, so it was clean.  And it offered a range of water temperatures.  One of our team members, a licensed plumber, probably had the idea first, but several others weren’t far behind:  “We could build one of these. . .” and felt led to do so.

About a year later the first volunteers showed up in the church parking lot to begin transforming a beat-up old construction site trailer into a Shower Trailer.  The work took about five months, but 1,100 person-hours later the job was completed.  For about $15,000 (one quarter the commercial cost) St. Andrews and the four other Northern Neck (Virginia) Presbyterian churches produced a Shower Trailer with four men’s showers, four women’s showers, and a wash room with six sinks.  On the exterior, there are two laundry-washing tubs and two tankless water heaters.

Delivery of the trailer provided the impetus for our third mission trip.  We delivered the trailer to the Olive Tree PDA Camp in New Orleans in August, 2008.  While we were there a few of the team were able to do a little work in the community while others stayed behind to begin installing the Shower Trailer.  We had a sobering realization with this trip:  not only did the homeowners suffer nature's devastation but also suffered at the hands of dishonest contractors.  We channeled our discouragement into greater dedication to the homeowners.

Thanks to the SAPC congregation for accommodating shower facilities for the Olive Tree Presbyterian Volunteer Village. Photo courtesy of First Presbyterian Church of Kilarnock.

Then the entire team worked for several days to complete the installation.  As the sign that we left behind at the camp states, “Jesus said:  Clean my sheep.  For I was dirty, and you gave me a shower.”  

St. Andrews’ three Gulf Coast mission trips to help PDA have been enormously meaningful and satisfying.  Those who could not actually participate in the hands-on work have felt connected to the work, too, as through their committee work, financial support and prayers, they have supported the trips.  We feel blessed that we have been able to respond to Christ’s call in this way.  It is good work.  We also admire PDA’s commitment to help in the area for seven years, long after the initial flurry of response has faded.

Thanks to the First Presbyterian Church of Kilmarnock, Virginia, for sharing their story and photos.

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