Locals pick through free toys outside the 'mobile command headquarters' of GERT Ministries, a three-person relief team headed by Margaret Raker, seated in RV doorway. (Brock N. Meeks / MSNBC.com)

WAVELAND, Miss. -- Christmas won't slip through the cracks for the children of Waveland and Bay St. Louis this year if Margaret Raker, founder of GERT Ministries, has anything to say about it.

Operating at the margins of bigger, more organized relief efforts, Raker practices a kind of guerrilla relief. The Temperance, Mich., woman founded GERT (God's Emergency Response Team) on a shoestring, funding the three-person relief effort out of her own pocket and operating out of a "mobile command headquarters" cleverly disguised as an aging RV with threadbare tires and a wheezing eight-cylinder engine.

This is Raker's third trip to the region since Katrina hit.

"I go back to my hometown and ask everyone I know for donations," Raker says "This time we named the trip 'Christmas for Waveland.'" She also sends out a newsletter asking people to drop off donations at local businesses.

GERT's efforts are dwarfed by larger Christmas missions aimed at the area; at least two different groups have loaded up tractor trailer trucks with toys that have been distributed here already. But judging by the response, those previously delivered toys have barely made a dent in the need.

Raker's RV is parked in front of a blown out hotel just off the main highway here while her niece, Shealee Moore, stands along the side of the road holding a handmade cardboard sign advertising "Free Toys!"

"We've had a 100 or so people by already and it's not even noon," Raker says, nodding to the few remaining boxes of toys awaiting distribution. "And we started out with about 400 toys this morning."

Far from being disappointed that she doesn't have more to give out, Raker is anxious to have her inventory cleared out so she can get back, load up and make another trip.

"I'm looking to get bigger," Raker says. "I'm on a mission from God."

A bit of Broadway by the Bay