Day 7 - Ohio

In the morning, some of the people from the church we stayed at prepared scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and biscuits with gravy for breakfast. We ate and talked with the people from the church. They were interested in Servants Unite and they were interested in helping in Louisiana.

The weather was cold, and we even saw snowflakes in the sky in Kentucky. Spring had given way to a second winter. Fortunately, the snow wasn't accumulating and there really wasn't much of it before we got through. After playing some "cell phone tag," the group leader figured out what we would have for lunch.

North of Cincinnati, we took an exit and drove along until we reached a place called La Rosas Pizza. There, tables and chairs were moved to make one big table for all of the volunteers in our trip. The group ordered vegetarian pizza (there were two vegetarians in the group), the works, and a pepperoni and sausage pizza for the people who liked meat. We enjoyed the meal and the chance to hang out one last time before we headed back to Ohio.

We stopped in Grove City to drop off most of the teens. Then we stopped in Columbus and I was asked to give directions to get to my house. Then I was dropped off, and the group leader helped me get my luggage into the house. I was home at the end of my fourth trip to Louisiana. We would be going out of town to spend time with family on Easter Sunday, but we decided to put that off until after church tomorrow.

Day 6 - On The Road

On the trip home, I got to ride shotgun in the van for part of the trip. It was after dark that I got to have a conversation with our group leader, John McGuire. He asked me how I had come to Christ, and how I had gotten involved in disaster relief for Servants Unite. I told John my story...

Both my brother and I were baptized on the same day in 1994, on the last night of Summit, youth rally that started in Columbus that year. As a 15-year old and as a new Christian in 1994, I was so full of energy. I thought I could go out there and change the world for God, but I had trouble even overcoming my own temptations and my own addictions. I struggled for years, and became so jaded that I could not see the damage that sin was doing to my life, my relationships, and even my belief in God.

Then came 9/11. My first motivation was to go and help, but I heard over the news how they no longer needed volunteers. Some people from Ohio had gone, but the need was over, and besides, Autumn Quarter classes at Ohio State University were about to start. I felt like I had missed a chance to do something.

Then came 8/29/05, a hurricane that nobody believed would hit New Orleans turned north and hit New Orleans. The news was full of the situation surrounding Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for weeks. Maybe I was listening on all the wrong channels, but I never heard about anybody going to help. Then some churches in Ohio gathered supplies and put them on trucks bound for Louisiana.

This is where John's story connects: he drove one of the trucks and thought up the idea of Servants Unite on the trip to deliver the supplies.

I heard rumors of Servants Unite a few weeks after that first truck load was sent. But the 2005 Ohio State Buckeyes football season had started. Where I work, football season and Christmas are the busiest times of the whole year, and it is almost impossible to spare a single employee until January.

Then my church's youth minister Adam Metz said that the youth group would try to go to Louisiana in the summer of 2006. I asked if there was an age limit and he said "no." I took my first trip with some of the teens from my church and some of the teens from another church.

That week transformed me. It is the reason why I went back for more trips to Louisiana, and it is the reason why you can see about it on this blog.

Anyway, John and I talked about a lot of other things, including how the American Dream has become materialistic, and how different all of our things look after we've seen a disaster zone. He played Switchfoot's latest CD for me, which includes their take on the American Dream.

We stopped in Tennessee, north of Nashville. There, in the church's gymnasium, we rolled out our sleeping bags and air mattresses, and spent the night. It was the same church we had stayed in on my first trip.

Day 6 - Memorial

We packed up to leave today, and made sure everybody had an "overnight" bag packed with all the essentials for our scheduled stop in Tennessee. We were going to stay at a church on the way back, so we wouldn't get so tired on the trip back to Ohio.

But before we left, we had to pick up two Ohio volunteers who wanted to work just a bit more in the morning. They got to work at the women's shelter, and they got to work with the California crew again. So we got to meet the California crew again and hang out for a few minutes while our two volunteers finished up what they were doing and gathered up their tools. We took them back to the trailers and they got cleaned up to do some sight seeing.

When we headed out of Chalmette, we drove past some landmarks that I remembered from my third trip. We drove farther, and passed woodlands and bayous on our way to a landmark in St. Bernard Parish. It was where Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the Parish. There is a stone monument with the names of St. Bernard Parish residents who died in the disaster. We took group pictures there, and we took pictures of the memorial, the names on it, and the metal cross that was placed slightly offshore. The metal cross has a cutout of the face of Jesus on it, and the famous initials "INRI." It is also part of the memorial.

