The water is receding, and many will soon forget about the million people who lost their homes last week when floodwaters inundated one of Mexico's poorest regions.

Not the members of Raleigh's White Memorial Presbyterian Church.

They're wondering how soon they can get a flight to the ravaged area and when they can start digging new foundations.

Several dozen of the church's members have spent 15 years building a seminary campus in the Mexican state of Tabasco, which took the brunt of the flooding. Along the way, they say, the people of Tabasco have become part of their extended family.

Now, they say they will be there as the rebuilding begins, both physically and financially.

"I have some friends there, their families have lost everything," said Ed Jennings, a leader of the church's work in Tabasco. "I've just been devastated this week."

The water was just beginning to retreat Tuesday after a week of intense flooding in Tabasco and the neighboring state of Chiapas. Sixteen people were missing after a mudslide. Hundreds of thousands of flood victims are living in parking lots and public buildings, standing for hours in lines for food, water and medicine. Outbreaks of cholera and other diseases are feared.

Some of White Memorial's members were in Tabasco when flooding began early last week. As they headed for the airport, after the U.S. Embassy asked them to leave, water was up to the floorboards of their car.

One of the volunteers, Dr. James Gentry, said that as their plane rose over Villahermosa, Tabasco's capital, "We could see the expanse of water. It looked like it was going to flood the whole town."

Within a day, it did. Since then, a group of church members has been checking the Web site of the local newspaper and trying, often in vain, to contact friends in the area.

A group of White Memorial members first went to Villahermosa in 1992, when they heard that a small church needed help building a security wall. It was supposed to be a one-time trip. But while they were there, they heard about the church's hopes of building a seminary. They decided to help make the church's plan a reality.

White Memorial now donates about $30,000 a year to the project, and groups travel there two or three times a year to work at the seminary and provide free medical care to residents.

Life-changing trip

Jennings, 67, said he has been to Tabasco 50 or 60 times since 1994. A Virginia native and longtime Raleigh resident, Jennings said that, on his first trip to Mexico, he didn't even know what the word "hola" meant.

He saw people crowded into tiny houses made of concrete or sheet metal, eating whatever food they could raise themselves. Many had little income, no transportation and didn't receive even the most basic medical care. Despite their poverty, people cooked meals and offered gifts to church volunteers.

"I had heard about the poor in other parts of the world, but I didn't really think about it," Jennings said. "When I went down there and saw it, it changed my life."

He was so affected that, in 1996, he sold his insurance business so he could live in the area for months at a time.

Jennings is one of about 200 White Memorial members who have helped a Mexican church turn 10 acres in a rural area outside Villahermosa into a landscaped complex of 11 buildings. The seminary turns out 20 pastors a year, who work in impoverished villages in southern Mexico, and it serves as a refuge for people in the area.

Much of its construction was done with only the most basic tools. Church members dug 6-foot-deep foundations with picks and shovels, and hauled concrete by hand in 5-gallon buckets. They sometimes worked in temperatures that topped 100 degrees.

Now, they think the drainage ditches they helped dig have saved the seminary. Water surrounded the campus but didn't flood it.

People all around it, however, suffered from severe flooding.

At this past Sunday's service, church members donated $3,200. Pastor Art Ross said that represents only the beginning of the church's donations.

"Once we figure out what the needs are, we will come up with more resources," he said.

Jennings said he is trying to arrange the first relief trip in early December, and he hopes to be among the first on the plane.