A loving wife and a beautiful daughter, and a well paying job; what else can a guy in his early thirties ask for. I am a civil engineer and my wife works for NGO, helping kids with disabilities. She gave up her job a couple of years ago when daughter Melisa was born and wanted to do a part time job to take care of her. We purchased an old house and settled in New Orleans shortly after our daughter was born and my wife’s father was frequently getting sick and refused to come and live with us. Life has been good so are our neighbors and my contracts. Now that I have a two year contract and our daughter two we were thinking about having a second child. My wife wanted to redo our floors, since they had old carpets and she wanted new hardwood floors. Well, on a single income, which wasn’t bad, we decided we would take a loan to do the floors and go for a laminate instead of hardwood and everything turned out to be pretty good and our house looked as good as new.

My wife’s father lived about a couple of hours drive from our house and it made things a lot easier and my daughter loved spending time with her grandpa over the weekends. Somehow Mother Nature poured down as rain from the sky and interrupted my construction and everything was getting delayed and things were starting to look bad. When my father-in-law got hospitalized, we drove over to see him in those heavy rains and staying there for two days and had to pay through our nose for his funeral expenses. I had not realized that my life was starting to turn upside down, when the rain wouldn’t stop and a flood warning was issued and we were not able to get back home and a State of Emergency was declared and the hurricane was named Katrina.

After two weeks of staying at a friend’s house, we were finally able to get back home, looking forward to see our house, hoping it was in good shape, maybe just some minor fixes damaged by the Hurricane and we had to park the car and walk back into the town. It was devastating, trees on the road, roofs hanging on trees, cars submerged in half water, couldn’t make out where the road ended and where the curb started. All we could see were flat surfaces with irregular structures, broken lamp posts and hanging telephone cables, water everywhere and leaving my daughter with my wife, I walked through the mess with water up to my chest. There were cops and rescue workers still trying to search for survivors and I had a ray of hope when I walked through, which looked like some building son the higher plane looked a little intact.

The view was devastating, the street that I drove everyday, the park my daughter played, the community where we built a house, our neighborhood, gone, everything was gone and all I could see was water and people desperately hoping that one of their family members would still be alive, pain, tears, desperation and devastation. When I managed to reach my home it looked alright from a distance, but I was deceived, but estimated the damage would be covered by my insurance. When I got closer, it was a house alright, but not a one that can be rebuilt or live in, the floors were completely destroyed, and it looked like a hundred year old ruins, I know I can’t rebuild it, it will take years to undo the damage, but a better option would be to calculate the loss and settle with the insurance and rent an apartment.

I ended up in a mobile home, cramped, searching for a new job, since there was none anymore there, all because I was not covered for flooding! After a tough fight with them I was able to get some money and cleaned out of my savings and was able to breathe a little. Without a job, without a home and to my amazement a second child on the way, I was forced to look for a job, yet I didn’t have enough money to leave the state and my leave my pregnant wife and a young daughter to take care of themselves. I was in tears and we were starving, and I was in a place that I would do anything to take care of my family and the unborn child. I couldn’t give her or my daughter the best possible care that I could have before the hurricane, but now, maybe the best thing is not to bring this child into this world and it was already a bit too late for that since my wife was in her second trimester.

Being an atheist, for the first time in my life I went to a nearby church where they were providing shelter and food, all I thought was my wife and my daughter and we had food and shelter, but my pride was hurt. I felt like I was begging for arms and was at the mercy of someone and I couldn’t live like that anymore and yet can’t leave my wife and go search for a job somewhere else. If I were a coward maybe I would have committed suicide, but the one thing I had was humility and I was holding on to that. I felt a relief that now my daughter and my wife were being taken care of, but she was almost close to her due date, I couldn’t leave her. The first time in my life I prayed, I prayed to god for a healthy baby, and a way for me to take care of my family.

I don’t know what it was, who it was, someone recognized me and it all happened so fast, I had a job in Nevada, a 5 year contract to work on a casino. A place to stay, insurance, everything was taken care of. Till today I don’t know who that man was, but someone who had a heart much bigger than you and me. Today I, my wife, my daughter and my son are flying back to the grand reopening of the St.ThomasChurch from Los Angeles. I am still an atheist, but I go to church, not because I believe in god, because I can help someone in need, like the stranger who was there for me as a "Guiding Light".