I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
— Philippians 4:13
NEW ORLEANS — It's a short Bible verse, inscribed onto a wooden bunk bed in one of the girls' dorm rooms at a New Orleans Baptist church.
Andie S. likely scrawled it onto the wood long before this group of girls entered the room that serves as a temporary home for hurricane relief workers. They might not have noticed it Sunday as they lugged suitcases and blankets into the small room.
But that simple message just might describe them.
For the next week, these students from Traverse City Christian School will replace their semester exams with a different kind of test — one that will require them to be prepared physically, mentally and spiritually.
The 123 students in grades seven to 12, and several dozen parent volunteers, will spend the week rebuilding parts of Chalmette, La., a town that has yet to recover from Hurricane Katrina. The students' work is part of a schoolwide mission trip, the second of its kind in school history.
School members went to Moss Point, Miss., in early 2006.
"I think it will draw me closer to Christ, just being out here," said Matt Galla, 13, a seventh grader visiting the region for the first time. "A lot of the houses were really torn up."
Chalmette, an unincorporated town in neighboring St. Bernard Parish, is about seven miles from downtown New Orleans and east of the city's devastated Ninth Ward. The parish as a whole had nearly 67,000 people prior to the August 2005 storm, according to its tourism director. About 25,000 have returned.
The group is staying at Oak Park Baptist Church across the Mississippi River from Chalmette, a church that converted former meeting rooms into dormitories for visiting workers. The students' main project this time will be to help rebuild the First Baptist Church of Chalmette.
Students will be divided into teams of at least eight people, Principal Patrick Rode said, and will be assigned specific tasks. The work will be appropriate for each age group, he said.
As the group's buses rolled through New Orleans on Sunday, the end of a roughly 22-hour trip, freshmen and sophomores aboard one of them excitedly talked as they gazed out at the bustling city. But the conversation became noticeably quieter when homes, clearly affected by Katrina, came into view.
On some streets, visible from the city's two main expressways, a number of trailers were parked in driveways. Telltale markings of search-and-rescue missions still could be seen on a few homes, at once both real and unbelievable.
"It was kind of different seeing it in the city," said freshman Meagan Van Til, 14, who made her second school trip to the Gulf Coast. "But a lot of the damage was still the same."
For those who had gone before, the effect might not have been as jarring as it was the first time around. But others, making the trip for the first time, didn't know what to expect.
"That used to be someone's home, and they lost everything in the storm," seventh grader Jacob Sollose, 13, said. "It was sad."
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