Survival Mode

Greetings and Ahoy There to everyone out there that is wondering where we are and what we are doing. What a blessing to be together and to have arrived safely in Mobile, AL on Sunday. Joe, from the YMCA of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, picked us up. We were excited to see a friendly face and the big welcoming Y on the front of his shirt.

Joe drove us the 45 minutes to Ocean Springs, MS. Ocean Springs is located 5 miles from Biloxi. We are staying here, at the YMCA. The boys are downstairs sleeping in the nursery and the girls are directly upstairs in the Karate room. We are just a few of the many that are sleeping each night at the YMCA. Other people from YMCAs across the country as well as Relief Counselors from the National Organization of Victims Assistance share the space and the stories.

Driving through Ocean Springs on Sunday we were amazed and surprised by the seemingly small amount of visual damage. Jodie, a Program Director from the YMCA of San Francisco, met us, passed on some of her wisdom from her experience of the previous week. Jodie drove us a little away from the center of town where we first began to understand the different levels of destruction. Just a few blocks behind the YMCA we quickly began to understand that our first impression was wrong.

Just blocks away houses are missing. Yep, missing. Ripped from the foundation with maybe just the toilets still standing or a staircase rising to no where. There is trash everywhere. It is in the trees, 12 feet off the ground where the water rose and left it to later blow in the breeze. Boats are scattered in places where boats do not belong; in yards, on the road, and even settled ontop of the rubble of a home. The toys of children lay strewn in piles and piles of rubble. It is hard to believe that a pile of carpet, insulation, siding, lumber, personal objects used to be someone's home, their lives, their past and future. The highway lays in a mangled mass of what used to be a be the road to a town where life was good, simple, and normal.

Normal is the word of the week because it is what everyone seeks. Normal is comfortable and comfortable is a long way away. Normal is sleeping on a bed, your bed, warm and soft, not a tent in the yard of what used to be the front yard. Normal is eating warm meals, drinking cool water, taking hot showers and dressing in your own clothes; not something a kind church worker gave to you.

Constantly seeking normal is what sends everyone, including us, into Survival Mode.

We are on our way to scrub the women's locker room.....more pictures and stories to follow!

Mississippi Elite Eight