Ocean Springs, USA - Hurricane Katrina changed the face of the Church of Christ. The altar area at the back of the brick building has vanished under boxes of shampoo while the pews are piled high with cans of food.
"It looks more like a supermarket than a place of worship but we had to put the provisions somewhere," said 62-year-old Eileen Logan, a member of the congregation who is helping co-ordinate her church's emergency relief efforts.
It's the same story in countless churches that dot this genteel Mississippi city, which like much of the Gulf Coast was shredded by last week's killer hurricane.
Instead of relying on government workers to come and clear up the mess, the churches looked to their own nationwide networks and found the help they so-badly needed.
"If they'd waited for the federal government to move, they'd have to wait six months," said Ed Humphries, an energetic Church of Christ minister from Pensacola in near-by Florida, who had spent the day stripping homes soaked by the ferocious Katrina.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, tasked with disaster relief in the United States, has come under fierce criticism for responding too slowly to the crisis, especially in the ravaged city of New Orleans that lies just up the coast.
Although Ocean Springs escaped total devastation, parts of the city were nonetheless flattened, whole buildings blown to smithereens by the howling winds and historic seafront homes squashed into the earth by flood waters.
Mayor Connie Moran said the authorities had promised her help within 72 hours of the storm passing. But a FEMA team took a week to arrive, swooping in by helicopter to survey the devastation along the city's splintered coast road.
"We felt a bit forgotten. The FEMA were slower to respond than we had expected, but the unofficial relief was immediate and overwhelming," she said, eating a supper cooked for her by volunteers at the First Baptist Church.
Herself a Roman Catholic, Moran says the various Christian faiths are working together, planning to pool their resources to take care of children given that the local schools are likely to remain closed for weeks.
"It doesn't matter what the denomination is. These churches are the glue of this society," she said.
The Baptists are offering suppers to all volunteer workers and out-of-state police whose numbers are rising daily. Although the city's stores are all closed and electricity lines down, the church is having no problems feeding the hungry.
A sister church in Texas has delivered a freezer full of beef while another church in Kentucky sent over 200 generators.
At the Church of Christ, the Pensacola worshipers said they were merely repaying a debt of gratitude after Ocean Springs' citizens rushed to their help last year when they were floored by Hurricane Ivan.
"There's no point sitting around and waiting for the government to do something. That wasn't how this nation was built," said Logan, whose two daughters lost almost all their belongings to the flood waters.
An exhausted city alderman, Jerry Dalgo, has been overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity. Sitting in the Baptist church's improved canteen he surveys the pallets of food sent by sister churches in Giorgia.
"When all this is over, I am going to dedicate myself to helping other people in trouble," he says.
"This has been a total life changing experience for me. I've come to realise there is nothing more important than helping other people."