“I’m so glad you came by,” my neighbor said. “We’re Catholic, but I admire Billy Graham so much. I’m going to try to get my son to go with me.”

I was knocking on the doors on my block, delivering invitations to this weekend’s “Celebration of Hope,” the Billy and Franklin Graham crusade scheduled for Saturday and Sunday in our N.O. Arena.

Mine must be the only house on this block without two dogs. Even though it was the supper hour–from 6:30 to 7:30–darkness had fallen and it seemed that everyone had settled in for the evening, until the doorbell roused dogs and threw every house into commotion. Even so, almost everyone was at home, they were all cordial, and several expressed appreciation for the invite.

The mosquitoes were as big as silver dollars, and everywhere. I apologized a couple of times, until one neighbor said, “These won’t bite. In fact, these are the good mosquitoes that eat the little ones.” Coulda fooled me. They sure look fearsome enough.

The Catholic lady asked for more invitations so she could invite some of the people at her church this week. I gave her a packet of 25.

The name “Billy Graham” certainly opens doors on my block.

Yesterday I enjoyed preaching at the First Baptist Church of Madison, Mississippi, for their three morning worship services. To my surprise, a number of New Orleans area people were in the audience. Bill and Dorinda Evans said, “We live here now. Moved here after Katrina.” As did several other families. It’s a story repeated in every town and city across this part of the world, which explains where the missing 300,000 citizens of this metro area have disappeared to. They have infiltrated America.

Kimberly Williamson Butler–remember her? New Orleans’ Clerk of Criminal Court who became a criminal herself for disobeying the rulings of her judges–appeared in court today and was sentenced to three days in jail and a fine of $500. In the past she has said voters sympathize with her because she knows what it is to be fired (from the mayor’s office), to be the victim of discrimination (because she’s a Christian, she says), and to be persecuted. Now, I suppose she’ll want the sympathy votes of the jailbirds. And she vows she is qualified to be our next mayor. If we thought Nagin was something….

Monday I finally got around to reading Sunday’s (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger. I told the folks at Madison: “I know where I am. I am fully aware that Mississippi took the full brunt of Katrina, and that you are tired of all the Katrina-stories and news, too, the way the rest of the nation is.” I told them of my friend David Shivers, a Mississippian now pastoring in Indiana, who called Friday and almost apologized for not sending work crews to New Orleans. “We’re sending them to my home state,” he said, to places like Bay St. Louis and Waveland. I told him, “Hey friend, we’re all in this together. We suffered together and we’ll rebuild together. When you help the Mississippi Gulf Coast, you’re helping us. It’s all the same body. New Orleans is the left flank and Bay St. Louis is the right arm.”

On that theme, Bill Minor’s column was headed: “Let’s not fuel a La-Miss. ‘feud’ over Katrina’s recovery money.” (I told the Madison church that in Louisiana they were saying Mississippi was getting more federal money because Haley Barbour is their governor, with all those Washington contacts. In Mississippi, I hear people saying, “New Orleans is getting all the attention.”)

A long-time veteran of Mississippi political reporting, Bill Minor doesn’t think the Haley Barbour connection for Mississippi offsets the fact that Louisiana has one Republican senator (Vitter) and five of its seven congressmen are Republicans. However, something is happening, he says.

“In the $29 billion Katrina package squeezed through Congress at Christmas in the first round of recovery money, Louisiana got only $5.3 billion in critical home rebuilding funds as compared to Mississippi’s $4.2 billion, even though Louisiana had five times more homes destroyed or ruined than Mississippi.” He continued, “The $29 billion wouldn’t have even passed (remember Bush proposed only $11 billion) if Mississippi’s U.S.Sen.Thad Cochran as Senate Appropriations chairman had not attached it to the defense appropriation which was a must-pass bill.”

Contrast that, Minor says, with the Baker bill, “the broad recovery measure backed by the entire Louisiana delegation sponsored by Rep. Richard Baker, a Baton Rouge Republican with a 90 percent pro-Bush voting record. It would create a federal corporation funded by bonds to buy back and demolish entire low-income devastated neighborhoods such as New Orleans’ Ninth Ward to encourage its 100,000 scattered former residents to return and rebuild.”

