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By the Thousands, Faithful Toil to Resurrect Gulf Cities
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Since then, the Bethel effort has grown far beyond its Fairfax benefactors. More than 2,000 volunteers -- broad-accented Minnesotans, drawling Southerners and Californians who bring their own organic coffee -- have rolled in and out. They share prayers and meals and fan out through devastated neighborhoods to hammer, saw and paint.
Some volunteers, dubbed "Biloxi boomerangs," return again and again.
"It's very hard to leave once you've been down here," said Pete Berlowitz, a Columbia software entrepreneur who drove down on impulse after Katrina with 75 roof tarps, and stayed.
John Dutscheck, a 49-year-old nurse from suburban Milwaukee, put his house up for sale and moved to Biloxi in December to work in the Bethel makeshift health facility.
"I know God sent me down to staff the clinic," said a red-eyed Dutscheck, who lives in a trailer behind the church, at the end of one long day.
In an area where Christian faith is sunk deep into the sandy soil, God is never far from the hammers and saws.
Retired mechanical engineer Marv Smoyer, 65, a member of Arlington's Faith Lutheran Church, drove down last month after persuading his minister to part with the church van. He thumbs toward the ceiling of Bethel church.
"The guy upstairs gave me ability and talents," Smoyer said. "It's up to me to help and to follow the Man."
Searching for God's Presence
Each evening, after volunteers have finished dinner, Judy Bultman asks them: "Where did you see the hand of God today?"
During one meeting, a Loudoun County volunteer rose to tell of a baby born after the storm who lives with his family in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer. "This little baby has never known a home in his lifetime," the volunteer said.
Tucker and his Northern Virginia crew have stuck to East Biloxi, which they came upon when the church secretary asked them to look in on her son's home there.
Driving through the streets in their "Mow Cow," a pickup borrowed from MowCow Lawn & Landscape in Fairfax Station (motto: "utterly dependable service"), they have become a neighborhood institution. Residents wave, calling out, "Hey, Mr. Bart!"
