CHURCH MEMBERS AID HURRICANE VICTIMS

Barbara Popp spent the long Labor Day weekend laboring in Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Andrew.

So did her husband, John, along with another couple, Rocky and Becky Tallent of Millersville, and Delmar Eggimann of Gordonville.

All are members of the First Baptist Church in Jackson.

They spent Saturday and Sunday handing out food and doing cleanup work at a Baptist mission church in Dulac, a small, shrimp-fishing town in the Louisiana bayous southwest of New Orleans.

They arrived back home late Monday night.

The trip was hastily organized, with relief supplies being rounded up Friday. The church contributed some money to buy supplies and other items were donated by area merchants.

Barbara Popp said the relief effort was coordinated through the assistance of the Missouri Baptist disaster relief office in Jefferson City.

Popp said the five left about 7:30 p.m. Friday, bound for Houma, La. "We left as soon as everyone was finished with work and school," she said.

John Popp operates a warehouse company in Jackson, while Rocky and Becky Tallent are students at Southeast Missouri State University. Rocky Tallent also works on the family farm in Bollinger County. Eggimann operates an auto body shop in Gordonville.

The Popps drove down in their pickup truck loaded with relief supplies. The Tallents and Eggimann made the 13-hour trip in the Tallents' van, which was also stocked with emergency supplies.

The relief supplies included 10 cases of apples from a Jackson orchard, mops, brooms, shovels, toothbrushes, tooth paste, bars of soap, cases of bleach, disposable diapers, baby wipes, and women's hygiene products.

Popp said the apples were in great demand along with all types of fresh fruit. "That was one of the best things we took," she said.

Bleach was also a hot commodity. "Everything stinks and has that gumbo mud on it, and so they are having to disinfect everything, she said.

"We took quite a bit of bleach. That went like hot cakes," recalled Popp.

The five arrived around 8:30 a.m. Saturday at the First Baptist Church in Houma, a city of about 100,000.

The church served as home for the five volunteers, along with about 150 other Baptist volunteers from several states. "Folks came from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee," said Popp. Many of the volunteers were college students.

"Houma didn't have much damage, just tree damage," she said.

But it was a different story in the nearby bayou town of Dulac where the relief effort was concentrated. Homes, little more than shacks in many cases, were heavily damaged from flooding. In many cases, she said, "the water came in the front door and out the back.

"Trailers were dislodged and twisted," she said. "Everywhere there were stacks of wet carpets, mattresses, refrigerators just stuff that was soaked. It was trashed.

"There were lots of shrimp boats that had been totally destroyed," she said. "We saw lots of roofs just completely taken off."

Becky Tallent said: "The people we worked with were mostly poorer than dirt. We were down in swampland; I mean the mosquitoes were bigger than Missouri bats."

She said many of the houses or shacks in Dulac were built on concrete-block foundations.

"They were just cutting holes in the middle of their floors and scooping all the mud down the holes to get it out of their houses," said Tallent.

Ditches were filled with sewage and bayou water. The stench was awful, said Tallent.

"It was unbelievable and the farther down we went, the worse it got," she said.

The hurricane left in its wake a contaminated bayou, crippling the shrimp fishing industry, Tallent and Popp said.

"It could take a year to harvest the shrimp again. Their whole livelihood is shrimping," said Tallent.

The area is home to Cajuns and Indians, she said.

Eggimann said it will take a long time for the bayou areas of southern Louisiana to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Andrew.

"I think the flooding has done the most damage," he said. "The sad part is they were so poor to start with."

Despite the devastation, residents of the Dulac area still managed to offer a smile, said Eggimann.

He recalled that one 59-year-old man at the mission church said it was the fourth time that he had "lost everything" due to storms and hurricanes.

The five volunteers helped with relief efforts at the Grand Caillou Baptist mission church.

Popp said they helped organize the distribution of food to needy residents. "When we got there, they had to close the gate because they did not have it organized," she said.

Popp and Becky Tallent help manage an emergency food pantry at the First Baptist Church in Jackson.

As a result, Popp and Tallent were able to use their expertise in helping to organize the distribution of food to hurricane victims in Dulac.

The food was soon bagged and boxed and the distribution of food resumed, said Popp.

While there, Popp said she and her husband were able to contact friends who live on a rice farm southwest of Houma. "We had been concerned about them. We were able to finally reach them on the phone."

Popp, Tallent and Eggimann said they don't think of their efforts as heroic.

"I don't think we are heroes or anything like that," said Tallent. "We are just normal everyday people who felt God's calling."

Eggimann believes charitable work is part of being a Christian. "I felt like the Lord said, `You need to go,' so I went."

Popp said, "I think it's really putting Christianity into more action than talk."