Biloxi, October, 2007

NOTE: If you view the photos using Internet Explorer V6, you may find the photos appear below the menu rather than beside the menu as they do with other browsers.  I'll fix this when I return from Biloxi, sorry for the problem.  Webmaster.

A group of members of six churches, led by the First United Methodist Church of Santa Rosa, went to Biloxi, MS, from October 20 through November 3, 2007.  We helped reconstruct housing and lives damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

We are on our way home as I type this!

What?  Isn't all that stuff fixed by now? 

NO!!  The need there is still great.  There was so much destruction that the churches there expect it to take 5 - 10 years to get things back to how they were before Katrina struck in August, 2005.

44 of us were in Biloxi.  Some were here for a week, and some for 2 weeks.  We use this web site to keep you posted on what we learn and experience during our trip, as we did last year.    You can see photo albums about our trip.

We thank Chris Smith of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat for his story about our trip on October 9, 2007:

"BACK TO BILOXI: Jim Wieschendorff trekked with other Sonoma County churchpeople to Biloxi, Miss., last fall to lend a hand to victims of Hurricane Katrina.  The destruction and suffering took the retired IBM exec's breath away.

So why's he so anxious to go back to Biloxi next week?

'It was probably one of the most exciting things I'd ever done in my life,' said Jim, a member of Santa Rosa's First United Methodist Church (www.fumcsantarosa.org).

He's going back with 47 other church volunteers, he said, because he truly felt that he was doing something while rebuilding homes for people who lost virtually everything to Katrina.

Jim invites us to send along some cards, the kind Biloxi residents can use to purchase building supplies at Home Depot or Lowe's."

We thank all of you who sent cards to us.  We have been able to raise over $16,000 to use for helping the people of Biloxi.