“But the Bush administration pulled the plug on the Baker bill and dashed much of Louisiana’s hopes. Suddenly, a week ago, Bush came up with $4.2 billion more in aid for Louisiana to rebuild homes. Even then, as Louisiana’s Vitter said, what has come down so far from Washington to restore our Katrina-shattered region is but a ‘down payment.’ Certainly we don’t need to fuel a political rivalry between the two states.”

Speaking of a rivalry between the two, I was struck by a letter to the editor from Mike Walker of Brandon, a suburb of Jackson. Headline: “N.O. residents should stop ‘whining.'” He writes, “Evacuees from New Orleans are on the airwaves complaining about the hotel rooms they have been staying in for lo these many months, while Waveland and other Coast survivors are still living in tents, basically exposed to the elements, without bellyaching.” He continues, “The media constantly talk about New Orleans, probably because, erroneously, they say New Orleans is where Katrina hit, and not the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”

Walker goes on to say, “I know this is a generalization where New Orleans’ evacuees are concerned, and to the few that this description does not fit, I apologize. The rest of them should get out of the hotel rooms, get a tent and go back to New Orleans and start rebuilding. They should hush about the accommodations and stop whining! It’s time all of us quit expecting the government to feed us and change our diaper like a 2-month old child and started taking responsibility for our own actions, or lack thereof!”

I can’t address the whining of the evacuees since I have no idea what he’s referring to, but he is mistaken in thinking any reasonable person in or out of the media has been saying that Mississippi was not hit by Katrina. And he is equally mistaken if he thinks New Orleans wasn’t hit by Katrina. The Mississippi Gulf Coast took the full force of the storm, with the eye reaching over this way as far as Slidell, I’m told. But don’t tell us our part of the world was not hit. Almost every resident in my neighborhood lost roofs and trees to the storm, and had inside damage from the rainwater. Nothing like what hundreds of thousands of others experienced, but bad enough.

What did the greatest damage to New Orleans, I’m certain Mr. Walker knows but ignores since it does not fit his argument, was the breach of our levees. Levees maintained and guaranteed by the U.S.Corps of Engineers. That’s why we in this part of the world feel the federal government has some responsibility in this matter. That’s the difference. The rest of the Gulf Coast had pure hurricane damage of the worst kind. New Orleans had that of a less severe kind, plus floodwaters–dirty, polluted, oily, saltwater that sat in the streets and inside homes and churches for many days.

The Billy and Franklin Graham team will be here this weekend, bringing with them Ricky Skaggs and Bev Shea and Cliff Barrows and others. And hope. They will bring hope with them.

We’re asking God’s people all across the country to pray that the hearts of our people shall be open to the Lord and that He shall do a new thing in our midst.

MONDAY POST SCRIPT: In the paper this morning, the front page headline reads: “Butler jailed on contempt charge; Secretary of state calls for her resignation.” Al Ater, our Secretary of State, has finally come public with his views on the Kimberly Williamson Butler fiasco. He says he has been carrying her office, doing her work for her, from Baton Rouge and enough is enough. “I’ve never worked with a more unprofessional person. I want her out of the way, and I’m exploring every option….”

Ms. Butler defended her actions, saying the hallmarks of her term in office as Criminal Court Clerk have been “Excellence, integrity, and service.” Sounds to me like a motto for her campaign to be mayor. But excellence? Listen to Secretary of State Ater again. In his many phone conversations with her since Katrina, “It’s never been, ‘How can you help me get commissioners?’ or some other task, but just ‘I’m the boss.'” He wants her out. Stay tuned.

At this moment, a Senate committee charged with recommending funding for the Gulf Coast rebuilding is hearing from the governors of the affected states. Someone in this morning’s paper went ballistic over Governor Blanco telling last week’s congressional visitors that “we are extremely dependent on your good graces and understanding.” That’s leadership? he asked, and again asked, “Where do we find these people?” referring presumably to our elected leaders.

I think all of us would prefer our governors hold their heads high in Washington and not enter as beggars, testify as supplicants, and leave as having received handouts. We are part of the United States of America, a nation made up of the finest people on the planet, people who know how to do the right thing. That’s what we want to hear our leaders urging the senators today: “Just do the right thing.”