Day 349 – The Chief End of Humankind – Pearlington Update

This is an update on the status of our church-wide stewardship to Pearlington, Mississippi and surrounding area. Volunteers at Pearlington serve by working on homes from lower Pearl River County, and in the County of Hancock from Kiln, Bay St. Louis/Waveland to Pearlington itself. At times we also work on homes across the Pearl River towards Slidell, LA.

In the area of Pearlington itself we work on homes that are served by a number of aid and construction partners in addition to PDA. These groups are Pearlington Recovery Center, located at the old Charles B. Martin Elementary School, the Mennonites working under a group called CARE, Baptist affiliated groups and individual church groups who have made Pearlington a primary focus for their mission, an example being Fountain City Presbyterian Church in the Knoxville, TN area.

Some of these groups have been funded by grants. The Pearlington Recovery Center, the longest standing organization, loses its funding May 31 and will no longer be operating after that date. The Baptist recovery organization disbanded this winter. The Mennonites are still here but working out of Bay St. Louis. The Fountain City group, bless them have been coming 3-4 times per year since Katrina hit. I owe them thanks because they led me here.

A few independent volunteer groups such as Fountain City are still coming down. The Philadelphia Presbytery still has a commitment to work with us until we meet the needs in Pearlington. The Arknasas Presbytery is assembling groups of churches in a commitment to follow through on one home until it is completed by year's end. PDA is committed to working at Pearlington at our Village until October, 2009.

A number of factors will influence PDA’s decision to remain or close our village at that time. Our rent has increased therefore it costs more to support volunteers, and our volunteer numbers are dropping which significantly increases that effect. We operate our village under a temporary use permit that must be renewed annually by the County of Hancock. We have encountered some resistance to renewing that permit from local contractors, some of whom are on the board that approves the use.

This worry is really misplaced since the majority of these home owners can’t afford contracted services. In fact, fraudulent contracted services are the cause of much of the heartache in the whole Mississippi area. The bottom line at this point in my unofficial opinion is that PDA will seek to keep running our mission in Pearlington at some location as long as there is a robust flow of volunteers, funds and work to do.

For the most part the future of recovery of Pearlington, and the Gulf, is in your hands.

Is there a need for volunteer effort? The short answer is yes.

PRC has twelve homes under construction. It looks like six of them are in pretty good shape after PRC closes on June 1. The other six however need help or they may not get completed.

There is one home in Pearl River County that is caught up in an alleged fraud by one of the local aid groups and left only as a framed-in shell. The owners are a young man and wife with several very young children, including one who has had operations for a heart problem. They lost everything through Katrina and he is trying to complete the house through loans and what money he can glean from what is left from his pay after taking care of his family expenses, a family. They need help.

As I get into the actual casework, I am finding many unmet needs in Waveland. Historically we haven’t paid a lot of attention to Waveland and Bay St. Louis but these two incorporated cities were hit as badly as Pearlington. There is a lot of socio-economic stratification in these two towns and the poor are being crushed under the hard boot heel of some of the well-to-do in those towns who seem to desire that part of the population go away.

Whether that attitude comes from a pecuniary interest or just the "not in my backyard" mindset, it deserves our resistance through our aid. I apologize for my strong language but this is what I read in the newspapers and hear said by community advocates who are longstanding residents.

There are many more homes that are being repaired. We call these “rehabs.” Between PRC and PDA I estimate there are about eighty known homeowners (perhaps about 150-300 people) who either can’t live in their homes, are living in them but shouldn’t, are in marginally livable situations, or are in homes that have had minimal repairs and can be lived in but repairs are not completed.

In the face of limited volunteers we are in a mode where we have to set job priority on a “triage” basis that takes into account dire need, number of volunteers and skill level of volunteers. Although I will protect the confidentiality of these clients, I can give you some idea of these needs.

There is single mother who has four children living separately from her and who is living in a MEMA (Mississippi Emergency Management Agency) cottage that must be repossessed by the end of March. She has to work and is also trying to keep one of her teenaged girls out of trouble.

There is a couple in Pearlington who have been bilked out of tens of thousands of dollars by dishonest contractors. The husband has a serious chronic illness and the wife is struggling to carry on the repair work through us. They face an undetermined eviction from their MEMA cottage in the next month or two. We have had to dismantle a large part of the faulty construction of this home by one of those contractors. By the Grace of God we have found aid from the Mennonites on this construction and re-roofing, and hopefully the Fountain City crew will help make a dent in the drywall job so we can get them in a real home.

There is another couple in the same boat. They live in a MEMA cottage and their house has been almost completed when we found gross construction defects by contractor with fraudulent credentials that must be repaired to prevent structural failure.

There is a single mother who has had very extreme, difficult and threatening spousal problems. Living under that dark cloud she has several pre-school and elementary aged children whose small modular home needs repair just to have a small piece of safe, peaceful existence to rebuild her family’s life.

There are many other homes in the Pearlington area among those eighty that need partial repair. If we leave with this work undone, we do not know how, when or if the work will be completed.

If we had commitments from churches to provide 75 volunteers from now through October, only for fifty percent of the open days we would probably have enough support to fight to carry on until this mission work is done hopefully in 2010 and be able to reflect positively on the answer to first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (inclusive language in italics is mine) :

Q. What is the chief end of humankind?
 A. Humankind’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.