Although it has been more than two years since Hurricane Katrina flooded parts of New Orleans, one Crawfordsville church group knows there is still work to be done.

A group of about 20 adult volunteers from St. Bernard Catholic Church will makes it third trip to New Orleans since the hurricane, leaving Oct. 18 and returning Oct. 27.

The church has been working with St. Gabriel the Archangel Parish near the New Orleans suburbs of Gentilly Woods and Pontchartrain Park. St. Bernard members have cleaned up the church and worked on restoring numerous houses in the area on its previous trips, organizer Clara Wooten said.

“Our motto is ‘Everything subject to change’ because you just do what needs to be done,” Wooten said.

The group visited New Orleans for the first time in April 2006, eight months after the city was devastated by Katrina.

“From the day I saw the city flooded I felt like somehow I needed to get there,” Wooten said. “It was one of those things you just know you need to step up and do something.”

St. Bernard’s pastor happened to have a connection to St. Gabriel’s pastor through working with him in seminary, so the churches started working together, Wooten said.

“It’s like the Lord just opened a path for me to get there,” she said.

A group of St. Bernard volunteers went back to the city in October and saw slow improvement in the neighborhoods surrounding St. Gabriel, in which most of the houses suffered flood water up to the ceiling, since the neighborhoods are close to a canal that overflowed in the hurricane, Wooten said.

“The improvement in the neighborhoods is very slow for a lot of reasons,” she said, “One is money. Grants take forever to be released.”

However, one consistency the group has encountered in its communication with New Orleans residents has been their determination to come back to the neighborhood they have always called home, Wooten said.

“The people of New Orleans have such heart, and most of them have lived there for years and years and it’s home and they don’t want to move away because of the threat of maybe another Katrina,” she said. “I think a lot of people don’t understand that.”

In its trips to New Orleans, the St. Bernard’s group has become close to several families it has worked with there, clearing yards, putting up drywall and gutting the houses of neighborhood families. The church group was rewarded for its hard work when it heard one family they worked with got to move back into their house last month, Wooten said.

“That we feel is a real success story because a lot of the things we did really helped them move back in,” she said.

Members of the group have all been touched in different ways from working with Katrina victims, she said, but they all come back feeling as if they got more out of the experience than the people they went to help.

“You are so touched by the people you work with,” Wooten said. “The people are so appreciative of anything you do. You just feel like they’re people who really need assistance who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“You give and you get so much more back from the people.”

Wooten recalls a time she was particularly touched by the magnitude of the situation the first time she visited the city after the hurricane. On a trip to “ground zero,” the site of the broken levy that flooded much of the city, Wooten saw blocks of houses washed away from their original lots. Lying on the ground were children’s toys, clothes and other family items, she said.

“You knew people’s lives were laying there on the ground, and what could you do to help that?” she said.

One accomplishment the church is particularly proud of is helping reopen the St. Benedict the Moor School in New Orleans, a private school for children who live at least 200 percent below the poverty level. Tuition is free, but parents have to do community service to show they are interested in their children’s education, Wooten said. The school was fortunate enough to have flood insurance and was able to use the money to get up and running again last fall.

“The children there are the most amazing children I’ve ever met,” Wooten said. “You know you are really making a difference when you see these kids, a lot of whom are still living in FEMA trailers.”

In its third New Orleans trip, the St. Bernard group will drywall, do yard work and gut more houses in the Gentilly Woods and Pontchartrain Park neighborhoods, which mostly house senior citizens. The work will depend on what needs to be done, Wooten said.

The accommodations aren’t four-star — the group will sleep in bunk beds in dorms — but the group has always thought its been treated well in New Orleans, she said.

In preparation for the October trip, St. Bernard Catholic Church will have a red beans and rice dinner 6-8 p.m. today in the St. Bernard gym to raise funds. The menu, which also includes Mardi Gras cole slaw, corn bread and dessert, will celebrate the culture and foods of New Orleans.

“So we can show a little of the New Orleans hospitality,” Wooten said.

A free-will offering will be taken at the dinner, or those interested in contributing to the trip can drop off a check at the church designated for the New Orleans trip.