Another visitor to the memorial was a Baptist minister who knew one of the people who died. He told us that we were on the shore of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the infamous MR-GO. He also told us that the foundations of the cross offshore lie on privately owned land that was covered by MR-GO as erosion changed its boundaries. St. Bernard Parish had to face a scuffle with the ACLU about the setup of the memorial because of the cross and the fact that the MR-GO is a public waterway, but the Parish must have won for now.

The Baptist minister joined us for a prayer for a safe trip to Tennessee and then to Ohio. After that, we headed back to Chalmette. There, we ate at the restaurant that let us watch the Buckeyes game. We had lunch there, and I had shrimp stew which tasted very good. After we filled up our stomachs with lunch, we filled up the vehicles with gas and headed for Tennessee.

Day 5 - New Orleans Again

Some of our Ohio group had helped a man two days ago. He had promised us that he would catch fish to make us dinner while we were here. When we got back to the trailers, he was there as promised, with his wife helping out. They fried fresh fish for us, served us dirty rice, salad, and hush puppies. Some of us went back for second, third, and fourth helpings of fish because it was so good and there was so much of it. Even when we stopped eating it, the man finished frying the fish and gave it to us wrapped up in foil. The leftover fish got stashed in the refrigerator of one of the FEMA trailers and people snacked on it later.

Then some of us decided to go back to New Orleans. We detached the tool trailer from the van and headed back into town. We did a lot of window shopping and sight seeing, and I bought souvenir key chains for people at work, along with a couple of postcards and a book about reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina. On Decatur Street, we decided to split into two groups and see different sights. Before we separated, we arranged to meet back at the Cafe du Monde.

We either traveled on Royal Street or Bourbon Street until we reached Canal Street. A block or two from Canal Street, we saw an interesting painted wooden sign in an art and craft shop:

Not everything in life should be about money. Love is always found in the things we do that don’t always make sense. We were put in this world to get to know each other, share each other’s food, and say it is good.

This reminded me of dinner last night, so I tried my best to memorize the message. We returned to Decatur Street and headed toward Cafe du Monde, where the other part of our group would meet up with us again. Before we went inside the cafe, we saw a Vietnamese man come and shout a greeting to us. He was one of the people from California, and the rest of the crew from California was in the Cafe eating. The California group invited us to join them, and started rearranging chairs and tables to make a big circle for us all to sit with them.

We ordered more coffee and beignets and sat and talked with the Californians for a while. Before I said goodbye to the Californians, I shared the quote I saw with them. They thought it was a good message also, and they told all of us that we all were some of the nicest people they had ever met.

I was glad to have met the California crew again. I think they're some of the nicest people I've ever met.

Day 5 - Half and Half

The morning was cool and partly cloudy. I woke up with aches all over from mucking. We had moved a (filled) water heater yesterday, so we could take away the debris behind it, as well as a lot of wheelbarrow loads of debris, so every move I made today made me aware of the work I helped do yesterday.

I spent most of this morning doing the strangest thing I've ever done in Louisiana. It wasn't mucking, it wasn't reconstruction, it was watching a warehouse. Actually, this warehouse was a gymnasium, complete with basketball hoops. It was part of the park outside, which had baseball fields, picnic pavilions, and a playground that was built by Extreme Makeover.

The person who usually watched the warehouse had gotten sick and needed to see a doctor, so there I was doing practically nothing. When people came to take cases of bottled water, I made sure they signed the guestbook and wrote down how many cases of water they took. I was told not to let anybody leave with anything but bottled water. A couple people came to get things that I wasn't authorized to let them take, so I had to call the volunteer coordinator.

The volunteer coordinator came to lock up the warehouse and take me to one of the places where work was being done. I got dropped off at a house where some people were doing drywall, so I joined the work there.

I helped cut some drywall, including cutting out a hole for an electrical outlet, I helped hold the drywall up so that people could put in drywall screws, and I helped move drywall into the room where the work was being done. We had a puzzle to solve at one point: how to get the whole sheet of drywall into the room, when we were closing up the spaces between the studs. Another volunteer found that we could slide the drywall diagonally, past the closed wall and through one of the open walls, into the room where we needed it.

I stayed to help do drywall for the rest of the day, so I spent the first half the day standing around watching the warehouse, and the second half the day working on drywall.

