Four years ago today, Hurricane Katrina began making her devastating path of destruction through Mississippi and Louisiana.

The category 3 hurricane blew through New Orleans with maximum winds of 125 mph, killing more than 1,600 people in Louisiana and Mississippi and causing more than $40 billion in property damage. Hurricane Rita followed nearly a month later, with billions of dollars in additional damage and at least 11 more deaths.

Many communities remain broken, littered with boarded-up houses and overgrown vacant lots. But churches across the country - and many across North Georgia - continue to lend their efforts.

This past March, Clermont resident Jeff Carruth traveled to Lakeshore, Miss., with a group of men from Concord Baptist in Clermont to help with rebuilding efforts alongside Lakeshore Baptist Church in Mississippi.

Lakeshore Baptist has spent the past four years coordinating efforts to rebuild the entire community. This includes the partial reconstruction of more than 100 homes and 35 homes built from the ground up - all with the help of almost 550 church mission groups.

Carruth said he was amazed at the devastation that still lingers on the Gulf Coast.

"Everything (on the highway) really looked normal and I was thinking, ‘What is the big deal?' But it was like a line was drawn," he said. "Once you passed over that line there were no trees over 7 to 8 feet tall, everything was broken off, everything was dead.

"The look in people's eyes is hard to describe. It is like a hollowed-out look ... but just knowing that someone is there helping you, it seems like it just changes their whole demeanor."

Carruth added that the salt water flooded the land, which then killed the trees. The birds died or flew away and have not come back to Lakeshore, which is about 10 miles outside New Orleans.

"It was very humbling to see that much damage to a church and a group of people not thinking of themselves but thinking of basic needs like shelters and other things," Carruth said.

Lakeshore Baptist has promised the people of their community that their homes are the first priority. After they are constructed, church construction will begin.

The church is now meeting in a Quonset hut.

"That's what we meet in, and then we have other military-style Quonset huts that the volunteers come and stay in. So we can sleep about 180 people here on the church property," said the Rev. Don A. Elbourne Jr., pastor at Lakeshore Baptist. "Our whole ministry has taken a different shape, so we know that we will probably be hosting volunteers for several more years."

The group of men from Concord were led by the Rev. James Dollar, Concord Baptist's assistant pastor, who said because of the results of the trip in March, he will lead another trip to Lakeshore in September.

"When we went the first time, we helped this lady (who) was living in about a 10-by-12 storage building. You would not believe what people are living in," he said. "After this long, that it still looks the way it does and that people still live in FEMA trailers and all that, it is hard to believe."

During the upcoming mission trip, Dollar said he knows basically what the Concord group will do while in Lakeshore.

"Usually we go off the progression of the last group, and so we are either going to be finishing a home to where some homeowners can move in late September," he said, "or they've got another house that they have just gutted because the people haven't done anything with it since the storm."

Elbourne said any help from volunteers is appreciated by the people of his community. He just hopes that people in the South and other parts of the United States don't forget about Mississippi.

"I want people to realize that there is still work left to do. ... If any churches want to come do mission trips, we are here," he said. "We are still raising money but we have not actively started raising money for the church buildings because all of the money that we have gotten in we have used in the community."

The Associated Press contributed to this report