Rebuild Lakeshore’s Kitchen

I posted pictures of our destroyed camp kitchen after Gustav. Many of you have called and emailed about reconstructing a more permanent kitchen. I’m listening; and that’s exactly what we plan to do. I created a Facebook cause, “Rebuild Lakeshore’s Kitchen” where we can accept online donations and spread the word for that purpose. I also emailed a letter out to our Rebuild Lakeshore google group. In case you have not added your email address to our list, I’ll copy the letter below:

Dear friends of Lakeshore,

For the past three years you have faithfully, generously, and selflessly come to the assistance of those in our community as we rebuild in the catastrophic wake of Hurricane Katrina. By God’s grace you have assisted in making huge strides toward recovery. With your help we have been a part of rehabbing a few hundred homes. In the last couple of weeks we began constructing our 31st house from the ground up. The distribution center has ministered to literally thousands of residence with necessary food, clothing, and household items as locals put their lives back together. Roughly 450 churches have partnered with us in mission trips to our area and we can not thank God enough for your contribution to the efforts. While we have seen so much progress, we see a long road ahead with several thousand residence still living in temporary housing. We plan to continue the Rebuild Lakeshore efforts for the for seeable future.

The three year anniversary of Katrina had us evacuating the gulf coast once again. In the providence of God, Hurricane Gustav left little damage to our area compared to Katrina’s monster foot print. All the homes that volunteers have constructed held up without damage, however many campers, trailers and cottages took on water.

On our church property, the metal church building and the office escaped unscathed by Gustav. Even most of our small sheds held up under the strong winds. The big white storage tent did not fair as well and we lost some of our building supplies. A few trees fell and limbs littered the property. The camp kitchen suffered the most damage. In our evacuation efforts we were able to pull most of the kitchen equipment out and bring it to higher ground, however the dining hall structure completely collapsed. This loss leaves us nowhere to feed the flood of volunteers needed to continue the recovery efforts.

We need to reconstruct a kitchen facility as soon as possible. Our post-katrina Kitchen went up out of necessity without regard to long term durability. This time we want to build a more stable structure that can survive strong winds and light flooding. We already have plans on the drawing board, but we need your help to fund this special project. We have set up a Facebook cause, “Rebuild Lakeshore’s Kitchen,” where we can accept online donations. If you prefer to use traditional mail, make checks payable to “Lakeshore Baptist Church” with “Camp Kitchen” in the memo line. Mail to: Lakeshore Baptist Church PO Box 293 Lakeshore MS 39558. Your tax deductible donations will enable us to host mission teams and minister the love of Christ to our community for years to come. We can not thank you enough.

by grace alone,

Pastor Don A. Elbourne Jr.
Lakeshore Baptist Church