Day 4 - Where I Saw Jesus

We ate with the group from California. After everybody had eaten, the Buddhist priest shared an interesting custom with us, explaining the Vietnamese tradition of greeting other people by clasping hands and bowing...

The Lotus flower is the most beautiful flower to Buddhists. The Lotus flower grows practically anywhere, from beautiful gardens to refuse heaps, to manure piles. It grows and the buds are oval-shaped, like two hands close together (the way people pray). The tradition of greeting people is to make hands like the Lotus blossom, to recognize the beauty of the Lotus. No matter what kind of person you greet, you are looking at them through the Lotus shape of your hands. This is to remind you that all people are beautiful inside, no matter who they are, no matter where you meet them.

A little while later, the California group returned to their trailers and we stayed behind at the tables where we ate. Our group leader started a devotional about "Where I Saw Jesus." This is a devotional that was started early after Christian volunteer groups started showing up. There was even a blog about Where I Saw Jesus, though it hasn't been used in a long time. Each volunteer from our group thought of where we had seen Jesus this week, or elsewhere, to share with the other people in the group.

So here we were, a few adults and a bunch of teenagers who wanted to give up Spring Break to God. This is where our group leader said he saw Jesus. We had another day of work but a lot of the volunteers kept singing praise to God even after the devotional ended, and the group leader went to bed.

Day 4 - Mucking?!?

I asked a fellow volunteer to drive me to the Winn-Dixie in the morning because I had been doing two days of work without using work gloves. I decided safety was important enough, especially if I was going to work at either of the two open assignments we had scheduled today. The painting crew still had work to do but they didn't need anybody extra. If we went to the women's shelter again, I'd probably wind up helping to hang drywall, and at the newest assignment there was drywall hanging to do there also.

So I wanted to protect my fingers from hammer blows and cuts from hand saws or utility knives. So I was surprised when we were told that there was a house that needed mucking done. I wound up in the mucking crew with one other person from our Ohio group. She and I would help a crew from California clean the house. After the other groups were dropped off, we got dropped off with the Californians (who were Vietnamese immigrants) in front of the house. The grass had been stripped away, and when I went inside to inspect the house, it was partly gutted also. It looked like the crew that had been here before had taken away most of the furniture and then knocked out the walls.

But the floor hadn't been cleared off, and it was loaded with debris and fragments of drywall and other muck. We started cleaning up and then got rained on. The debris turned out to include sand and old oil. That meant that this was one of the houses where oil from a nearby refinery had leaked in. It finally hit me: sand or gravel and oil make asphalt. The floor was like pavement in some places because of that mix of sand and oil.

We met firemen from the house next door, where they were off-duty and still at work helping a fellow fireman with his roof. They gave us their leftover donuts and we all came out to meet them. We also met the Buddhist priest who came with the crew from California. Later in the day, as the pile of debris outside got taller and taller, a removal crew pulled up out front with a dump truck, a backhoe, and a bobcat. A few minutes later, the debris pile we had built up was gone.

The other house next door hadn't been touched since Hurricane Katrina. The day was a mix of signs of progress with signs that there's still a lot of work to be done.

When we got back to the trailers and got cleaned up, we found out that the California crew had sent somebody back to prepare Vietnamese food for dinner. They had made enough for all of us Ohioans too! The food was delicious, but there turned out to be too much of it for all of us!

Day 3 - Recreation

In New Orleans, our volunteer group split up into a couple of different groups. There were some people who wanted to window shop and see the sights before eating, and there were some people who just wanted to eat. I joined the latter group, and both groups chose Cafe du Monde as a good meeting place before we left the city. With a couple of hours of free time, we headed up Decatur Street.

We stopped to eat at a restaurant on the corner of Decatur Street and St. Philip Street. The group leader ordered fried alligator tail as an appetizer and shared it with us. I asked him if this was revenge for last night, when the Ohio State Buckeyes lost to the Florida Gators. The restaurant had a live musician who played blues and jazz while we ate, and I enjoyed the red beans and rice that I ordered.

After dinner, we went back up Decatur Street and did some window shopping of our own. One thing we noticed was how cool the weather had gotten. Thankfully, that could be cured by the caffeine and sugar fix we got when we went inside Cafe du Monde. Once our beignets were finished, we headed back to the van and then back to the trailers for bed.

Day 3 - Rebuild!

