"And the greatest of these is love."

Here's a wonderful story about a Christian couple who left their home in Oregon and relocated with their kids to New Orleans after Katrina to be there to minister to the broken and broken-hearted. Jim Louviere and his wife Michele were doing well in Oregon at the church they founded. They now live in a battered trailer behind an abandoned strip mall. They are, effectively, missionaries. Excerpt:

Jim Louviere, a dark-haired, deep-voiced man, also works to spread the church's help and its message, sending mobile relief trailers to outlying neighborhoods and setting up tents that might one day grow into bricks-and-mortar churches.

Meanwhile, his wife -- a dynamic woman who talks about how vital it is to "love up" those who suffer -- races through her days helping hurricane survivors cope and training other counselors and student interns to do the same. She says it's tough, if not impossible, to stem the grief.

Not a day goes by when she doesn't talk to clients in pain because they lost a loved one in the storm or the continuing psychological and physical aftermath. Two weeks ago, a fellow church member killed himself. He and his family had lost everything when their St. Bernard Parish home flooded last August; last week, the man's brother-in-law was slain inside his home as he worked to repair the flood damage. Michele Louviere struggles to console the family.

Another newly homeless family recently learned that their losses will multiply if the father isn't fortunate enough to get a liver transplant; he's dying.

"You can't say, 'You're gonna be OK,' " Michele Louviere says, "because they're not. I've never seen the levels of grief I see here.

"Everybody," she says, "is hurting."

I'm proud to be able to say I know them. Michele and I were in the same class in high school. She was so effortlessly kind to everyone. And now she and her family are doing something heroically selfless. It's humbling to think about.