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2007-10-16 issue:

The people MDS helps

Stories of hope and faith

by Everett J. Thomas

Print Article

Carmen Dedeaux: ‘The house that love built’
Carmen evacuated her home in Pass Christian, Miss., on Aug. 28, 2005, as the eye of Hurricane Katrina approached the Mississippi coast. The 30-foot storm surge removed her house from its foundation, then deposited it on its side several blocks inland among the debris of other buildings, vehicles and shattered trees.



Rebuilt faith: Carmen Dedeaux in the kitchen of her new house in Pass Christian, Miss. The Pass Christian Rotary Club provided building material and MDS provided the volunteer labor. Photo by Everett J. Thomas.

For a week after the storm, Pass Christian residents were not allowed back into what was left of their town. When Dedeaux finally made it to her house through the debris, she could stay only long enough to find a few personal items. Several weeks later when she was allowed to return again, she found that her house had been bulldozed, and nothing was left.

The double devastation left her bitter at God.

“I lost my faith in God,” says Dedeaux, who was so angry that she sat down in the middle of what had been her street and screamed at God. God responded by sending Mennonite Disaster Service volunteers to rebuild her house.

“People would come in, put down stakes and work until they were finished,” she says. “It got to where they were no longer helping build my house. God was sending people to help me rebuild my faith.”

Today she enjoys the house on pylons that also represents her rebuilt faith.

“I have more faith now,” Dedeaux says, “not because I got a new house. [The volunteers] came in with the same agenda: that God loves you. That’s what is so special about this house, the house that love built.”

Note: Carmen tells her story firsthand here.


Lloyd Boisseau: no longer jaded
Oh, Lord. Thank you so much!” said Catalina Boisseau when John Kroeker, project director for Mennonite Disaster Service New Orleans, told her that MDS would commit to rebuilding her shattered home. “It’s been two years and my husband is so depressed. He is disabled and can’t get out of bed.”












No longer jaded: “I’m jaded,” a disabled Lloyd Boisseau tells MDS’ project director John Kroeker. “People say they will come and help us, get their picture and name in the paper and never come back.” Photo by Everett J. Thomas.

Catalina insisted that Kroeker come into their FEMA trailer and tell her husband the good news personally. Lloyd Boisseau explained why he was “jaded” about promises of help.

“People come and say they will help us,” Lloyd says. “They get their picture and name in the paper and never come back.”

The Boisseau house is one of four new houses MDS will help build in the New Orleans area this fall and winter. Money for building supplies will come from partners such as Catholic Charities; the labor will be provided by MDS volunteers.


Tony and Donna Duplessis: ‘a shoulder to cry on’
Tony Duplessis, pastor of Lighthouse Fellowship Church near Buras, La.,says: “[Mennonite Disaster Service] has been a nucleus that [allowed] our congregation to come back. I had a shoulder to cry on, and they had a plan. We wouldn’t be able to be back without MDS.”



Philosophic about living in hurricane country: Tony and Donna Duplessis stand in front of the Lighthouse Fellowship Church, a Gulf States Mennonite Conference congregation where Tony currently serves as interim pastor. Photo by Everett J. Thomas.

Hurricane Katrina obliterated their home, built on property that has been in Donna’s Native American family for generations. When they returned after the storm, only the cement steps from the front porch remained.

The Duplessis family, currently living 30 miles away as their home is being rebuilt, are philosophic about living on the long, low peninsula that extends southeast from New Orleans into the Gulf of Mexico.

The watery bayou country is especially vulnerable to hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina passed through Buras before going across the Gulf and making landfall at Pass Christian, Miss.

A storm the size of Katrina “happens once in 37 years,” Tony says. “A once-in-37-year average is good.”

Tony and his family evacuated to Arkansas during the storm. Tony says that during their stay there they experienced an earthquake and a tornado. Tony compared the various natural disasters that afflict different regions of the country and still feels safer with a hurricane.

“We know a hurricane is coming a week in advance,” he says.

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