We got to go back to the women's shelter, and the painting crew got to go back to where they had been yesterday. At the women's shelter, I found that the old insulation was still hanging in the ceiling. Then I thought twice about that. If it was left up there when a crew first mucked and gutted in the building, then it might still be moldy. If it was still moldy, it might cause problems after the building got finished. I went looking for a ladder tall enough for me to reach up there and take the insulation down. I found a ladder sitting in a different part of the women's shelter. On my way back to the insulation, I spotted more of it in a different place. It took me only a few minutes to tear out all the old insulation.

While I was looking around for other jobs to do, I almost stepped on a rusty nail. I went to look for a magnet and then went and collected all the rusty nails I could find. I helped in other odd jobs before we stopped for lunch. I had a sandwich in the cooler this time, so I didn't have to eat grilled cheese today.

After that, a rented tile remover was brought to the women's shelter and one volunteer started using it to clear off old linoleum tiles from the slab floors inside. I helped him by putting the scraped tiles and bits of tile into a wheelbarrow. Sometimes we traded places and he did the shoveling while I operated the tile remover. Some other volunteers came and we took turns using the tile remover. We got more efficient like this: we could send one volunteer to the trash pile with a wheelbarrow full of scraped tiles while we filled up another wheelbarrow with scraped tiles. We also had manual tile scrapers and we used these to get in the areas where the tile remover wasn't easy to operate.

There were actual construction workers also on contract at the women's shelter, and they jackhammered part of the slab floor to make way for new plumbing. We got to help unload the rubble from that operation. Then our group leader went to buy more drywall. He used the tool trailer to hold all of it, so when he arrived at the women's shelter, we all helped unload.

Once the work day was over, we headed back to the FEMA trailers to clean up. Then we got ready to go to New Orleans.

Day 2 - Unsuspecting

After we cleaned up for the day, we headed back to where we were staying in FEMA trailers. We had hamburgers and hot dogs for dessert. Because we're all from Ohio, we were curious about how the Buckeyes would be doing, and we hunted for a place that would let us watch the 2007 NCAA National Championship Basketball Game.

We found a nice place with big screen TVs on the walls and got to hang out. Unfortunately, the Buckeyes didn't do very well in the game. This was my first year trying to follow the brackets for the Buckeyes Men's Basketball team. I was hoping the Florida Gators wouldn't make it to the Championship, but they did.

Just like the 2007 BCS National Championship Game, the Buckeyes started out ahead of the Gators. But then the Gators made a quick comeback and stayed ahead for the rest of the game. We went back to the trailers with bruised egos and three more workdays.

Day 2 - Reconstruct!

Our group got split up into two distinct groups. One group handled painting while the other handled some construction work at a women's shelter that was being rebuilt. I thought a lot of today's work was like the tail end of gutting. I helped remove drop ceiling hangers and bits of wire from the ceiling in some rooms where a drywall ceiling was to be installed.

The drop ceiling hangers were little eyelets with wire wrapped through them to hold up the crossbeams of the tile ceiling. It took a lot of effort to stay balanced atop a ladder while twisting the eyelets until they completely unscrewed. Then one of the workers there told me if I hammered against the eyelet in one direction, it would bend. If I hammered it back the other direction, it would just snap off.

Once I started using a hammer on the eyelets, it was a lot easier to take them out. After that, most of the work was in getting lined up beneath one, then untangling the wire that was tied through the loop of the eyelet.

Our group leader used a concrete saw to cut some cinder blocks in the wall on one side of the building. I was curious to see what was happening there. It turned out that the plan for rebuilding the women's shelter called for a door where the blocks had gotten cut. I got to have a turn helping to sledge-hammer the wall until there was a door. At least two other people took turns, so we never got overexerted.

I got to watch a volunteer help open a door through a brick wall that was cut for a door also. He took a flying leap and drop-kicked the wall, and at least two thirds of it fell out. Brick walls don't have rebar inside them, so I think this is why the brick wall fell so quickly.

At lunch, I realized that I forgot to put my sandwich in the cooler we had brought. Since it had sat in the van, the cheese had melted. Another volunteer called it "grilled cheese the Louisiana way!" It tasted good.

In the afternoon, I went back to helping remove hooks from the ceiling in different rooms at the women's shelter. Since there was a deadline on getting the ceiling finished, another volunteer started helping me take away hooks. He showed me how I could use the side of the hammer to hit the eyelets. That made it much easier to swing and hit them. We worked like that for a while, but then I noticed something up in the higher part of the ceiling.

