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MISSION BLOG A week-long account of the Gulf Coast Mission Team as they travel to Slidell, Louisiana and assist with the still massive devastation of the Gulf Coast hurricane. The Team: Gogginsville
UMC Floyd
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Blog entries in chronological order. April 16th, 2006 On a joyous Easter Sunday, the mission team was commissioned by the congregation at the conclusion of the Holy Communion. As the team members knelt, Gogginsville's lay leader, Wayne Blankenship, prayed over us, asking the Spirit to send us out with the Risen Christ to those still in need in Louisiana. Floyd United Methodist Church also commissioned Haden and Kathy Dulaney during their Easter Sunday service, sending them with over $850 in contributions for the trip. The Rev. Jim Fosnot blessed Mary Martin for this team during Mass at St. Francis of Assisi Church over the weekend, too. The prayers of our congregations is so important! Please lift us daily to God throughout the upcoming mission. In Christ, April 17th, 2006 We finally got word of what we'll be doing! There are four homes in and around Slidell that are near completion. We will be completing interior finish work (i.e., casing windows, hanging doors, installing ceramic tile, etc.) on these homes. They evidently are owned by elderly residents. Of course, we'll see what we end up doing once we're there! We also had our last official team meeting this evening. Besides doing last minute preparations and planning what tools to bring, we also learned that we have raised well over $5,000 to use for construction costs. Since our fuel budget was calculated on a fuel cost of $2.50 per gallon, we'll also use some of this to cover the fuel costs not covered by the participant fees. If you didn't know, we plan to pack-up the church van and Doug Rorrer's truck Friday afternoon/evening, and depart from the church at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday. In Christ, April 18th, 2006 The Gulf Coast MIssion Team Blog and Website goes live! Check back for daily updates after the 22nd. Given the conditions of the area, updates are not guaranteed, but we will try and communicate from the team each day. The links above can help position where the team is going, the weather they might be experiencing and some information about the city itself.
April 22nd, 2006 Gulf Coast Mission Team left for Slidell, LA and arrive safely around 11:00 p.m. April 23rd, 2006 After a fifteen-hour
drive, we arrived here Saturday night. Our lodging is at Aldersgate
United Methodist Church in Slidell. We have the good fortune of
staying in Asbury Hall--which seems to be an old apartment building
converted into Sunday schools, and then converted into offices for
the Northshore Recovery Center and a small dormitory. The two showers
on campus are located in our dormitory. So all the three other groups
here must come through us to get clean. Folks are sneaking in as
late as 11 p.m., and as early as 5 a.m. to take showers--slipping
through the midst of our sleeping bodies. April 24th, 2006 After two full days of work, it’s so easy for us to understand why the recovery efforts are going so slowly. We reported to the office next door at 8 a.m. Monday, along with the three other teams, to find-out what we’d be doing. I’d spoken with Pyllis, one of the construction coordinators, both last Tuesday, and again earlier Monday morning. She’d told me how we’d be working on Ms. Tatem’s house—trimming in doors, laying tile, fixing some electrical problems, among other things. But when she met with us all that morning to divvy-up work projects, it became quickly evident that she had been confused when speaking with me. Ends up that Ms. Tatem’s house was to be completed by Ginghamsburg Church, not Gogginsville Church. At the end of the meeting, our team had no assignment. But I wasn’t too worried. She has over 125 active reconstruction cases, and about six houses nearing completion. We hung around after the meeting. “I think I’ll split your team, and send half of you over to Ms. Bell’s house, and the other half over to Natasha Edwards’ house.” She then proceeded to give me a two-minute rundown on every little detail we needed to cover in each house. “Ms. Bell’s needs to be prepped for vinyl tiling. Do the whole house in the tile, except for the back two rooms. Those will be carpeted—glued, not tacked. The Missouri team will come-by and spray orange peel in the bathroom. After that, go ahead and clean, paint, and finish the bathroom.” I was writing furiously, even as my mind brimmed-to-overflowing with questions. “And at Natasha’s, I’m worried the roof wasn’t fixed right when it was replaced. The Missouri team is on their way there to spray-texture the ceilings. You’ll go behind them and paint the ceilings. But before you do, check all the waterstains to see whether they’re fresh. If they are, you’ll need to get up there and patch the roof. Be sure to kilz the watermarks before painting. And on your way there, take this P.O. by the hardware store on Pontchartrain Drive, and they’ll give you the hardware for the doors and latches.” With that, she handed me a rough needs list on each house, and said, “Xerox a copy for yourself and leave the originals on my desk.” And with that, she was off to help someone else. We were on our own, pretty much, to figure things out from here. Bewildered, I stepped outside, where our team had gathered, waiting to hear back from me what was to be done. Dan Hodges was already construction supervisor for one group, so I tasked him with Ms. Bell’s house. Doug Rorrer agreed to lead the group at Natasha’s house. By the time we’d sorted-out who was going where, what tools we needed, and where on earth these places were, we rolled-out of the Aldersgate parking lot. All this had only taken an hour-and-a-half! By the day’s end, we finally had our bearings. We’d figured out how to purchase supplies, how to navigate the kitchen at the church, and how to “git ‘er done!” We also found-out that we were not alone. Phyllis came by Ms. Bell’s house to check on the crew there. When they said they were waiting for Doug’s truck so they could go purchase some plywood for the floors, she said, “I’ll go get it for you.” In less than half-an-hour, she came rolling back in with a stack of plywood in the back of her truck—no small feat, considering how crowded and hectic are the hardware and construction supply stores. After the day’s
work was done, and we had had our dinner and showers, we gathered
for reflection and worship. “Where have you seen Christ?”
