Notre Dame Teens Help Build Hope in Mississippi

Katrin Cengiz works on steps for the entrance deck of a home her youth group from Notre Dame Parish in North Caldwell helped to construct for a family in need. Behind her is a Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) trailer-the type still being used by scores of families two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area.

NORTH CALDWELL-The desperate need of people living along the Gulf Coast, two years after the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, made the decision of where the youth group at Notre Dame Parish would go this year an easy one.

Seventeen teenagers and nine adults-including the pastor, Msgr. Edward Ciuba, Joy McDonald, the parish youth minister, and Ed Frenzel, the music director-drove 2,400 miles round trip to Bay St. Louis, MS, as part of an eight-day "Project Katrina" outreach effort.

Located 50 miles northeast of New Orleans, Bay St. Louis still showed the scars of the massive storm when the Notre Dame group visited there last July. National news reports indicate the Gulf Coast area continues to suffer from stalled rebuilding efforts and bureaucratic delays. For example, many families in the Bay St. Louis area are still living in trailers, McDonald said.

McDonald, who coordinated the trip and was one of the adult chaperones, said that, given the ongoing need of families in this region, leftover funds will be used to help finance a return trip to Bay St. Louis for the youth group this coming summer.

As a real-world example of spirituality in action, Msgr. Ciuba said it was important for young people from his parish to "see the devastating after-effects" of Hurricane Katrina, citing the "great benefit" of interacting with the "still-suffering" people along the Gulf Coast.

The archdiocesan contingent had a lot of help before heading south. Once the decision was made to travel to Bay St. Louis, the young people mobilized to raise funds for supplies and transportation needs. The teens and adult supervisors held a gourmet dinner night, washed cars, had bake sales and put together an evening at "Café Katrina."

The Notre Dame Parish group joined with other young people from across the country to work on rebuilding homes. Most of the work, Msgr. Ciuba explained, was installing sheetrock. When the visitors from the Archdiocese of Newark departed, he noted, practically all of the sheetrock on the first floor of a new home was completed.

The entire outreach effort, Msgr. Ciuba stressed, was "religiously oriented." Each morning began with prayer. In addition, many meaningful one-on-one connections were formed between youth group members and area residents. One of the houses the Notre Dame Parish young people and adults worked on was for a couple with two children. Occasionally they stopped by and one afternoon made a hamburger dinner for the volunteers. The day before they were to return to the Garden State, the family also came to a farewell celebration.

Katrin Cengiz and Allie Candido (left to right) put the finishing touches on an entrance deck to a new home, which they helped to build for victims of Hurricane Katrina in the Bay St. Louis area. The decks were needed in certain areas because the homes were constructed on 14-foot stilts.

"I headed out (to Bay St. Louis) thinking I was going to help rebuild and repair homes, but it was really so much more than that," Sandra Lucero, now a freshman at Notre Dame University, IN, said. Lucero was struck too by the fact the residents "put their complete trust in complete strangers and in God and welcomed us into their homes despite all the devastation and disappointment they had already suffered. The blind faith that they entrusted us with was the greatest gift they could have given us."

While some homes were close to being restored, many others, she lamented, looked the same as they did after being hit by a 40-foot wall of water. The "sweltering heat, the bugs that did not want to leave us alone and the brown water that tasted kind of funky were all small things compared to what the Bay St. Louis residents were going through," Lucero said.

Julianne Contreras, another adult chaperone, took note of the beauty of Bay St. Louis "in spite of the great damage it had suffered." That beauty, she stressed, "went far beyond the surface." Meeting other youth group members from throughout the United States, she noted, everyone was asked to look each day for "God sightings" in the picturesque Gulf Coast community. Such sightings were meant "to remind us of the ability to find God in our everyday experience and surroundings," she explained. Particularly moving was the impact of the genuine appreciation and heartfelt thanks from the people they had journeyed to help, she said.

"Overwhelmingly grateful" is how Msgr. Ciuba described the response by area residents to the youth group's mission of mercy. Many times the prolific thanks came when the locals found out they were from out of state, he said, adding that the Notre Dame Parish group was the only one from New Jersey there at the time.

"I cannot begin to count the number of times someone said 'thank you' just because we hadn't forgotten about this small town that needed so much support and love," Contreras said. "Perhaps what touched me most were the teens themselves. God clearly was here. I think God's proudest moment at camp occurred when one of our own teens stood up and sang 'Amazing Grace' to a crowd of over 200 peers and adults. Everyone stood to cheer. I know that God was smiling."