There was old insulation up there, and then I saw an ice cube tray jammed up underneath that. There was only one way an ice cube tray could be stuck there like that I thought. It had to be up there because Hurricane Katrina left it up there when the storm surge came through.

I didn't worry about what I saw. For a while, I helped some of the volunteers hang drywall in the upstairs part of the women's shelter. Then we got ready to end our work day and clean up.

There was bad news though--our group leader had gone to help somebody fix a truck engine. There was an accident with the winch used to lift the engine out of the vehicle body, and our group leader broke his finger because of it!

Day 1 - Pathfinder

Dad dropped me off in Grove City, after we decided not to try to go to Westerville to join the trip. I recognized somebody from the trip in December--one of the wannabe muckers from the Third Trip. After a short round of introductions, we prayed for a safe and successful trip to help rebuild in Louisiana. Our group consisted of a 15-passenger church van and two SUVs. We left Grove City in a light rain, and before we left Ohio, the rain stopped. The sunlight was beautiful and I enjoyed talking to the people I rode with.

We listened to some good music and a Christian comedian I hadn't heard of before. The driver also shared a story about a Christian rapper who has set up a church in the ghetto. It sounds very different from the typical mostly-Caucasian church I'm used to as a suburbanite, but it also sounds like it's a good idea. The rap we listened to was about the Crucifixion. It was a powerful contemporary view on the heart of what we believe as Christians.

As we traveled through Nashville, we wondered whether we would be pulled over by a police cruiser that started its sirens. Instead, the police passed us and got off the Interstate at a different exit.

In Mississippi, we stopped for refueling and restroom breaks, and met a person who stayed at his house when Hurricane Katrina came through Mississippi. He told us his story of the hurricane and the damage that followed it. Another person at the same gas station asked for information about Servants Unite, and John gave him a business card with contact information.

With the exception of an April Fool's Day joke, and stops to get gas, use bathrooms, or switch drivers, the rest of the trip to Louisiana was uneventful. After a brief introduction to our accommodations (a group of FEMA trailers allocated to a volunteer organization), we had a devotional and then went to bed. This was the 24th Servants Unite team to go to the Gulf Coast. The rest of my week would show me a mix of progress and the continuing need for volunteer assistance in rebuilding.

Prologue

I sent a question about a post at Servants Unite and got an answer from John. The email also included an invitation to join another volunteer crew going to Louisiana in the first week of April.

Up until this time, I hadn't ever really been sent an "invitation" to volunteer, although I felt it was the right thing to do. After checking on the details, I got permission to take another volunteer trip to Louisiana.

Day 7 - The Voyage Home

In the morning, our group leader took a vote: "do we eat breakfast first, and then hit the road, or do we hit the road and eat breakfast somewhere on the way?" The vote was taken to hit the road first, and find breakfast food on the way. We took off like a flash, and headed for Tennessee. We would stop for breakfast somewhere on the way. As we drove through Alabama, morning sun light began to burn off the thick fog in the lower-lying areas. When we reached the Alabama-Tennessee border, most of the fog was gone. North of Nashville, we pulled into a McDonalds and enjoyed another chance to hang out while we ate breakfast.

But we stayed on schedule also, breezing along the interstates on New Year's Day 2007. On the way home, one of the wannabe muckers said that even though he hadn't been in a team involved in mucking and gutting a house, he had enjoyed the trip. That was good to hear, because I had thought the same thing. Most of the trip home, we listened to music that the group leader had ripped to his laptop's hard drive on the Windows Media Player. We stopped in Kentucky for refueling and bathroom breaks, and then hit the road again. As the afternoon wore on into evening, we crossed back into Ohio and reached Columbus at about 6:00pm. We formed a circle for a final prayer, and afterward, said our goodbyes.

Dad drove me home, and I got to enjoy a belated 2006 Christmas with the family at the end of the long trip.

Day 6 - Sunday in N'Awlins

We got up at a later time today because we had no work assignments. However, we did have to pack up and be ready to leave Chalmette. After making sure all my things were accounted for in my suitcase, I finished packing my duffel bag for the overnight stay we would make in Alabama. The plan was to leave the bigger luggage in the trailer and only unload the smaller items and essentials.

After breakfast, a group of us went to a coffee shop nearby. I got an iced mocha which packed enough of a wallop to get me properly awake after a week of work and fun, and we returned to Hilltop Rescue to finish our preparations. One "preparation" we made was to sing "Happy Birthday" to one of the volunteers from our group. A small prepackaged cake was unwrapped and loaded with enough candles to create a fire hazard when lit. It was a nice touch to end a week of work. We also spent time signing t-shirts that some of the group members passed around. I found out that it is easier to approach this the way a dot matrix printer would print.

