Before last fall, David Baldwin and his wife, Patty, had been trying to unload their motor home for a couple years.

But that was before last Aug. 29 and Hurricane Katrina and the couple’s subsequent move to Pearlington, Miss., to help restore an obliterated Baptist church and coordinate First Baptist Church of Vicksburg’s relief efforts in the area. For nine months, since Thanksgiving, the RV has been home to the couple as they work to get First Baptist of Pearlington back on its feet and functioning as an outreach center for the still-devastated community.

&#8220The Lord had other things in mind for that motor home,” Baldwin said.

A year after the killer storm wreaked havoc across more than 100 miles of coastline in three states, the Baldwins are the most permanent of First Baptist’s presence in devastated areas. And First Baptist is only one of dozens of churches, charities and organizations in Vicksburg and Warren County still volunteering time and money to the still-slow rebuilding effort.

Many churches are sending teams down monthly for a week of work at a time. First Baptist has sent a team to Pearlington, its &#8220adopted community,” to work with the Baldwins for one week every month through November. Duties range from counselor to construction worker.

&#8220The first priority is trying to get the church functional,” Dave Baldwin said. &#8220We’re trying to rebuild houses, trying to get people who still have houses back into a livable condition, where they have electricity, water and can move back into them.”

Bowmar Baptist Church is another Vicksburg congregation that’s pledged to send delegates to Waveland, ground zero for the storm in Mississippi, for one week every month for a year beginning last Thanksgiving. Its roughly 35-member relief team is headquartered in a large tent with two shower stalls on the former site of Little Zion Baptist Church, where a couple from Gateway Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., sold its house there and moved to the Coast to establish Pathfinders Mission. The group, which sent another 35-member team down this weekend, takes work orders for everything from drywalling houses to assembling portable storage units.

&#8220It’s going in and mudding out houses and right now, helping people get a semblance of order in their lives,” said Debbie McDermitt, who has helped coordinate Bowmar’s effort along with her husband, Jimmy, and other members of the church. &#8220It’s been a year now and it’s not much progress at all. It’s hard to describe…there’s a lot of depression, a lot of hopelessness. You kind of wake up and you’re in the middle of a garbage dump.”

That &#8220dump,” which in some places still has largely bare trees strewn with the remains of houses, insulation, signs and anything else swept in by the unstoppable winds and storm surge, stretches over enough land to occupy thousands of workers from around the nation and the world, and to make coordination outside of government or a many-armed relief organization a chore.

&#8220We don’t work for anybody,” said Baldwin, the motor home traveler. &#8220We tried to work through local people, but they were so busy, and there was nowhere to stay in Pearlington.”

In weeks immediately after the storm, a half-dozen local churches organized by the United Way of West Central Mississippi took turns volunteering to serve food at Crawford Street United Methodist Church. In the immediate aftermath, when Vicksburg itself was reeling from property and structure damage, loss of power and near-hysteria over gasoline supplies, the Vicksburg Convention Center became the hub for up to 1,100 people.

When it closed Sept. 23, the convention center had incurred $190,000 in costs housing several hundred evacuees.

First Presbyterian donated more than $1 million worth of generators, bottled water, chain saws, extension cords, box fans, ice chests, clothes and other equipment on more than a dozen trips to different areas of the Coast.

No local organization has kept track of everyone who came through in the days and weeks following the hurricane, but many remained in and around Vicksburg, some well after the convention center and church shelters closed their doors – and still remain, in neighborhoods, in schools, working (or looking for work) and making their way in a new community.

The United Way of West Central Mississippi still hears from evacuees it served after the storm, most from New Orleans, said Director Barbara Tolliver, and is still helping people as far away as Yazoo City.

&#8220We had a call from Claiborne County yesterday,” Tolliver said last week. &#8220Things happen in their lives and they remember the United Way helped. …Sometimes we find out they want to call because we were the friendly faces that greeted them initially and they wanted to call to find out where to go, what assistance is available to them, to find what kind of help they need.”

The United Way is also still paying for counseling for some evacuees, Tolliver said, which remains a major focus of its Vicksburg therapy branch, Grace Christian Counseling Services.

&#8220There’s something about helping people that is awesome. It really is,” Baldwin said. &#8220People come down once, and they always want to come back.”