Editor’s Note: Yesterday I started a multi-part series based on my visit to New Orleans last month to see rebuilding efforts more than five years after Hurricane Katrina. I profiled St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Pacifica, CA., which sends a work group down every winter to help rebuilding efforts through a group called Project Homecoming. Today I continue the profile, highlighting how by reaching out to New Orleans, church members are reaching out to new friends in their own local area.

NEW ORLEANS – When members of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Pacifica, CA., started heading to the Gulf Coast every winter to help rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Katrina, they were so passionate about their visits, that passion became infectious.

Subcontractor Paul Wayne handles a door that Pastoral Associate Ellen Rankin, of Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, is about to paint.

Five years after the annual trips started, the work groups that go down include friends, family, people from other churches and faiths – even people who don’t go to church. And even those who can’t come with the work groups participate by either donating to the cause, or getting involved in other charities in the San Francisco Bay Area where they are located.

“It’s nice St. Andrew collects people and brings them along,” said Ann Mason on last month’s trip. She attends the Unitarian Universalists Church in San Mateo. After talking up the New Orleans trips at her own church, the congregation is sending a youth group to work here in June.

Pacfica drywall subcontractor Paul Wayne has come back multiple times after hearing about the trips from a St. Andrew member at a party. He’s Jewish, but he said it makes no matter. He enjoys working with his St. Andrew friends year after year.

Wayne is one of many Bay Area contractors who now spend their annual vacations with the St. Andrew church group. He and another contractor on last month’s trip, Mark Huff, who attends Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, said they recognized on their first visits how needed skilled workers were in New Orleans.

In addition to having collected a loyal band of contractors, the church group has found friends and co-workers who can’t go on the trips, but gladly donate money to make the annual trips a reality, or to directly help out those in need in New Orleans.

In fact, two elementary school teachers who go on the trips during winter break raise money from their students at Peninsula schools.

Diane Goldman said she started collecting “Change for Change” from her school in Menlo Park. This year students and parents donated $700; Goldman chipped in some to purchase an $850 Home Depot card that she brought with her to give away to a family helped by Project Homecoming.

Fifth grade teacher Gillian Parkhurst from Menlo Park took a cue from Goldman and did her own spare change drive with students. She found a fifth grade class in New Orleans that her students became pen pals with, and have even spoken with on Skype. She was able to visit the New Orleans pen pals during the February work trip.

Reaching out and becoming more connected to the people of New Orleans has inspired the St. Andrew congregation to become more connected to its own community along the way, church members said.

One of the trip organizers, Half Moon Bay resident Berni Schuhmann, said she believes St. Andrew is more of a “doing church” in the Pacifica area since the trips started. She and fellow trip leader Lisa Angelot said church members who can’t make the annual trek are getting involved in local efforts such as Rebuilding Together and Relay for Life.

“It’s been really good for our church…this mission stuff, it just seems to open the door to more,” said Angelot.

Tomorrow: Annual New Orleans work trips are a family affair.

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