Fixing greater pains first

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a five-part series on the efforts of Palm Harvest Church volunteers to help victims of Hurricane Katrina in Pascagoula, Miss.

The tears in Jeanne Sherman’s eyes when she walked through the door of her blue clapboard house in Pascagoula, Miss., made it all worth it for volunteer Don Peterson of Costa Mesa.

“Just seeing all those strangers working on my house got to me,” Sherman said, a young grandmother whose house was ravaged two years ago by Hurricane Katrina. “I cry more now than I ever did after the storm.”

Peterson has trouble moving his right arm after tearing his rotator cuff on a construction job earlier this year. Doctors say he will need surgery, but Peterson said he could not cancel his trip to Pascagoula because there are still homes that need drywall, still people waiting to return to their homes.

“I knew the surgery would be after the trip,” Peterson said. “I didn’t want to be here with my arm in a sling.”

Peterson tries not to use his right arm, as his wife will be furious with him, he says, but it’s hard when there are people in need. He tries to direct and lead, calmly explaining how to plaster a wall to church volunteers, many of whom have never been on a job site before. But he can’t resist picking up a trowel for long, and there are those 50-pound tubs of plaster that need to be unloaded from the trunk of a car.

“But your arm, Don,” another volunteer says. He dismisses them with a wave while unloading the tubs.

His wife wouldn’t let him take any of his tools to Pascagoula this year, fearful he could further injure his arm.

“She’s supportive, we talked and decided the mission was the most important thing,” Peterson said. “But she doesn’t want me to get hurt.”

Peterson said he believes God wanted him to come to Pascagoula this year, and that you can’t argue with divine marching orders. Self-employed in the construction business, he hopes to find an insurance provider that will pay for his operation, but many orthopedic surgeons accept only patients who have group health insurance.

“God will find a way,” he said.

Peterson has trained countless volunteers to hang drywall in homes torn apart by Katrina over the past two years. His father taught him the skill when he was in grade school, and they worked together on 4-foot stilts by the time he was 11.

Peterson has led a team of volunteers for the past two days to hang drywall and repair the plumbing and electrical wiring in Sherman’s home. A nurse at an adult care center, Sherman has lived in a FEMA trailer and at the houses of family and friends since Katrina left 7 feet of Gulf water in her house and 6 inches of sludge on the floors.

The insurance company cut Sherman a $13,000 check for her house and everything inside. All the money went to her mortgage company. She didn’t have flood insurance. “If you looked at it from the outside, it looked like nothing happened,” Sherman said. “But it was a mess inside. The only thing you could salvage was glass. It was the only thing the water and mud didn’t ruin.”

Sherman’s pastor, Don Edeker of New Horizon Ministries in Moss Point, Miss., said 20 families from his congregation lost everything in the storm.

The ministry has helped repair about 350 homes since Katrina, including Sherman’s. The program, which helps coordinate repairs with donated supplies, is dependent on the labor of volunteers like Peterson, Edeker said.

“For some people, this is the only help they get,” Edeker said. “After seeing people give of themselves like this, I have more confidence in people than ever before.”

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.