That's the perspective of Debra Miles, a resident of the city who was on the receiving end of ministry from a disaster relief team sent to the storm-ravaged city in June by Magnolia Avenue Baptist Church in Riverside.

"The fact that church people are coming out to help us on their own time, at their own expense, is what keeps this from being a tragedy," said Miles, a kindergarten teacher who fled New Orleans the day before Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the city and much of the Gulf Coast.

"Basically a lot of the help we're receiving in New Orleans is coming from the people with the hammers and saws who are volunteering their time to come help us.

"If it wasn't for God's people, we really would be in trouble here," Miles declared.

More than 219,000 volunteers have unselfishly donated time and resources since Hurricane Katrina stormed ashore on Aug. 29, 2005. The largest relief effort in U.S. history has distributed financial assistance to more than 3.7 million survivors, according to the American Red Cross. More than 27.4 million hot meals were served in the wake of the disaster, largely thanks to Southern Baptist relief workers.

The California factor
California Southern Baptists accounted for 1.5 million of those meals themselves, said Don Hargis, California Southern Baptist Convention Baptist Men's Ministries specialist.

"We have had well over 2,000 California Baptist volunteers involved in Katrina relief over the past two years," Hargis said. "People actually gave about $1 million, which enabled us to help volunteers keep going to New Orleans over that period of time."

Magnolia Avenue has sent three teams to the city, according to Mike Studebaker, the congregation's servanthood ministry coordinator.

The church sent a five-member team in July 2006 to help "gut out" houses that were molding in the south Louisiana humidity. Another team followed in January, pressure washing stripped-down homes and treating lumber used in reconstruction. Then in June, a team spent two days at Debra Miles' house.

"We had a plumber and several handyman types," Studebaker said. "We re-plumbed the house, worked on a shower, hung some inside doors and laid baseboards."

Toilets were installed in the house just before the team arrived, but there wasn't any air-conditioning, Miles noted.

"Those wonderful people sweated so much. I'm grateful for that," she said, her voice choking with emotion.

"They worked hard on the house, like it was their own house, not like they came to work on something and then leave.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," she added, "because they're God's people and that's what God's people do."

The love of Christ
Helping people in need is helping Jesus - and that should be motivation enough for any believer, Hargis declared.

"Matthew 25 is one of our key scriptures," he noted. "The Bible says that when we do these things for 'the least of these,' we are doing it to Christ. And helping them earns us the right to share Christ with them.

"When someone realizes that you left home and came all that way to sleep on the floor and work 12 to 15 hours a day for free, they want to know why. That's when we get to tell them about Christ and His love."

Magnolia Avenue had been involved in disaster relief before Katrina, but serving in the storm's aftermath marked a real turning-point for the church, Studebaker said.

"Katrina really knocked us out of our complacency as a church. Getting out there and seeing the need changes a person," he added. "All the people we have taken out there want to go back and do more to help."

A person couldn't help but be horrified at the conditions in New Orleans after the storm, said Miles, who is a member of the city's Franklin Avenue Baptist Church.

"I stayed in Texas almost a year after the storm," she said. "I went to Houston, and then my brother is in Dallas too. When they finally would let us back into New Orleans, I went to see what it was like.

"It looked like a Hitchcock movie," she said. "All the trees were grey. You couldn't see any birds anywhere. New Orleans is a city where people are always walking around and hanging out. You didn't see any life at all. It was horrible."

In the days and weeks after the storm, survivors often were desperately hungry, she said. The Christian spirit of volunteers made a particularly powerful impression - and pointed a multitude of people toward Christ.

"Volunteers would come by with food, and people would be so hungry they would offer them anything just for a sandwich," she said. "But the volunteers would reply, 'You don't have to pay for them. We made them for you.'

"The folks from Magnolia Avenue Baptist Church are a wonderful group of people," Miles declared. "I know I could never repay them; only God can do that. I love them and thank God for them. I haven't stopped praying for them.

"If it wasn't for church groups like them coming down to help us, we would really be lost."