BILOXI, Miss. – Chung Nguyen's house sits in the shadow of two casinos – his home a small testament to hard work and careful saving, bookended by the money and madness of craps tables and card games.

Nine months after Hurricane Katrina sent water lapping against the eaves of Chung's roof, it's hard to look in either direction of the Gulf Coast without seeing irony.

Rev. Pete Brown/First Presbyterian Church (ENLARGE)

Members of the mission team pose in the home of hurricane victim Betty Smith.

Part 2: Disaster relief comes in all shapes >>More photos from the trip>>

Chung, a Vietnamese immigrant, came to the United States six years ago, seeking good work and better fortune. A few blocks away, thousands of gamblers come to Biloxi each week. Never mind the work; they just want the fortune.

For every nickel Chung puts toward taking care of his mother and grandfather, who is nearly 100 years old, millions of dollars more are poured into the chips and drinks offered at the IP Hotel & Casino or the Isle of Capri, Biloxi's first gaming resort.

Whatever you might think of gambling, don't sell the casinos short. They're pumping plenty of money into storm-shattered Mississippi. They're still bringing in tourists by the busload. And they're paying good money to people like Chung, who is a card dealer at one of the resorts.

"You come to my table first hour of my shift ... you win," he says. "You come to my table last hour of my shift ... I win."

To be 23 years old, Chung is a pretty interesting character in this block of broken houses and FEMA trailers near Interstate 110. Five of us from First Presbyterian Church in Rocky Mount are standing in his freshly painted kitchen – the Rev. Pete Brown, Tom Maude, John Turnage, Warren Gold and me. We're here to help rebuild houses during a weeklong mission in Chung's neighborhood.

Between funny stories of long nights in the casino, Chung shares a tale about a different kind of table – one he credits for saving his life on the night of Katrina's fury.

When his single-story house began filling with water, Chung climbed on top of a table in his kitchen. As water began moving his furniture, Chung pushed the table under a ceiling hatch, then made his way into the attic, the highest point he could find inside his home.

There, he waited and hoped for six hours that the water wouldn't fill his attic, as it did the rest of his house. Luckily for him, it didn't. When the flood at last receded, Chung climbed down into a kitchen of mud and ruin, thankful to be alive.

The houses in Chung's neighborhood are full of disasters and stories about those disasters. During our stay, we work on only a couple of houses – Chung's and one owned by Betty Smith, who lives two blocks away. But it's enough to give us a sobering idea of what the Gulf Coast has endured and is still enduring.

The damage we see is eerily similar to what Eastern North Carolina woke up to in September 1999, following Hurricane Floyd. But it's on a gigantic scale.

Whole blocks of U.S. 90, which runs along the Bay of Biloxi, have been wiped away by wind and water. Skeletons of antebellum homes hang on here and there, spray-painted with warnings: "You loot, we shoot!"

A cemetery is littered with shattered gravestones and unearthed mausoleums. The entire side of a hotel has been ripped away, offering passers-by a curious, cross-section view of rooms and made beds, ready for tourists who probably won't be arriving for a long while.

The work of five pairs of hands in two small houses in a region so decimated seems almost laughably insignificant. But Mrs. Smith thanks us for practically every nail – bent or straight – that we bang into the wall board we're hanging in her home.

During a week of disaster-camp hamburgers and peanut butter sandwiches, Mrs. Smith is our godsend. For lunch one day, she lightly fries the best catfish I've ever tasted. For our send-off meal, she boils big, red shrimp, fresh from the Gulf.

None of this is expected of her – not by us or by the Presbyterian Church's disaster assistance organization. But as Mrs. Smith reminds us every day of our trip: "You've got your work to do, and I've got mine."

For Chung, Mrs. Smith and thousands of relief workers making their way into these homes, that's going to be true for quite a while.

Weather wizards and TV people will watch the skies this summer, ready to jump all over the Next Big Hurricane, ready to tell us again how deadly nature can be, as if it's a brand-new tale.

For residents of the Gulf Coast, the fury of the storm lies all over the broken trees and wrecked buildings in front of them. It's not likely to disappear any time soon.

Jeff Herrin is the editor of the Rocky Mount Telegram. This is the first in a series of columns he's writing about disaster relief efforts in Mississippi.