Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
With drywall, two-by-fours and a patient faith in a sometimes-exasperating God, Burke resident Bart Tucker is trying to raise a small neighborhood from the dead.
But in this Gulf Coast city of 50,000, a slender thumb of land smashed by the winds and waters of Hurricane Katrina, nothing comes easy -- least of all miracles.
Since arriving in Biloxi with a convoy of supplies and volunteers from his Fairfax County church, Lord of Life Lutheran, shortly after Labor Day,
Tucker has spent a total of eight weeks here. He goes home only to raise more money and recruit more volunteers.
His efforts have rippled across Northern Virginia. Other faith organizations have joined in -- churches, Habitat for Humanity, Bible study groups
-- sending members and money, forming partnerships with Biloxi churches and adopting families.
But Tucker's crusade is hardly solitary. More than 10,000 religious people across the country have poured through the stricken Mississippi Gulf
Coast in an unprecedented volunteer effort.
They sleep in church sanctuaries, RVs and tents. They leave behind jobs, schools and retirement for labor pilgrimages of days, weeks or months.
Some have taken drastic measures, selling their homes and leaving family to move to the crushed Gulf Coast to devote themselves full time.
For Tucker, a lifelong Lutheran, his is a spiritual mission best described by the Biblical admonition by which he lives: "Faith by itself, if it is without works, is dead."
Beyond that, he doesn't question God's purpose for his presence.
"I'm just here," he said. "Whether I'm called in this direction, I'm not sure. I'm here."
The volunteers' focus: a seemingly endless horizon of destruction that stretches 70 miles. In Mississippi, 35,000 homes owned by residents who had no flood insurance were destroyed. Tens of thousands more were heavily damaged. Beyond this is Louisiana, where 77,000 homeowners with no flood insurance saw homes destroyed.
"We know that we will be there for a minimum of five years," said Pamela Burdine, a spokeswoman for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, which has launched its largest response to a disaster -- more than 2,000 volunteers in weeklong shifts.
These missions are concentrated mostly among Christians -- Methodists and Catholics are doing case management -- but they have been joined by the faithful from other religions. Last month, for example, 150 Jewish college students bunked at a Presbyterian church in Gulfport, Miss., while they repaired homes after koshering the church's kitchen.
Muslim volunteers purchased and converted a mobile home into a health clinic and distributed cleaning kits donated by Mormons.
So many volunteers are arriving that faith organizations are struggling to house them.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has built five "volunteer villages" in church parking lots and on local government land. Each houses up to 90 people in tents. Five more villages are planned.
Samaritan's Purse, an evangelical Christian relief group rebuilding 500 Biloxi homes, is putting up 90 volunteers each week on the grounds of a half-demolished Methodist conference center. The Salvation Army is constructing barracks for 240 under a former Biloxi football stadium, said
Maj. Rob Vincent, commander of the Christian group's Mississippi recovery effort.

The massive campaign has drawn grateful praise from beleaguered local officials, who say that federal money has been slow to arrive and that many of the poor will slip through the cracks of the qualifying standards for federal aid.
For the poor, rebuilding has "fallen squarely on the shoulders of faith-based groups and other NGOs," said Biloxi City Council member Bill
Stallworth, referring to nongovernmental organizations. "The government basically has not done a whole lot."
The storm has meant desperation for the vast majority of the residents of East Biloxi, a community of one-story, wood-frame homes of African
Americans, whites and Vietnamese Americans, where one-third live below the poverty line.
On Tucker's most recent trip, one man ran out into the street to flag him down.
Nhieu Nguyen, 33, had lost his restaurant in the storm. His home is a soggy shell, and he, his wife and their five young children sleep on the floor in what remains of their living room.
Nguyen begged Tucker for help.
"I don't have no flood insurance," he said, pulling out documents inside his home showing that he owes $80,000 on the destroyed structure. "I don't have nothing."
Tucker looked around at the dark mold speckling the wall studs, the children eating noodles in the stripped kitchen and Nguyen's papers. In homes around Tucker, overwhelmed volunteers from Northern Virginia were up to their armpits -- sometimes literally -- in work, tearing out soaked ceiling panels, nail-gunning shingles, installing new walls.
"Not in January or February," Tucker told Nguyen. "Maybe in March."
Nguyen, a slight man with thinning dark hair and bleary eyes, nodded. A half-promise was better than destitution.
"Thank you, sir," he said, following Tucker back out to the street.
'Just Come'
In the days after Katrina hit in August, Tucker and fellow church member Liz Pagan, a Fairfax seamstress, scrambled to put together their mercy mission.
"We had no idea exactly what we would do down there," said Pagan, who has spent seven weeks in the hurricane zone. "People asked me: 'What do I pack? What are we going to be doing?' And I said, 'I don't know. Just come.' "
Choosing Biloxi almost at random, because so much aid seemed to be going to New Orleans, they drove down in a convoy of vehicles with 20 others.
Carrying chain saws, generators and food purchased with $15,000 donated by their church, they arrived Sept. 9 -- the first out-of-town volunteers to get to Bethel Lutheran Church, a 100-member congregation on the western edge of Biloxi. The church was struggling to help stricken residents.
Lord of Life members set up a health clinic in the church library and turned the fellowship hall into a food pantry.
Their sudden appearance "was one of those times when God touched me," said Judy Bultman, 59, wife of Bethel Pastor Jerry Bultman.
At first, the work was grim and dirty. They "mucked" devastated homes where the water had risen to the ceilings, shoveling out foul-smelling mud and dead pets' carcasses, and hauling out houses' entire contents -- walls, bathtubs, mattresses, couches, clothing, pictures, toys, oozing refrigerators.
Residents worked alongside them. Together, they wept and prayed.
"I've never been through something like that," said Scott Daniels, 45, a federal employee who was on the first trip and returned a few weeks ago.
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!"
Their misfortune is not something that the well-to-do Tucker has experienced in his life.
After retiring from the Air Force in 1989 after 20 years as a test pilot and weapons-procurement specialist, Tucker, 58, started a defensecontracting business.
In 1997, he sold it and turned full time to managing his investments. Married for 36 years, he and wife Peggy have two grown children.
In a convoy led by the "Mow Cow," stunned volunteers visiting East Biloxi for the first time recently stared in silence at collapsed houses leaning into the streets, caved-in roofs, piles of debris, a blue Toyota draped over a fence.
A sour smell of decay and rot clung to the nostrils.
"My God," said one.
Jerry and Glenda Williams are two of the lucky residents having their home rebuilt. They just happened to encounter Tucker as he walked by shortly after his arrival, finding out who needed help.
Now, while a team installs drywall in their house, they live in a FEMA trailer behind it.
Jerry, 48, a shipyard worker who grew up in East Biloxi, grills ribs and pork chops for the volunteers; Glenda, 49, fixes fried chicken and rice and beans.
The Williamses credit Tucker for sparking the community back to life. One by one, they say, residents are returning as they see the work being done.
"He's come here and give us hope," Jerry said.
On some streets, there is only silence from the husks of broken houses.

But, slowly, other portions of East Biloxi are stirring. Generators roar, saws whine and teenagers drive by, music thudding from speakers.
On some streets, children play in yards again, and neighbors embrace and share stories of loss and survival, thanking God for what is left and those who are bringing it back.