I asked. Among the many answers, one has stayed with me: “In
Milton—the member of Aldersgate who had sat with us at lunch
yesterday. He’s a National Guardsman, and had been sent to
the Superdome for 10 days after Katrina hit. He told us things we
can’t imagine.” Rudy and I had sat at another table,
and I had noticed how most of our group seemed to be intently listening
to a man at their table. That was Milton. As I had observed them
listening to him—and the tears coming down his face as he
talked—I sensed they were sitting around a Holy Table. “I
saw Christ in Milton,” someone said as we reflected. But interestingly
enough, I had seen Christ in our group, and in the midst of that
table, where the pain and suffering and humanity met the healing
welcome of God’s grace. When they had gotten up from the table,
I watched as every one of our team members embraced Milton. He was
there. Indeed, the risen Lord is with us. Alleluia. April 25th, 2006 Today the rubber hit the road. I stepped out of our dorm early this morning to spend some time outside in prayer before breakfast. Stepping out of our air-conditioned cave into the wall of humidity outside was like jumping into a sauna. Within ten minutes, I was sweating, and my Bible and papers were soggy with moisture. I knew it would be a tough day. And I was right. At Ms. Bell’s house, Dan, Cheryl, Mary, Gary, Dad and I worked on various projects—laying a new subfloor, scrubbing-out the bathroom, hanging blinds, etc. Being our only electricity was from a small generator setting on the side porch—and it was being used to power the skill saw to cut plywood—there was no air-conditioning. The thick air, combined with the high temperatures made it oppressively hot. Yet we pressed on. In the afternoon, there came a thundershower, which did nothing but raise the level of humidity from 95 to 100 percent. I was outside taking a break after the rain had passed, and observed Dan’s shirt sopping-wet with perspiration, and sweat dripping off of his chin and nose. Thankfully, he and us all knew when we needed to take breaks. By day’s end, we’d finished laying the new subflooring, and had hung all the blinds. Cheryl had spent several hours getting the bathroom from a state of nastiness to being clean and ready for renovation. Before lunchtime, Gary’s phone rang. Evidently, they’d made a mess over at Natasha’s house. We knew that Doug and Ray planned on patching some roof leaks, and reinstalling some flashing on her roof. They called Gary, asking him to fetch them some new clothes. I didn’t see it, but I was told that, by the time they came down off the roof, Doug and Ray looked like a couple of tar babies. Rudy suggested someone fetch some feathers to finish off the job. It was so bad, that they just threw-away their clothes. Unfortunately, no one on that worksite thought to take a picture. That would’ve been one for posterity! Late in the afternoon, Ms. Bell’s daughter, Barbara, brought her mother by to see the progress on her house. Barbara had told us yesterday that her mother stayed fit by going out to do laundry. We’d discovered this morning what she meant: Ms. Bell’s washer and dryer had been located in a small rusted metal shed about fifteen feet from her house. The plan is to install an upright washer-dryer by her back door, so she doesn’t have to worry about getting up ad down the steps so much to do her laundry. I can now see why this is important. Naomi (Ms. Bell) is in her early seventies, and seems to have some pain in her feet as she walked. But she was able to come in, walk around and see what we had done. As she perused, her monologue went something like this: “Mmm, mmm! Look at those nice light fixtures. Yes, I like those. And, look here Barbara—they’ve got the blinds up. Praise the Lord! This looks so fine.” After chatting
with her a little, and snapping some photos on the front porch,
we bid her and Barbara farewell. It didn’t seem like they’d
be back before we left. As I shook her hand and said goodbye, she
said to me parting words I’d never heard: “Bless and
