1670 Old Spanish Trail is a one-floor commercial building, simply sitting on a concrete slab at one of the main drags of Slidell that supposedly got hit the hardest during the storm of 2005, infamous Katrina, sitting in three to four feet of water, but remaining structurally undamaged. The building is owned by a Gerald C. Clark, a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Slidell, the congregation that is hosting the volunteers of PCO (Presbyterian Community Outreach). Gerald fell ill and so the restoration of the building was put on hold. For two and a half years, nothing moved, except the lower sheets of the walls were ripped out, the floors stripped, the front store, a Mardi Gras paraphernalia joint, abandoned, but Gerald's C.P.A. business in the back part was and is carried on by Kathy, one of his employees and a relative, a woman in her mid-forties, blond hair, mother of three, not unattractive, working as an accountant. February is her busy season in this desolate and depressed joint, carrying on, marching on, more in remote control to shut out the decrepit circumstances of her workplace. We arrive on Monday morning and start working in the deserted front store. The material is provided by the owner. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance provides us. We do some demolition, including the bathroom, bring down the remaining fluorescent lamps, scrape the popcorn from the ceiling, start putting up drywall to the ceiling, fix the outside wall, some minor carpentry, hanging sheetrock, do the mudding, and will probably finish up the end of the week with sanding the walls. All day we hear Kathy's telephone ring, clients come and wait in the reception area, an increasingly dusty table with sad chairs standing around, some Christmas decoration still sitting at the foot of a wall at the side, the studs somewhat disguised by a flimsy plastic plane, tacked with pins to hold up, meant to separate the rooms from each other and the office area in the back from the store area in the front of this building. Kathy just goes about her business, answers the calls, talks to the clients, hands out documents, and just does her job. But in those rare moments she shares with us, I see a woman who is slowly filled with an abundant joy, while we are there. It is not a joy that makes her jump up and down, that would make her sing or laugh out loud. It is a silent joy, a joy of relief, a joy by redemption, that, finally, after two and half years sitting in this s---pit, there is reasonable cause to believe, that she will not for so much longer be forced to see the marks of crap Katrina left behind, for her, to haunt and torture her, day in and day out, every time she lifts her head from her work. A silent joy, because she has now reasonable cause to believe that she will not for too much longer be forced to shut out her immediate environment in order to function, in order to work, in order to live. She has hope and is glad to believe that her sadness will find an end?not too soon, but it is already out there, coming closer and will come to 1670 Old Spanish Trail, too. Kathy joins in our beginning and closing prayers, and we can see that she gets clogged up. So are we. LORD, have mercy. Amen.