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."

A bishop from the church's Picayune, Miss., area was at the storehouse with Lillie to pick up a load of relief supplies for the members of his congregation, but phone service was lost before he was able to relay information to the newspaper about conditions in his area. Other faith groups are also involved in a variety of ways.

Wade Gaylor, disaster relief director for the Southern Baptist Utah-Idaho Convention, said his organization is coordinating with the national Southern Baptist Convention to help provide equipment and manpower. Two trucks have already been flown from Salt Lake City to Shreveport, La., one of them to be used by the Southern Baptist Convention's national relief director to assess damage and direct relief efforts.

A local couple has been dispatched with the other truck to work in the convention's disaster center in Alpharetta, Ga., for about a week to help coordinate disaster response.

Nationally, the Red Cross has asked Southern Baptists to help prepare 500,000 meals per day for the next 90 days, Gaylor said. "We have an agreement with the national Red Cross — they provide us with the food, we prepare it and they serve it. Southern Baptists actually cook about 90 percent of the food the Red Cross serves."

As part of that effort, local feeding teams of 15-20 people each will be dispatched in the next three weeks to work with the Red Cross. Gaylor said a few opt to take their own RVs, but most will simply drive to the area and work out of existing Southern Baptist churches.

Gaylor is also coordinating the deployment of feeding units and cleanup and recovery units — including portable showers, washers and dryers — that will be dispatched from Utah and Idaho in the next few weeks. Coordinators from the national convention are on the ground with satellite phones and communicating the needs with the national relief offices in Atlanta, which then requests help from the state conventions.