Four days after a devastating hurricane slammed into the Southern gulf coast of the United States, more than 100 students, faculty, and staff from Andrews University, a Seventh-day Adventist institution in Berrien Springs, Michigan, arrived in the area to help provide disaster relief.

The convoy, which included two busses, a van, and a truck full of supplies, arrived at Bass Memorial Academy,  an Adventist boarding school, just outside Purvis, Mississippi, approximately 50 miles from the gulf coast, on Friday, Sept. 2.

Despite the extensive media coverage devoted to the hurricane, members of the Andrews relief team said they were unprepared for the total devastation.

“I assumed you’d have to get within 50 miles of New Orleans for it to be that bad. There were road signs, wires, and telephone poles just lying every which way. You could see rows of 50 trees just snapped off,” Andrews vice president for Student Services, Frances Faehner, recalled.

The Andrews workers teamed up with Adventist Communities That Serve (ACTS), a volunteer disaster response team from Florida in charge of food distribution centers at Bass Memorial Academy and in nearby Purvis. Workers in the two kitchens served approximately 5,000 meals per day to a community desperate for food. Youth ministry student Andrew Moreno found himself thrown into the role of head cook in the Bass academy kitchen, where he spent nearly three straight days “just cooking, all day.

“We were always scrounging for food, but I was amazed at how everything kept multiplying itself,” Moreno recalled. “I kept saying ‘we’re going to run out of this,’ but whenever we needed something, a [truck] would show up with more.”

Along with community assistance, the Andrews volunteers worked to help Bass Memorial recover from the severe damage suffered in Katrina’s onslaught. Three buildings at Bass Memorial Academy sustained major roof damage during the hurricane, and the campus was littered with debris.

The team joined forces with 40 students from Southern Adventist University, who had arrived on campus a few hours earlier, clearing debris and removing carpet, tiles, and insulation.

Andrews students also joined ACTS volunteers at a makeshift distribution hub on the Bass Academy campus where cars lined up for more than a mile to spend the day waiting in the heat for much-needed supplies.

“People would drive through with their trunks open, and we would literally stuff them full of supplies,” says Erica Slikkers, senior public relations major.

“Anyone we helped was so grateful—people were crying all the time. It was a huge blend of people, not only from poverty situations, but [also] driving nice cars. All of a sudden they didn’t have anything—their world was turned upside down,” she added.

Hurricane victims weren’t the only ones touched by the efforts of the students. Pastor Glenn Russell, associate professor of religion and one of the project coordinators, said, “To me the most inspiring thing was to see students meeting real needs and the incredible job they did—their energy, their skills, and their commitment was inspiring to me as a teacher.”

Another Adventist college is also lending a hand by serving as a central hub for collecting disaster relief supplies for Adventist Community Services centers in North America. Columbia Union College, located in the Washington D.C., area had dozens of students helping to collect and sort hurricane relief supplies over the Labor Day weekend.

Both Andrews University and Columbia Union College are offering a year of free tuition to Adventist students who were enrolled at a university or college whose operation was affected by the hurricane.