House Raising

missions

| SPIRITUALITY

HOUSE RAISING Summit church builds hope, homes and a future in Waveland

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TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY TRUDY BERGER Every year during the first week of June, First Baptist Church of Summit sends out a construction mission team. It may be to build a church or to help rebuild damaged homes, but at this time of year a team of anywhere from 30 to 70 people, ranging from youth to senior adults, will hit the road on this trip. This year, the trip was to have been to Gallup, N.M., but due to a delay in obtaining building permits, a substitution

was made and the trip was just down the road, to Waveland. Many people, even those of us in Mississippi, assume that the Gulf Coast has been rebuilt. Not so. Waveland is in the process of rebuilding, but the damage there remains extensive. The FBC mission team was sent to Shoreline Park Baptist Church to build a home for a family that lost theirs to Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29, 2005. The project was a ground-

up construction job, to build an 1,100 square foot wood frame house on 12 foot high piers, under new hurricane construction standards. “Scott,” the homeowner, explained that he had been injured on the job and was disabled. Once Katrina hit and destroyed their home, his wife and child had to wait along with tens of thousands of other victims for their FEMA trailer. Once settled in their FEMA

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trailer, it did not take long for Hurricane Gustav to come along and once again wipe them out. FEMA regulations prevent victims from receiving more than one trailer, so they then lost their automobile to pay apartment rent. This family was in a real bind. Left with nothing but the land on which their home had once stood, the Rev. Ed Murphy and Shoreline Park Baptist Church came to their rescue with the church’s innovative construction program. Scott’s home is the 16th such home built under the auspices of the church, this time by volunteers from First Baptist Church Summit. Bro. Ed has seen a lot in the 10 years that he has been the pastor at Shoreline. In the last five years, he has seen loss for his own membership. Waveland was ground zero for the Mississippi coastline during Hurricane Katrina, and the Shoreline church was hard hit. As he recounts story after story, he chokes up frequently at the struggles and difficulties that different people have faced. He even had to bury a church member soon after the hurricane, and when he says “bury” he means preaching and digging the grave as well. This is not your ordinary Southern Baptist preacher. On any given day he might be driving a tractor, using the bucket to hoist sheeting on the job, hauling construction materials to the job site, hauling children around in another van to some activity, tak-

ing a church member to a job interview, putting Freon in a deacon’s truck or just pitching in on anything else that might need to be done. “I surrendered to the ministry late in life,” Bro. Ed explains. “I was 35 at the time and I had my own construction business so I know how to build houses and do a lot of different things.” As he drove around to the various sites of the 16 homes that he has built since Katrina, recounting the unique and touching stories of each family as we approached each site, he says, “I can’t believe there have been this many. How did I do all this?” When asked what he plans to do next, he responds without hesitation, “Sleep. I’m just going to sleep for a while. You see, I get up at 6 every morning and go nonstop until 12 every night. And from midnight until 6 in the morning I don’t really sleep very well because my brain is still thinking about all the details involved. So I really want to sleep.” Bro. Ed and his wife Karen, originally from South Carolina, have grown children and grandchildren scattered around the country. They would eventually like to travel out west and mentor pastors in smaller churches, possibly doing short-term assignments building Sunday school classes or serving as worship leaders in churches. “When they finally lay my body down, I’d like it to be totally spent in service for the Lord,” says Bro. Ed.