At a local church, we all got to write on the walls. The sermon was about a New Year's Restitution, giving our lives back to God. We left scriptures, song lyrics, and other inspirational messages on the walls of the unfinished auditorium. The next day, the church planned to prime and paint the walls, so our messages would be hidden away in the building. One message stood out to me: "I thought I came here with everything, but I'm leaving with so much more."

I felt the same way. Before we left, we were greeted with a familiar song, in a familiar voice: "My father is in heaven above!" The jodel rang through the church auditorium, drawing attention not to the jodeler, but to God: "I cannot praise Him loud enough!" I got to talk to her again after that.

After we left the church, we headed into New Orleans, where traffic had piled up and streets were busy: the Saints were scheduled to play in the Superdome today. We didn't go to the game, we only went to have lunch. At first, we dropped people off at a local restaurant to place our reservation, but they found out that the line went out the door, down the block, and wrapped around the corner!

We picked up the people we dropped off, and headed to a familiar restaurant: Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company. I had eaten there in August. Since our group was so large, we had to be seated separately, and the group I was with got seated at the same table that I'd been at in August. I thought that was an odd coincidence.

After lunch, we headed back to Chalmette, to load up our trailer, and then we hit the road. The sun set as we crossed the I-10 Twin Spans Bridge across Lake Ponchartrain.

The drive to Alabama was uneventful, except for a quick stop for fast food. We listened to music CDs and I remembered my recorded jodel. Once I got home, I planned to get a patch cable so I could play my tape into the computer and burn the jodel and the interview to a CD.

At a church in Alabama, a church member let us into the building around midnight. It turned out he was able to use the audiovisual equipment in the auditorium, and he offered to burn my CD there. That saved me a few steps, and I thanked him for the favor.

As the seconds ticked away and 2006 came to a close, there was no ball to watch, no fireworks, and no loud celebration. We were all very tired. I watched the seconds tick away to midnight, and said "so long 2006" before going to bed. 2006 had ended, and our trip home would end tomorrow, in 2007. I felt that was a fitting end to a good trip helping others and serving God.

Day 5 - The Jodel...

While washing laundry before packing to go home, I ran into a familiar-looking woman in the laundry room: it was the woman who jodeled at the beginning of the week. We struck up a conversation, and since I had brought a tape recorder, I asked if I could record her jodel.

She gave me permission, and we went to a less noisy room to record. After she finished, the other people in the room gave loud applause which was also caught on tape. I also asked her to explain where jodeling came from, and recorded the story of the jodel:

In Switzerland, in the Alps, villages and communities send young men up the mountain slopes to tend to the flocks, make mountain cheese, and farm the land. In one of the villages, a problem arose. One year, when there were no other men available, a boy volunteered to go into the mountains to do the work.

His mother asked him if he was sure he wanted to do this: "You are only a child, and it's very hard work," she said, "and you could be hurt. How will we know you are safe if you are all alone?"

He said he could handle the hard work: "In the morning and in the evening, you will know I am safe because I will sing my prayers as loud as I can."

The villagers sent the boy into the mountains. At sunrise, everybody was awakened by the loud echoes of the boy's strong voice. They knew the boy was safe. And as the sun set in the evening, the boy's voice would echo through the valley again, and the villagers knew they could rest assured that their boy was safe.

As the farming season went on, one morning, the sun rose and no echoes came.

The villagers hurried up the mountain and found that the boy had fallen and been injured. His voice had reassured the villagers when he was safe, and his silence had warned them of the danger he was in!

Thanks to his jodeling, the boy was able to get help when he needed it, and after his injury healed, he returned to his work in the mountains.

After the interview was over, other people joined our conversation, and it changed to discussing mucking and gutting houses, to reconstruction, and other things in between. I have always enjoyed meeting new people while volunteering, and this evening was no different.

Day 5 - Finishing

A general order went through our team in the morning: there will be no more mucking. I could understand the order fairly easily. It isn't that mucking isn't necessary or helpful, it's that mucking wasn't our main reason for being in Louisiana. We had gone to all the hassle of packing building tools to build things up, so why waste our chance to use those tools? There were hundreds of teens who had come to Louisiana to muck and gut houses, so there were enough people doing that kind of work anyway.

