Monday night, March 12, and I am on a short-term mission trip from our church to the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance camp in Pearlington, Mississippi, which we've been told was pretty much "ground zero" for Hurricane Katrina. Water was 17 feet deep here, destroying everything, so we are working at construction ... rebuilding (or, more accurately, building) homes for residents who lost everything. We are part of a larger contingent of about 120 from churches throughout the Presbytery of Detroit. There are 13 of us here from our church in Ann Arbor. It's truly staggering to witness firsthand ... this is the fourth such trip the Detroit Presbytery has done since the August 2005 hurricane, and they say they expect the need to remain for 4-6 more years. Today we spent installing drywall in a home, and mudding it (filling the seams between sheets of drywall). I was part of a small, five-person work team ... good people. As I have told a fellow missionary, "The friendships you make on trips like this have to be one of the very top benefits." We left Ann Arbor Saturday morning, arriving in Mississippi Sunday evening after two very long days of driving (well over 1000 miles), and leave to head back next Saturday morning.