by TERRY TRAHAN, JR.

Rod and Beulah Rodrigue walk into Camp Good Earth’s fellowship hall with a smile that speaks a thousand words. To them, the hall is more than a building where volunteers gather to share a meal as village managers plan the week’s detailed agenda. The main room’s colorful walls represent the memories shared among over 3,000 volunteers who have migrated to the Houma area to help locals get back on their feet following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Camp Good Earth sits on 6 1/2 acres of property owned by the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the United States of America, Lodge 1193, in Houma. As exalted ruler of the lodge, Rod proposed to use the tract of land along Coteau Road to support the community’s rebuilding efforts after the hurricanes crippled the bayou region. Talks with the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to produce a plan on how to best use the property. When the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance got the call, the program showed interest and welcomed the idea.

“We met them out here, and they fell in love with it,” Rod says.

The land had no existing roads or structures, and there was no shortage of water on the ground.

“We had no conveniences out here,” Beulah says, walking past a puddle in the wake of an afternoon downpour. “It was nothing but water.”

PDA saw the property’s potential as a volunteer village and decided to establish Camp Good Earth, named in honor of Terrebonne Parish. According to PDA’s Web site, “Volunteer villages provide a predictable, safe and sanitary environment for volunteer groups where they can live in community while serving others.”

In 2006, the Elks and PDA reached an agreement by which PDA would use the land as ground zero for the operation, erecting structures to support the essential living needs of volunteers, and the Elks would retain all improvements to the property at the completion of the project.

To house the volunteers, the camp brought in 8-by-10 pods made
of corrugated plastic that sit atop wooden frames. The white-and-blue
interpretation of the A-frame tent has just enough space for three cots, two air ducts and a corded light.

“When they come in, they’re like an accordion,” Beulah says. “They’re flat and they open them up.”

In 2008, Hurricane Gustav blew the pods into the surrounding trees, requiring volunteers to rebuild the camp. The village is now using its third supply of the portable houses.

“They can withstand supposedly up to 70 mph winds,” says Joan Otto Ott, a former village manager from Michigan. But she says she wouldn’t want to risk staying in the pods under those conditions.

She wouldn’t have to, and neither would the volunteers.

Village managers stay in travel trailers parked behind the 35 pods. And there’s plenty room in the fellowship hall, built as a shelter reinforced
with steel brackets to withstand 150 mph winds. The $300,000 building at the camp’s entrance features restrooms, recreational space and a commercial kitchen. Each volunteer pays $20 per day for food and lodging, but donations and the PDA through its One Great Hour of Sharing program cover most of the expenses. In the hall, refrigerators and freezers remain stocked with food supplied by volunteers who had already visited the camp. If something is needed in the hall, volunteers go to town and purchase supplies for future use by visiting teams.

“They don’t want anything,” Beulah says. “Most of the groups go on mission trips to Guatemala and Nicaragua. Over the last five years, they’ve given it to us.”

Camp Good Earth has changed a lot in the five years since students from Austin College first traveled to Terrebonne Parish to be the camp’s inaugural residents. A rock driveway now leads to the fellowship hall and pods. A boardwalk connects the network of plastic shelters and leads to showers, restrooms and a recreational pavilion. A shed and semitrailer store tools needed at worksites. Four birdhouses designed to attract purple martins stand tall, overlooking the camp’s progress.

The fellowship hall remains the largest improvement to the property. Dick Glassey of St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Ballwin, Mo., supervised the hall’s construction, along with Curtis Marcello, a local contractor who donated his service to the project.

Inside, the volunteers meet to pray, eat and discuss agendas. They are surrounded by walls of T-shirts designed to remind them of those who served before them. In keeping with tradition, each team that works at Camp Good Earth leaves behind a colorful T-shirt decorated with the volunteers’ names surrounding the name of the team’s hometown or church.

“We have T-shirts in storage because we ran out of space,” says Bay Golfin, a work-site manager from Connecticut who completed her assignment at Camp Good Earth in May. She initially joined PDA in 2008 when offered a free trip to volunteer at Camp Olive Tree in New Orleans following finals week at the University of Maryland.

While at Camp Good Earth, both Bay and Joan worked to rebuild a woman’s house that left her family in “unacceptable” conditions following a one-two punch from hurricanes in 2008.

“Gustav and Ike had taken a big toll on her house,” Bay says about the Raceland property inhabited by Ms. Sonia. “Some of the volunteers had put 60 hours into that house.”

PDA crews stripped the house to the ground and are in the process of rebuilding the structure. In other houses around the bayou region, vinyl siding has been replaced, roofs have been repaired, new windows and doors have been installed, drywall has been hung, wheelchair ramps have been constructed, among countless other blessings the teams have bestowed upon locals over the past five years.

“I’ve seen [volunteers] come in with thousands of dollars. If someone needs a washing machine, they’ll buy it for them,” Beulah says. “It was hard in the beginning for our people to accept them. It’s the first time we’ve had people coming to help. It’s both sides giving. I knew it would be good.”

Local churches have been quick to offer assistance to the village as well. In addition to the teams that work on rebuilding projects in the community, the churches provide meals to volunteers from all over the country. The First Presbyterian Church of Bayou Blue cooks dinner every Wednesday, and the First United Methodist Church of Houma invites the volunteers to a warm meal on the first Monday of every month.

“I love the people here,” Joan says. “They opened their arms to me and made me feel like family.” Rod points to Cajun hospitality as another incentive for volunteers wanting to travel to Camp Good Earth from cities as far away as Eureka, Calif.

“They love to come to the area because a lot of times they go down the bayou and people fix them boiled crabs, gumbo and jambalaya,” he says. “They really enjoy that.”

Rod and Beulah say Camp Good Earth plans to end its mission at the end of the year. The Elks originally agreed to a 3-year partnership with PDA and later extended the agreement to five years. The village is not alone in closing. Other PDA camps throughout Louisiana and Mississippi have met the same fate.

“The funding is way down, which is why the villages are closing,” Joan says. “It has nothing to do with the work that needs to be done.”

For now, a new team of volunteers prepares to move in to finish Ms. Sonia’s house and tackle new challenges ahead. After the day’s work ends and dishes are put away inside the fellowship hall, the volunteers step out into the humid air to watch the bayou sun fade into the heavy horizon. It’s a scene they seldom experience in their big cities—a spiritual scene that makes saying goodbye a little harder.

“Our volunteers are called by God to come and do His work,” Joan says. “This is their Houma away from home for a week. They’ll go home and tell great stories and want to go back.” PoV