A few of the Habitat staff recommended that we attend St. Rose de Lima Catholic Church to “wake us up on Sunday morning”. The church is located about 2 blocks from the shore in Bay St. Louis. Terry and Sue also went with us.

St. Rose, an integrated church founded in 1926 as an African American Catholic church, has a fantastic gospel choir that had the whole congregation energized with their music. The service began with children of the parish reading short speeches from Martin Luther King and Barak Obama in honor of MLK birthday and the inauguration of Obama.

We were invited to attend that evening’s Social Action dinner that was expanded to be a Celebrate America Ball. It was very touching to celebrate America’s first African American president with this parish.

In between our church excursions, Sue and I decided to walk the Bay bridge – which spans 2.1 miles.  Since we had no clue how long it was, we decided to also walk the Pass Christian bridge that preceeds “the big one”. We ran out of time and had to turn back about 3/4’s of the way across the Bay bridge, but plan to walk it at least once a week.

Sue & I joined a small rec center and between the beach and bridge walks, pilates and weight and aerobic machines at the center (and a little construction), we shouldn’t fare too bad with all the delicious fried food here.