WITNESS: "Hurricane Katrina was big, but God is bigger"

Jon Hurdle has been reporting for Reuters from Philadelphia since 2004. A native of England, he has been a print journalist for 25 years. In the following story he recounts his experiences as a volunteer helping to rebuild after the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina 2-1/2 years ago.

By Jon Hurdle

OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi (Reuters) - At 6 a.m., the lights come on at Camp Victor, a base run by the Lutheran Church for volunteers helping with recovery efforts 2-1/2 years after Hurricane Katrina slammed into Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

I climb out of my wooden bunk and stand in the breakfast line with about 100 other volunteers from around the country.

We eat oatmeal or pancakes, fuel for a long day's labor on the thousands of homes that are still in need of repair long after one of the worst natural disasters in the United States.

My fellow campers are mostly middle-aged men from Lutheran churches in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa who have taken a week off work or away from retirement to cut lumber, paint walls or clear debris from the homes that were badly damaged or destroyed in the August 29, 2005 hurricane. The storm killed more than 1,400 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Some come with construction experience; others sweep floors or cook food; all are motivated by the goodwill that has brought more than 11,000 volunteers to the camp since the storm hit the Gulf Coast and collapsed the levees protecting nearby New Orleans from the sea.

The Lutheran Disaster Relief camp can take as many as 220 volunteers at a time. It is in a former garment factory in Ocean Springs, a pretty coastal town that seems to have been spared the worst of the storm.

I went as a Quaker -- albeit an aspiring one -- rather than as a journalist, and hoped the humanitarian work would be a rewarding experience for me as well as a practical help.