bye, now. Bless and bye.” April 26th, 2006 Before they painted Natasha’s ceiling today, it seems God decided to test Doug and Ray’s roof job. It poured rain overnight, and was still dumping when I woke-up this morning. By the time it had let-up, severe lightening was striking all around. Since the buildings at Aldersgate are spread-out, I had to walk some fifty yards from our bunkhouse to the fellowship hall for breakfast. I thought I’d wait until the thunderstorm passed, but I sure needed a cup of coffee. Emboldened by my dad going out, I decided I’d go on over. The morning was eerily dark, and the sky seemed charged with electricity. Since it wasn’t raining, I coolly walked through the parking lot towards the main building. Halfway there, a sharp crack of lightening struck nearby. All I saw was a flash of light, and a strange tingling sensation run through my body. Whether it was an electrical charge, or my hair standing on end, I don’t know. I ducked low and ran towards the door like a soldier on the beaches of Normandy. Hopefully no one was watching. When we got to our worksites, Doug called us to report that the roof had stood the test. Despite the deluge, not one drop had seeped through the roof. They proceeded to finish the painting at Natasha’s, and to get things prepped for the carpeting. Her house also had a rotted section of overhang near the front porch, where water had been seeping in for years due to the poorly engineered convergence of several rooflines. This was not hurricane-related damage. It had been there since before she purchased the home. We can say this with certainty because she moved into the house only three days before the hurricane hit. This is why her house was uninsured. Evidently, in Louisiana, flood insurance doesn’t take effect until 30 days after the closing date. So when her house sat in four feet of water for several weeks after the hurricane, her insurance policy left her high and dry. After Rudy finishes replacing the rotted overhang, Natasha’s house will be better than it was when she purchased it. Maybe this will be some consolation. It seems she needs consolation. She was brought home in the afternoon by a relative. She had been hit by someone who ran a red light. Though she suffered only minor injuries, her Pontiac was totaled. No one had the heart to ask if she or the other driver had insurance. Naturally, she was pretty shook-up, and didn’t seem to want to talk to folks much. She retreated to the FEMA trailer parked in her driveway, where she, her son, and two step-sisters are living until her house gets finished. We continue to pray for her. After having dinner at the church—hosted by the church, itself—Doug and Kim took our dirty clothes to the laundromat. Meanwhile, most of us walked over to Azalea Estates—an assisted living facility located immediately next to Aldersgate Church. I had called ahead to one of the residents, the Rev. Earl Mitchell, to ask if we could come-by for a visit. Rev. Mitchell is a Church of the Brethren minister who grew-up in Franklin County. He is Vivian Martin’s first cousin, and even today a member of Antioch Church of the Brethren. He moved here ten years ago with his wife in order to live near his daughter—a thirty-year resident of Slidell. He greeted us outside the main entrance of the residence, saying, “Now these folks look like they could be from Franklin County.” We visited with him for over an hour—listening to stories of how his parents met in Franklin County, the places and people he remembers from his year there, and of the various places he served in ministry. The one that sticks with me most was what he told us happened to him the year before he left Franklin County for Bridgewater College. Antioch Church was having a large church meeting, with several preaching elders from other churches there to help run the meetings. Though he wasn’t in the meeting itself, and though he had no desire or inclination to do it, the church elected him to ordination as a minister. Initially he declined the election. But an elder from another church came up to him outside the church and sat down next to him. Things were quiet between the two of them. After a few minutes, the elder asked him, “Earl, you don’t want to heed the vote of the church, do you?” Earl thought about it some more. He thought of how he wasn’t ready for something like this—how awkward, young and inarticulate he was to be a preacher. “Nope,” he replied, “I’m not going to do it.” They sat there longer looking out over the rolling pastures of Franklin County. After a while, the elder spoke again: “Earl, do you think that maybe the vote of the church reveals the voice of the Lord?” He took it in and mulled that over in his mind. A few minutes later he replied, “I suppose it does.” “Then don’t you think you should listen?” He was ordained
that night. He was seventeen years old. And that was 81 years ago. April 27th, 2006 Last night, during our team meeting, we decided to purchase a lawnmower for Natasha. By the looks of it, her grass hadn’t been touched since Katrina passed through. So Gary and Mary picked-up a nice Weedeater ™ brand push mower. We also decided to buy Ms. Bell the washer/dryer combo she needed to fit into that back hallway. But we are still awaiting word from the construction coordinator, Phyllis, as to how much it will cost. Thankfully,
Doug and his crew finished their work on Natasha’s house.