I would have liked to muck a house on this trip, but it was not necessary for me. In fact, I think I belonged with the mudding crew. We went back and finished the job we started at the beginning of the week. One person took care of that terribly small closet in the master bathroom, and I got to help install drywall in the master bathroom. Other people finished applying mud to the cracks and screw holes in all the walls.

I know about two kinds of drywall: one that is for normal rooms, and one that is water-resistant, for bathrooms. We began to run out of the water-resistant drywall, but the person I helped figured out how to do it with the scraps that were still left in the house. He figured that it would all get covered up with tile or wallpaper, and if the second and third coats of mud were done properly, nobody would notice that the walls were assembled from several small pieces of drywall instead of two or three large pieces.

Once that was done, I used mud and finished up covering the cracks in the newly installed drywall. I had to work around the bathtub, which was weird, because to reach the ceiling cracks, I needed to have a ladder. We ended up setting the ladder half-in, half-out of the bathtub. It was only difficult to finish the cracks because the ladder was uneven, but I was able to finish.

I went back to reload the mud in my trough and saw the tail end of a mud fight. Two people had tried to smear each other with the drywall joint compound, and one person had gotten it on her face. It dried on her face and cracked. Nobody thought about it until the end of the day.

For lunch, we had Jambalaya. Instead of eating outdoors like we had on all the other workdays, we ate indoors. It was raining and chilly. The Jambalaya had shrimp, sausage, and a strong spicy jolt that I really enjoyed. It also cleared out my sinuses, but I think that was a perk of getting to eat Jambalaya.

We finished the first coat of mud today, so only two coats have to be applied later, after it gets sanded. We were glad to find out that it was finished, and we had finished at the end of the day. We cleaned our tools one last time and got ready to leave, when the person with mud on her face had an emergency: a piece of the drywall compound had broken off when she was wiping her face, and it got into her eye.

Somebody got the first aid kit and found out that we had saline for washing debris out of wounds and eyes, and I offered to use it. I had experienced eye problems during my second trip, so I felt that I could offer some help. The mud washed out fairly easily, but it left the person's eye feeling irritated and swollen. I'd had eye problems in October and November because of getting gunk in my eyes all the way back in August: corneal abrasions had formed. In November, an ophthalmologist suggested some over-the-counter eyedrops that were for lubricating my eye so that the abrasions would smooth over and heal.

I suggested the same eyedrops for the person who'd gotten mud into her eye. I joked that this situation made the saying: "here's mud in your eye" mean something entirely new. We stopped to buy more eyedrops at Walgreen's on the way back to Hilltop Rescue. She put some of the new eye drops in her eye after we got back, and I told her what the ophthalmologist had told me: "Use the eye drops if your eye feels scratchy or irritated. And don't rub your eyes."

Day 4 - Muckers Anonymous

There was an element in our group who wanted to go mucking, tearing out debris from houses and trying to dig up sentimental items for the home owners. I would have been happy to go mucking also, so our team leader said a crew could go mucking if they could join up with Chuck. Chuck was our mucking crew leader in August. I did not have my heart set on mucking or gutting houses, though it would have been good to do it, I was not disappointed when Chuck told me his van was full of volunteers already. Since he had no room for additional volunteers, we headed back to the St. Bernard project office.

The Ohio Seven headed back to continue the mudding project at the same house. I was amazed at how much work there still was to do, even though we had worked there two days already.

I got to do something new today when our mud ran out. I asked if I could use the mixer, which is a special bit that attaches to any standard drill. Since our drywall compound came in boxes, it was too thick to use directly on the walls. Each time we needed another batch, we had to add water to it, then mix it up. So I got the chance to mix the mud and try not to splatter it all over everything in sight. I managed to do both somewhat well, and we loaded up our troughs again.

We also moved some drywall out of our way so that we could finish mudding in one part of the house. When it is dry, drywall is not very brittle, and it is not very heavy either. It was fairly easy for us to move sheets of drywall with two people: one person at each end can make sure that the drywall sheet doesn't get damaged.

Lunch was different again: the home owner bought us "po' boys." One was a cheeseburger sub a few feet long, and the other had roast beef. Yesterday's planned lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches remained untouched today, and the home owner promised to make Jambalaya for lunch tomorrow.

After lunch, we walked up the street to see what the other houses were like. On the way up the street, we met another volunteer who was installing insulation and drywall in a house. After we talked to the other volunteer, we looked at an earthen levee which was at the end of the street, and crossed a bridge to walk to the top of the levee. There was a marsh on the other side of the levee. After that, we went back to the house we had worked on for three days.

