Utah's faith communities are working with national religious and secular organizations to ship relief supplies, collect funding, organize feeding and cleanup teams and to pray for the tens of thousands of people devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, LDS officials on the ground in the Southeast still hope to account for some of their missing members.

Fourteen semitrailer truck loads of ready-to-eat food, water, sleeping bags and tents have left Salt Lake City from the Bishop's Storehouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some of them as early as last Sunday. Additional containers were being loaded Wednesday afternoon for immediate shipment.

Kevin Nield, director of Bishops' Storehouse Services, told reporters that areas of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi appear to be hardest hit, and the supplies being shipped there are in addition to food, water and other items that were pre-positioned at the church's storehouses around the region

LDS Church spokesman Dale Bills said several LDS church buildings, including those in Alexandria, La., as well as Jackson and Hattiesburg, Miss., are being used as emergency shelters to house those displaced by the storms, and they will also serve as distribution points for LDS relief supplies.

LDS missionaries were evacuated from the areas hit by the storm last weekend, and all are accounted for, he said.

Bennie O. Lilly, area welfare manager for the LDS Church's North American Southeast Area, told the Deseret Morning News via satellite phone from the church's storehouse in Slidell, La., which is serving as the primary distribution point for relief supplies. He said that in southern Louisiana and Mississippi the devastation is so widespread that local church leaders have been unable to account for all of their members there.

From 5,000 to 10,000 Latter-day Saints live in the affected areas, and with communication systems down, accounting for everyone is difficult, he said.

Lilly said local church leaders are responding to the needs of their congregations as well as can be expected at this point, but many face major challenges in dealing with their personal losses and circumstances. For example, President Barry Griggs of the Gulfport, Miss., stake reported in his first contact with regional leaders that his home had been destroyed.

"He was headed in his car toward North Carolina to drop off his wife," who has some health problems and needed to be evacuated. "Then he'll turn around and come back to the devastation of his own situation, in addition to trying to meet the needs of members in that area. When your home is destroyed, there's just so much you can do."

Communications in the area at this point are tenuous at best, Lillie said, illustrated by the fact that his satellite phone lost contact five different times during a 10-minute conversation with the newspaper. Still, he is grateful to have the equipment, which has also been used by local police and fire agencies in the immediate area. With spotty phone communication, "we just have to capture the information coming and going as fast as we can before we lose the signal."