They finished all of the interior painting, polished-off the overhang,
finished installing outlets and covers, and prepped the floors for
carpet and tile. Once the cabinetry arrives (in approx. two weeks),
the place will quickly be finished. We knocked-off early today, so we could travel into New Orleans again. Another group had told us we should check-out a couple of other areas. So I called the associate pastor of the “downtown” United Methodist Church here in Slidell. She would have liked to have given us a guided tour of these certain areas, but had responsibilities this evening. I got detailed directions from her, as well as a suggestion for a place to get some good gumbo while we’re there. So after quick showering, we rolled out of here around 4:15, bound for New Orleans. We exited I-10 onto I-510, which took us into St. Bernard Parish. Going over the high-rise bridge, that spanned the Intracostal Waterway, we got a great view of the area. The levies along the canal were quite clear, with the Army Corps’ of Engineers reconstruction of some levies evident. Beyond the levies were acres and acres of marshland, broken only by homes and businesses built on slightly higher ground. We took a left into a neighborhood where the devastation topped anything we’d seen to that point. It clearly had been a nice, middle-class suburban neighborhood. But now it looked like a war zone. Some houses had missing roofs, others gaped open, dark and vacant. Signs of life were few, except for the birds and occasional rat scurrying across the road ahead of us. The sides of the streets were lined with mounds of debris—anything and everything imaginable. In places, the trash was piled higher than our van. On the face of each empty, wrecked house was the ubiquitous “X”—the mark spray-painted on houses by search and rescue teams in the wake of Katrina. In each corner of the X was a number or letter, signifying things like date, search team, etc. The number in the bottom quadrant of the X indicates the number of dead bodies found inside. Thankfully, we didn’t notice any Xs with anything other than a zero in the bottom quadrant. We came to a corner where a carport had collapsed on top of a car, so we pulled over. A couple of us hopped-out to take some photos from across the street. I heard a door open in the vacant house behind me, so I turned to see a slender middle-aged man step out from this cavernous, two-story brick house. He leaned on the archways of his porch, seemingly just to watch us “tourists.” I spoke to him from across his short lawn. “This your house?” I asked. “Yeah, such as it is,” he replied. Rudy stepped across a pile of rubbish to get over to the man’s porch. I decided to go, too. His name was Kenny. He was a construction contractor, and had built this house 28 years ago. It’s where he raised his two kids, who are now in college. We stepped inside the wide, French-door entrance to view the remains of his home. The house had sat in nine feet of water for over two weeks. He had stripped-out the entire first floor himself, and had cleaned it up. The second floor was still intact, but all that remained of his first floor was dingy framing, and his dirty bathroom fixtures. In twenty-eight years, the closest his house had come to being flooded was when some water came up to his yard in a previous hurricane. “The neighbors told us that there were sixty people on the roof of our house.” We gazed-up to his roof. “Every other house in this part of the neighborhood is only one, maybe one-and-a-half stories. So the people who stayed had only one place to flee the floodwaters: my roof.” He pointed to a smashed portion of his first-floor porch roof. “Right there’s where the rescue boat hit the house when it was picking-up the people from the second-story roof.” On the front porch was the ruined, splintered cover from an old upright piano. Kenny walked over to show us, kicking it with his feet. “One of my grandfathers was a farmer, the other a mariner. He traveled the world over as a seaman. In 1904, he bought this piano in France or Italy, and brought it home as a gift for his wife. We had a heck of a time with this thing on the stairs.” “So you took it to the second floor to protect it from the flood,” I asked. “No. See, it floated up and through the second-floor balcony. We found it in the upstairs hall.” I had a hard time imagining an old upright piano floating. So did Kenny. “It was so waterlogged that the wood had all warped and cracked. It was just trashed.” I noticed two dried-up sprigs of palm branches stuck in the mailbox by his front door. I was curious. He told me, “That’s from church on Palm Sunday. We keep them stuck by the doorway. If you’re threatened by some kind of impending disaster, you’re supposed to burn them and pray. It’s supposed to keep you safe from harm.” The rest of the group was still waiting in the van. So Mary got a picture with him, and I offered to pray with him. He gladly accepted. Rudy, Mary and I held hands with Kenny, and we prayed for God’s guidance. Kenny wasn’t sure what the future held—whether he would be reconstructing his house and moving back, or renting, or selling. So we asked God to lead him and guide him, and to give him strength. After the prayer, Kenny said, “I’m so glad when somebody comes by and stops. It really helps. It’s so lonely when you’re here. No neighbors around, nobody to talk to about things. Thanks for the prayer.” With heavy
