As I rolled into the parish parking lot, I saw this incredible line of volunteers and tables, trucks with supplies parked on the lawn. Running around directing traffic was my great friend, Pastor Fred, a Baptist minister (our old house mate in Africa) who helped organise a convoy of church relief from Alabama. They were an incredible God-send.

I also bumped into a woman helping out there who was in our St. Luke's emergency shelter. She was dumped off here after being evacuated from a New Orleans hospital with fresh staples in her stomach. We were able to get her some medical attention and eventually took her "home" to Slidell, where she's now living in an emergency trailer and distributing food and clothing to others in need.

There's tremendous confusion over the attempt to bring some zip codes back into New Orleans and now a storm brewing in the Gulf. The re-entry was suspended this afternoon. People aren't getting it through their heads that even if they get back into parts of New Orleans, there is no fuel, no water, no sewer or sanitation, no food and the City no longer has a health care/medical system.

The toxic sludge layering everything is 20 percent fuel and the rest human/animal remains, e-coli, and other toxins/bacteria. About 80 percent of the city is out from underwater, but there is grave concern about some of the levy areas. Any new water and we're back under again.

Last Friday we had an area clergy meeting with a trauma psychiatrist from New York who worked all through September 11 and the aftermath. He outlined the stages of trauma, describing accurately where we've been and where we find ourselves at this time. In reality, the hardest part is just now coming upon us.

After the initial shock and subsequent euphoria of surviving, people begin experiencing the various phases of grief. They're now recongising they've lost all. There are tremendous feelings of hurt, anger, frustration, denial, sadness, etc. And we're all completely physically and emotionally exhausted at this point.

The last thing I remember with any clarity is waking up at 3am the Saturday morning before the storm, buying emergency supplies, and working on an initial evacuation plan for the parish. It was late last week we became aware that our church, home and neighbourhood will ultimately be bulldozed.

Word has it that FEMA will designate for demolition any structure having standing high water for more than two weeks. I have no idea what we will do with our many neighbourhood elderly folks. They'll have to collect any remaining belongings that may have survived and make long term plans to live elsewhere.

So many of our people have no savings and no insurance. One of our great concerns is whether there will be an effort to ensure affordable housing after the recovery. This was a serious problem in New Orleans before Katrina. New Orleans Police officers, who are paid next to nothing, were required to live in Orleans Parish.

It was absolutely impossible for someone on that kind of salary, with a family, to afford a home in a remotely decent neigbhourhood. And what we don't need are more run down miserable housing projects.

The storm has clearly exposed the problem of poverty in our locale. The schools were atrocious, access to good medical care nearly impossible, the roads awful and the street violence chronic. An abused wife with her children showed up at the parish a few months back and we couldn't find a single residential programme to help people in crisis stabilise and get back on their feet.

All we had were (unsafe) night shelters. A homeless friend who attended our church repeatedly told us it was all about housing people at night and getting head counts for grant monies, but precious little if anything out there to actually help lift people lift themselves from poverty.

As for our parish, Annunciation is one of the hardest hit in the entire hurricane area. We're down to 10 families with whom there has been no contact since before the storm. A number are using the Internet; we've started our on-line Bible study. Plans -- baring another storm -- are to put up a temporary building on the present site by year's end.

We need to resume our ministry, outreach and regular worship schedule. Whatever we are able to put up will likely be home for several years as the church and neighbourhood rebuild. Earlier this year our congregation undertook a study of Rick Warren's 40 Days of Purpose. It was a tremendous experience.

At the end of our discernment, we took time out in prayer to seek where God was leading us. What was our purpose? The answer that came to all of us, as a community, was to wait. I was entirely startled thinking the study was going launch us in an entirely new direction. But we were told plainly to keep doing what we were doing -- pray, worship, study and serve -- and not take on anything new.

We're now seeing the Holy Spirit had something much broader in mind. No one is sure what this new expanded vision will entail but we're eager to return and participate in whatever God blesses in our City. We have been praying the Prayer of Jabez (above) and it appears to have been answered. Our territory is now much enlarged.

To help: We still need basic supplies, e.g. hygiene/sanitary items, underwear and socks. A special request coming in from Slidell is for pull-ups (diapers for toddlers) and toilet paper. If you are planning on sending a truck or volunteers, plus connect with Fr. Ernie Saik here at St. Luke's. He's the quarterback and we're trying to keep him as the focal coordinating point. His number here is 225-926-5343 or email frsaik@stlukesbr.org. Information on cash donations can be found at www.stlukesbr.org.

We are desperate for cash to help folks get stabilised and settled and especially for fuel.

We're using up tremendous resources each week that we don't have on gas to ferry around people and supplies. Church of the Annunciation now has a temporary Internet site up and running, which we're working on a little bit each day www.annunciationinexile.homestead.com. Please keep us in your prayers. Be assured of ours.

Many blessings,

jerry+ op

(P.S. Some folks have asked about the initials after my name: Order of Preachers. I'm a member of the Religious Order better known as the (Anglican) Dominicans).

--The Rev'd Jerry Kramer Church is rector of the Church of the Annunciation in New Orleans