"The devastation is unbelievable, but the opportunity to help is even greater,” says Bluefield College sophomore Myra Bankert, one of four BC students who recently returned from a mission trip to the Gulf Coast to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bankert, of Botetourt County, joined classmates Shane Carr of Botetourt, Mary Mick of Princeton, W. Va., and David Neel of Bland, along with Bill Shockley, a BC assistant professor of business, on the seven-day assignment to Slidell, La., where months after the hurricane floodwaters have receded, the ruin remains.
“What got me was the devastation,” said Carr, a senior history major. “There are no photographs to do it justice. When you’re there, and you see just the roof of a house sticking out of water, someone else’s house in another person’s yard, you realize that these people just need somebody to be there, to let them know we care.”
The four Bluefield College students and their faculty advisor gathered in Slidell with approximately 60 other mission volunteers from Baptist churches across Virginia. They all came for various reasons as a response, they said, to a call from God.
“I had been to Jamaica before on a mission trip,” said Mick, a freshman pre-med major, “and after that I decided that missions was something I wanted to do in my life. When this opportunity came along, I knew I wanted to go.”
“I knew I needed to go and help the victims [of Hurricane Katrina],” added Bankert, a sophomore business education major. “I was actually in Hurricane Emily when it came through, and I saw what happened to those people. Just being there—I knew I had to go to Louisiana and help these victims.”
The Bluefield College group stayed at Grace Memorial Baptist Church, where they slept on the floor in Sunday school rooms in order to be available to serve. Each day began at 6 a.m. with breakfast provided by the church and soon after an assignment provided by Virginia Baptist disaster relief services.
“Our job was deconstruction,” Carr said. “We basically gutted houses, tore down homes that were no longer fit to live in and removed all the rubble.”
The workdays ended at 5 p.m. and always, according to the students, included, in addition to hard, physical labor—listening.
“We listened to stories of how some people lost everything,” Carr added. “One family had been through floods before, but none like this one. The flood waters forced them to climb up on their roof during the hurricane and use a refrigerator to float people to safety.”
Part of the purpose of the mission trip, the students said, was to witness and share God’s love with the hurricane victims. As a result, they passed out evangelistic flyers and offered their testimonies on occasion. While the intentional evangelism may have been limited, their witness was boundless, they reported.
“There was really nothing we could say to make things easier for these people,” Carr said. “Our witness was the fact that we were there, we were helping these people, and we were sharing God’s love with them.”
Shockley agreed, explaining that the mission trip was not all about the physical work. While volunteers were often working hard to help rebuild someone’s home, the Bluefield College students were busy “rebuilding the person.”
“These four young adults paid their own way to go for a week and work tirelessly to help other people in need,” Shockley said.
“If they represent our future, then we have a pretty great future ahead.”
Having witnessed the effects of one of America’s worst natural disasters, the students came home with a greater appreciation for their “blessings” in life and a deeper understanding of “wants” versus “needs.” They each shared how they will “take less for granted,” after having seen so many people “lose everything they owned.” They also came home with an invitation for others.
“Growing up, I had everything I ever wanted, but seeing how much these people lost, it changed me,” Bankert said. “I don’t ask for much anymore. Material possessions don’t mean as much to me now. The victims of this hurricane are going to need help for a while. More people need to go, but don’t go just to sightsee. Go to help!”
Special to the Herald