Many in the Gulf Coast area are looking to God as they continue to cope with physical and emotional devastation since Katrina.

The Herron Family
Al New, left, reads a Scripture with John Broussard, foster child of Gordon and June Herron, of Kiln, Miss. Gordon attended Franklin Graham’s Celebration of Hope in New Orleans in March, and Christ transformed his heart. He says that life hasn’t been the same and that a love for God’s Word has come over him. “When I opened that Book, everything fell into place,” he says. Gordon admits that he is not educated, but he has been teaching himself how to read the Bible, which he now reads out loud to his household, including his wife and their adopted and foster children, as they prepare for their day. Still in a single-wide trailer after their home was destroyed in Katrina, Gordon says he has good days and bad days: “[God] ain’t given me nothing I can’t handle. Life’s not a bed of roses. But His life wasn’t a bed a roses. Look at what He did for us. That’s the way I look at it.”

Taylar Couture
Rhonda Couture needed someone to talk to her 7-year-old daughter, Taylar. Unexpected deaths in the family–as well as Katrina’s destruction of their home and life–had undone the young girl. “She was having a lot of problems and she couldn’t talk to me,” Rhonda said. “One evening I went to take a shower and Taylar said, ‘I’m outta here.’ She packed her backpack and out the door she went. I had to jump out of the shower and grab her. She told me, ‘Nobody should have to live in total destruction, and I’m not going to do it.’ Nightly we would go through [a similar] ritual.” Rhonda tried to connect her daughter with a school counselor, but after meeting chaplain Toni New, Taylar only wanted to talk to her. Below, New frolics with Taylar before she prays: “God, thank You for Taylar and that You have allowed us to be a part of her life. I know You are going to get her through this. Help her, heal her, give her a future and a hope …”

Max Latham
Residents in lower Plaquemines Parish, some 60 miles south of New Orleans, live at the end of Highway 23, the end of Louisiana, the end of the Mississippi River. And when Katrina’s gales first made landfall, it felt like the end of the world. Like thousands of others in the parish, Max Latham, pastor of Miracle Assembly of God, in Buras, was left with a cement slab where his family’s home had been. The crosses on his property, which remained standing after Katrina, have been a community landmark since 1983. And since 2000, every June 1–the official beginning of hurricane season–people have come from miles around to meet below the crosses to pray for God’s protection. Latham recalls a reporter who came to the 2005 service. “What are you going to do if a hurricane hits?” the reporter asked. “We’ll know one thing,” Latham told him, “it won’t be because we haven’t prayed.” Nearly a year after Katrina, Latham says he would go through it all again. Hundreds of volunteers from 17 states, who were invited to use Latham’s expansive property as a base camp, have upheld the pastor and other Plaquemines Parish families and churches with their labor, gifts, prayers and tears. “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,” Latham recites from Hebrews 12:2 (KJV). “I lost a few things. … In the beginning we wouldn’t think we would go through it again, but if we could see from the Lord’s perspective …” Latham’s voice trails off. “What I have lost–it’s so minor compared to what we gained.”