hearts, we got back into the van and pulled away. We went from
there into the lower ninth ward of New Orleans. I cannot say much
about it, because words fail to explain it. It was here that the
levies broke in the aftermath of Katrina, and completely obliterated
this huge lower-income neighborhood. Truly, driving and walking
around there, with hundreds of deserted, destroyed cars, with homes
laying against other homes, and debris of people’s lives strewn
everywhere—and with not a soul around—was like walking
through the valley of the shadow of death. It was here that we saw
the first spraypainted “X” with a number other than
zero. I need say no more. April 28th, 2006 Today was a day of wrapping-up. After I had dropped-off the crew at Ms. Bell’s, I ran back to Aldersgate Church to the Disaster Relief office to settle accounts with them. While I was there, Phyllis, the construction coordinator, got off the phone from speaking with Levy’s Appliances. Beaming with joy, she said, “They’re going to give us an $1,100 stackable washer/dryer set for $750 for Ms. Bell’s house!” Evidently the owner of Levy’s Appliances had been so impressed with what UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) was doing in Slidell that he decided to sell the appliances for the homes they restored at cost. Our group had decided that we would purchase this washer/dryer set as a gift for Ms. Bell, so I went by Levy’s on my way back to the worksite and paid for it. It will be delivered sometime later next week, and installed by another team. Mary, Doug and some others took the lawnmower over to Natasha’s house. In addition to setting it up, and filling a fuel can with the right oil mix, Mary went ahead and mowed her yard, and trimmed around it with the Weedeater ™ bought for Natasha by the Missouri group. Unfortunately, Natasha was at work, and the crew there wasn’t able to bid her farewell, or present to her these gifts. After Doug and Ray fixed a major plumbing problem at another house, everyone came to Ms. Bell’s house, where we concentrated on getting absolutely everything done that we could. In addition to the Missouri team cutting and laying carpet in the back two bedrooms, our team absolutely went to town! We finished laying the vinyl tile, hung the painted doors, finished painting the ceiling, polished-off the bathroom, installed shoe-molding around the walls, and put guards on the interior step ledges—not to mention the huge task of cleaning up all the extra construction trash, dust, and glue strewn about the house. Though I helped with this and that, my most rewarding job today was installing the toilet paper holder and towel bar in the bathroom. I enjoyed knowing that these were two things Ms. Bell would be using on a daily basis. By the time four o’clock rolled-around, we had done everything we could in that house. The one exception was installing the bathroom sink. When we realized we’d forgotten to do that, we were too tired, and needed to be getting back to pack-up. What a joy it was to step through that house, and to see how nice, neat, and clean everything was! The electrician will come tomorrow to install the receptacles, switches and plates, and get the electrical work finished and ready for power. The only other remaining pieces are the installation of her kitchen cabinets and appliances—due to arrive next week. We wish we could’ve seen her face when she came in. Rudy fixed us a nice beef stew for dinner tonight, using beef my parents had raised. While dinner was cooking, my mom asked me to come-out to a side hallway from the Fellowship Hall. She wanted to show me something. I stepped out into the church’s “coffee house,” and found two tall walls covered with crosses of every kind. There were ornate wooden crosses, intricate resin crosses, and brightly-colored ceramic crosses. A sign on the counter said that these crosses had been given by the members of the church as a gift to the many hurricane response teams. Each team was invited to pick a cross and take it with them as a thank you. “You’d better pick-one yourself,” Mom said. “There’s no way all eleven of us can pick it.” After getting packed, and having dinner, we gathered together for some closing “family time.” I presented each team member with a t-shirt from UMCOR Slidell, and we gave witness to how each one of us has blessed the team this week. As I lit a candle, and prepared to worship and share in Holy Communion, I showed them the cross I had picked for us to take home as a gift from Aldersgate Church. It is a very primitive cross—roughly cut from clay, glazed with smudges of dark brown, and fired hard in a kiln. “As I looked at all of those beautiful crosses on the wall,” I explained, “this one stood out to me.” I held it up in the middle of our circle for them all to see. “It is nothing of great beauty. It looks as though it could have been pulled from the rubble in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans. Let this remind us of where our Lord has been, and where he continues to live: among those who are suffering, devastated, lonely and lost.” That cross sat on the white linen in the midst of our circle as we celebrated Communion together. It seemed so appropriate beside the broken bread, and the poured cup. And the Great Thanksgiving took on new meaning, as I prayed the Spirit to bless these gifts of bread and wine, “that we might be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood.” Let it be so. Amen. In Christ, |
