NATCHEZ — Sondra Satcher is building the home of her dreams, but it took battling a hurricane to get there.

Two years ago, Satcher and six family members were piling into a car outside her lower Ninth Ward New Orleans home. A hurricane was headed for the Crescent City, but most people weren’t overly concerned.

Satcher had a hard time convincing her family to leave. New Orleans was all her 90-year-old stepmother had ever known, and her niece wanted to wait for her boyfriend.

They didn’t pack much.

“We thought we were coming back soon,” Satcher said. “It was like, ‘OK, we’ll be back. No big deal.’”

So, Satcher, her husband James, her elderly stepmother, her niece and her god-sister and the girls’ two infants headed north.

Among the items they left behind was a picture that used to hang on her refrigerator — a picture of a log cabin.

“As a kid, I always wanted to live in a log cabin,” Satcher said. “I’m a city girl, so something about living in a wide open space always seemed appealing.”

They planned to join James’ family near Meridian, but when they got there, there was no power, little food, no water and an abundance of trees down. They stayed for three days, but it was no place for two babies and an elderly woman.

So, they started toward Texas to meet Satcher’s family. They got as far as Natchez before they ran out of gas.

Hotel rooms and shelters were filling up.

Fortunately, the carload of people found a small church opening its doors to those flooded out of the coast — Community Chapel Church of God.

Most of those who took shelter in the church slept in the gymnasium and fellowship hall. Those with infants and elderly were afforded an office in which to sleep. Satcher’s stepmother and the girls slept on the bed. Satcher and her husband took the floor.

The family stayed at the church a little more than a month. James found a job at an auto shop while Satcher helped around the shelter.

After a lot of searching, the family found a mobile home in which to live.

But Satcher was restless. Natchez wasn’t home, and moving into more permanent housing meant more time here.

“I still wanted to go to Texas,” Satcher said. “Then, my stepmom gets sick. It was like the Lord was saying, ‘Be still. Stay put for a while.’”

Satcher started working part-time at Catholic Charities, helping hurricane transplants like herself.

Nearly all of them had sad stories to tell. One woman’s brother and niece survived the storm only to die from water-borne illness. Many had families, like Satcher’s, scattered across the country.

“All you can do is cry with them, pray with them,” she said. “There’s nothing you can tell them other than ‘I’m sorry,’ but they’ve heard that so many times.”

Still, Satcher missed the family and friends she knew in New Orleans. Her niece and god-sister went to live with other relatives. When her stepmother died in June 2006, she missed them all the more.

“Then, one day, everything just opened up to me,” she said. “The Lord just put me at peace. I saw Natchez in a whole new way.”

She even got her log cabin.

Satcher and her husband were looking for a more permanent home and came upon a piece of land on Robins Lake in southern Adams County.

They plan to build a house resembling a log cabin amongst centuries-old oak trees.

Satcher has found her home, and she has no desire to move back to New Orleans. Her house was destroyed, and her friends and family aren’t there anymore.

“I wanted to find something there,” she said. “I took a couple trips back, but it wasn’t there. It makes me wonder if other people who move back are looking for something more — family, friends, a feeling. But for me, there was nothing to go back to. Natchez is my home.”