2 Corinthians 5:1 says “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” This bible verse, to me, was the foundation of our mission to Port Aransas. Although helping to rebuild the rectory of Father James Derkits was the vital part of our mission, we spent a lot of time focusing on being present with the congregation of Trinity By-The-Sea. From joining them in morning prayer everyday, to inviting them to the Gaff, or to just hangout on the beach, being there with them and letting them know that it does get better was our true goal.
August 23, 2005 marks the first page in the story of Hurricane Katrina, the storm that swept across the South for 9 days, stripping people of their homes, hope, and their dignity. The beginning of a storm that left people with nowhere to go for years. For me, Hurricane Katrina consisted of my entire family sitting on my grandparent’s screen porch watching things from the backyard blow away and an occasional tree collapsing. Unlike my story, those living at the Coast of Mississippi experienced a complete loss of normality, resulting in a sense of helplessness.
13 years later, the ones who were once endlessly searching for an answer as to why God would allow such a disastrous thing to occur to them, are the ones giving the answer of the same question to the people of Port Aransas, TX. The people of Port Aransas are still undergoing recovery from Hurricane Harvey which hit in 2017.
On Saturday, July 28, 21 missionaries were sent on a journey of discernment from: St. Peter’s By-The-Sea (Gulfport, MS), St. Mark’s (Gulfport, MS), St. Alban’s (Bovina, MS), and The Mediator (Meridian, MS) into Port Aransas, TX to help cleanup damage caused by Hurricane Harvey. On this trip, we de-mucked and contributed to the restoration process of the rectory belonging to Father James Derkits of Trinity By-The-Sea Episcopal Church.
I do not know Father James personally, but after getting to know members of his parish, I have come to understand that he has left a substantial impact on his congregation, along with the community of Port Aransas as a whole. His presence is known to be one of light
and love, which inspired our mission as a group.
During our trip, we attended morning prayer everyday with a few members of the Trinity By-The-Sea. Every morning at 8 a.m. the bell wass rung in order to let everyone to know that prayer had begun. The morning service is then recorded on Facebook Live to give members of Trinity By-The-Sea, who had to evacuate when Hurricane Harvey hit, the opportunity to join us in worship. (The morning prayer is still available for viewing on Trinity-By-The-Sea’s Facebook page.) As a contribution from our group to their morning prayer, Father Patrick Sanders played his guitar while the rest of our group sang songs such as “Sanctuary”, “Father I adore You”, and Father Patrick’s favorite hymn, “Mr. Bojangles”.
Directly after morning prayer, we jumped into a day of work. The week’s work consisted of digging postholes, building a fence, building a deck, removing weeds from a succulent garden, and trying our best to remove all leftover debris remains. When I knew that we were doing all of these things, I didn’t expect to play a role in anything but the garden and moving timber for the handy people to build the fence and the deck. In the end, everyone who knew how to tackle certain tasks made sure to teach everyone how to do these things, so we could all contribute to the process. Father Stephen Kidd taught me how to dig a post hole, Father Patrick Sanders taught me how to build a fence, and Whitney Robinson, Emily Tipton, Christie Yoste and I all worked together to find a solution on how to lay out the top layer of the deck. That is just the beginning of the team work shown this week. We all helped each other in finding ways to jobs as easy and efficient as possible.
When we worked on the succulent garden, we continued to come across screws and glass shards left over from the storm. Along with collecting these things, we piled up leftover scraps from the fence, deck, and anything else we could use in order to turn this new debris (or “newbris” as we called it) into artwork for the parish as a gift from us. This idea was inspired by Trinity By-The-Sea. When Hurricane Harvey hit, parishoners spent weeks picking up debris that they felt could not go to waste. After collecting all they could, they came together to create crosses and artwork out of their findings to sell in order to raise money for hurricane recovery.
After a long day of work at the rectory, our group was sent out on our night activity. Two nights we went to the beaches in Port Aransas in which we gathered under this beautiful white tent generously set up for us by one of the parishoners of Trinity By-The-Sea. At the beach we were able to cookout and have a meal together, along with meeting up with people from the church so we could share stories. We go to know where people were from, what their lives were like, and how Hurricane Harvey effected them. In return we told them about life in Mississippi and how Hurricane Katrina effected us. After 2 meals together, the parish of Trinity By-The-Sea already made us feel as if we had a home in a place that was uncommon to us.
On Wednesday night, we all went to the Gaff, a small outdoor restaurant with a stage in which Father Patrick Sanders, Father Stephen Kidd, and Scott Andersen put on a show. (The set-list can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/user/sophiacalder17/playlist/04sZLPepVR5oCe4IMa7bfh ) Trinity By-The-Sea’s ECW, along with other members of the church joined us once again to listen to them play, along with eating pizza and laughing over the simple, amazing things in life.
At the end of everyday, we ventured back to Corpus Christi right as the sun set. We reminisced on our sunshine’s and rainbows of the day, sunshine’s being the best things and rainbows being something that could’ve gone better. So as a whole, my sunshine was coming into a complete group of strangers, who instantly became family, to successfully do God’s work and show the people of Port Aransas the kingdom. We were there to be present and show Trinity By-The-Sea that sharing God’s love can make everywhere seem like Heaven on Earth. My rainbow was probably leaving. It always seems like once you get to know the people you are serving, it is time to part ways. Thank you to the people of Port Aransas for teaching us what it means to be a community and thank you to the mission group from Mississippi for allowing me to join you on this beautiful, hot journey. Ryan Adams was right, “All the sweetest winds they blow across the South”.
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