The Church Volunteers

Key Ivy
Sr. Producer/Director
Church Volunteers

I just spent two days in South Mississippi along with videographer Jeremy Burson shooting a story about volunteers from churches helping to rebuild the coast.

We met Elijah Mitchell who was a Methodist minister who lost both of his churches during the storm. He was appointed as the Regional Disaster Response Coordinator by the Bishop of the Methodist Church and he is operating out of Gateway United Methodist Church in Gulfport. He is a tireless worker who has been putting in 12 to 20 hour days for the past six months to try and help the people of the coast. His main job is organizing and dispatching volunteer crews from across the country to help needy people on the coast. These groups will come in for usually a week at a time and do everything from removing wet sheet rock to replacing roofs and floors to plumbing and electricity.

The volunteers we followed were from Indiana and Pennsylvania.
Some were college students on Spring Break and others were some older folks who came down in an RV. They all pay their own expenses for travel and food and a lot of them buy the materials that the people need to repair their houses.

They are usually housed in a local church where they sleep on the floor or on couches and there are only two showers for up to 120 people.

The volunteers kept saying that they just couldn’t stay at home and do nothing. They had to come down here and help. For some it was their third trip to the coast and they believed they were getting more out of this than the people they were assisting.

If it weren’t for these tireless volunteers, many people would not be able to return to their homes because of lack of money or man power to do these jobs that these people are doing for free.

As Elijah Mitchell told me, “It’s God’s strength that keeps me running, there’s no other way to explain it.”