Walking through the halls of Miami Middletown just before spring break, I continuously noticed the same flyer concerning a "mission trip" organized by Campus Crusade for Christ to help with the hurricane Katrina victims.

  Out of simple curiosity and the desire to help, I made a couple of phone calls, visited a couple of websites, and next thing I know I was driving the first leg of a fourteen hour road trip in a big red Miami University van filled with four guys I had never met before. We were on our way down to Pass Christian, Mississippi at 10:00 at night.

  We arrived in Pass Christian around twelve noon the next day. As we entered the town which is nestled on the Mississippi coast and was once and I am sure will be again considered the yachting capital of the United States, the destruction was truly unbelievable.

  Where million dollar ocean front homes once stood were re[laced with simply foundations and F.E.M.A. donated trailers for the home owners to live in, and perhaps a lone American flag stuck in the ground was all that was left.

  Our accommodations however, left little to be desired, as our convoy of Miami vans pulled into the parking lot of a cemetery that looked as if it had been forgotten. In the cemetary loomed the massive circus style tent that we would be calling home for the next week. As soon as we threw our bags inside, we were put straight to work building another tent in which more students would stay once they arrived. Needless to say I could tell immediately that the ensuing 7 days were going to be tons of fun.

  After the completion of the tent and a delicious meal at God’s Katrina Kitchen (another giant tent in which all the volunteers and some local residents for fortunate enough to eat at) and waiting in line for one of the 12 showers for the 650 college kids, I was ready for bed…at 8:30 p.m. After a good night rest we all awoke refreshed, and after breakfast next to the ocean, we headed to the local library which was now the relief efforts headquarters to get our project assignments.

  The Miami group was spilt up into teams that were assigned to different projects that needed attention in the demolished community. Through out the week we were assigned to all different kinds of projects from building fences, drying walling homes, roofing, and cemetery cleanup from where the hurricane had knocked over tombstones.

  I would have to say that despite all of the time and hard work put in amongst all of this destruction, the morale of not only the students from colleges all over the country including Miami, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, USC, and Baylor who had given up their spring break, but the residents, the people who lived here and dealt with this day in and day out not for just one week, was remarkably high.

  At the end of this trip those same four guys who I had never met before were like a band of brothers. We had all worked hard, and had some fun along the way with our impromptu football games and nightly corn hole tournaments.Looking back on the trip, the most memorable experience for me, one that I will never forget as long as I live, was the look of such appreciation and gratitude on the faces of residents as they tried to say