The day before Hurricane Katrina slammed their city of Waveland, Miss., John and Brenda Pastore did what they always do on Sundays. They went to church.
John Pastore is pastor of the Waveland United Methodist Church. He wasn’t about to abandon his flock. But by Aug. 28, 2005, most of the flock had abandoned him.
“Brenda and I planned to stay, but there were only two people in church,” the Mississippi pastor said.
They went home and tried to sleep that night. “I even gave Brenda a life preserver,” John Pastore said. Sleep didn’t come. Worry did.
Deciding that God would want them to be wise, the couple got up late that night and drove inland from the Gulf Coast. They rode out the hurricane with their daughter in Starkville, Miss.
On Sunday in Marysville, Pastore and his wife went to church to say thank you. More than a year after the killer storm wrecked their church and devastated the surrounding area, they visited a congregation that came to Mississippi to make things right.
Thomas Albright, senior pastor of the Marysville United Methodist Church, remembers his congregation wanting to help. When church members donated to the United Methodist Committee on Relief after Katrina hit, Albright said he asked, “Is anybody interested in doing more than that?”
They were, indeed. In December of 2005, 19 people from the Marysville church traveled to Mississippi. It was the first of several trips by Marysville United Methodist groups that helped restore Pastore’s church and renovate more than a dozen homes. All the while, they were building a cross-country relationship.
“Other churches helped, too. This church paid for everything they did. It was a great blessing,” said Pastore. He credited the Marysville group with restoring power, rebuilding the church kitchen and setting part of the building back on its foundation.
“All the media were either in New Orleans or Biloxi. In Waveland, we were really at ground zero,” Pastore said of the coastal area east of the Louisiana border. “Our church had nine-and-a-half feet of water.”
Steve Keep, who belongs to the Marysville church, went to help in December of 2005, three months after Katrina, and again recently for a weeklong stay.
“I’ve done an awful lot of things in my life, but this was the most enriching,” said Keep, an Everett real estate agent. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me. What moved me most were the people. Politically, we’re such a divided nation. Here were people, all kinds of Christians, coming together to help.”
In a photo from Mississippi, Keep is shown wearing a protective mask as he cleans black mold from walls. In another he’s cooking jambalaya for a work crew at a nearby church.
Albright said the Marysville team included skilled workers, among them electrician Terry Earnheart and building contractor Dale Gribble. “Everybody paid their own way, $600 to $700 per trip. We stayed at the First United Methodist Church in Picayune,” the Marysville pastor said.
When power was restored to an illuminated sign at the Waveland church on a Saturday night, “it was the only light for miles around,” Keep said. “It was like a beacon to all of us.” The next morning, they found an envelope taped to the church door. There was no note, just two $20 bills.
Pastore told the Marysville congregation Sunday that he’d been “down to tears” after Katrina. “What was the worst year ended up the best year. It was so wonderful to me. Not only did people come and do the job, they did it with joy and kindness. We’re back in our home, thanks to this church.”
“People kind of think it’s over. It’s not,” said Brenda Pastore, the pastor’s wife. More than 50 people died in Waveland, a town of about 6,000, she said. Across the street from their home, three elderly women drowned.
The Marysville pastor said the United Methodist Committee on Relief has raised about $40 million in Katrina aid, and has sent thousands of volunteers. “It’s going to go on five to 10 years,” Albright said.
“Churches do a great job of teaching what we should do,” Albright said. “It’s much harder to give people an opportunity to do it.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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