On our way back, we saw a house that still had the "X" logo on it, with the date it was searched, the code for the regiment responsible for that search, and the number of bodies below it. I had seen a lot of zeros, but this one had a number: one person had been found dead inside. It was a sad reminder that even as rebuilding could help some people return home, others would never return.

We sanded some of the areas that had been mudded earlier, and I had to touch up a window where I messed up the mud that somebody else put around the sill. The rest of the day, we continued mudding the house. There was still so much left to be done.

When we got back to Hilltop Rescue, I found out that a couple of the people from the team had managed to join a mucking crew. They hadn't done that kind of work before, so they had stories to tell of all the things they had discovered. It brought back memories--some happy, some very sad--from my other trips.

Day 3 - New Orleans in December

It was dark by the time we made it into New Orleans and parked. Since I have Seasonal Affective Depression, I reminded myself that the days were getting longer again, since the date was now several days past the Winter Solstice. The city lights were bright in the distance, and since it had rained, sidewalks and streets glistened, giving the Crescent City a magical appearance. I'm sure winter is less of a tourist season there, so there was less activity than I remembered during my other trips. It seemed quieter to me.

Some of the group went to a local restaurant near the Market, which was not open. Jazz music filtered in from outside. While we waited for our table, cell phone calls came in, and we asked for more tables. A few minutes later, several staff members from Hilltop Rescue arrived and joined us for dinner.

One volunteer ordered an appetizer of alligator tail. It arrived cubed, fried in a spicy batter. When he shared it with everybody else, I took a piece and tried it. Remarkably, it did not taste "like chicken," it tasted like alligator tail. There wasn't any meat I could think of to match that taste to, although the texture reminded me of shark.

After dinners ranging from jambalaya to grilled shrimp were served, we headed to Cafe du Monde to round out this trip with coffee and beignets. On our way into the cafe, somebody recognized Mayor Nagin, who was on his way out. He was gone before anybody really would've had a chance to talk with him.

After we finished getting a sugar and caffeine buzz that would last well into the morning, we returned to Hilltop Rescue. I didn't go to bed until I had finished drying my laundry load, at about 1:30 in the morning.

Day 3 - The Ohio Seven

With all the people from Youth in Action, there was a larger crowd in line for breakfast, and the morning devotional had to be moved outside to accommodate the crowd. This was almost unreal to me. During the first trip, there had been about 400 volunteers at Hilltop Rescue, the place was packed, but everybody fit into one room for devotional. During the second trip, there were at least 50 volunteers, but not more than 75.

The group I was with got to return to do more mudding at the same house as yesterday. We stopped at the office of the St. Bernard Project in the morning for updates, and we found out that our group had been given a name: The Ohio Seven. I don't know if any of the other groups got named by the home owners they were helping out. We got to return to see if we could finish the job, and there were things that had been left undone the day before that we would get back to. Everybody was excited, and we hoped we might finish the first coating of mud this time around.

On the way to the house, we stopped at Home Depot in Chalmette and picked up a lock for the front door of the house we were working on. At the house, the group leader worked to install the lock while the rest of us got our troughs of mud and went back to work.

I got to return to what I called "the worst closet mudding job in the house," something I called the closet I was working on yesterday. However, there was a "worst closet" and it wasn't the one I was in. There was a worse one adjoining the master bathroom. I could've stood inside it, but only if I squeezed into it sideways and then stayed still with my arms at my sides.

That gave me a good dose of perspective as I worked to finish the closet I started yesterday. I had to do the tape on the ceiling and in the corners around the sides of the ceiling.

Before we had the chance to break out the lunch we packed, the home owner's pizza arrived. She also let us have pop from a refrigerator behind the house. She also offered to let us use the bathroom in her FEMA trailer.

We went back to work in the afternoon, but we did not work for as long, because we had planned to go to New Orleans, see some of the sights, and eat dinner in town.

Day 2 - A Walk in Chalmette

We took a walk in Chalmette before our workday began. Most of this day was summed up in the Servants Unite blog.

But something that stood out for me was the driver who stopped beside us as we walked around the block. She asked us if we were volunteers, and we answered that we were. Even though we hadn't done any work for her, and she barely even knew us, she thanked us for being there.

"You don't know how much this means to all of us," she said.

We got to work later in the day. I joined a team with six other people. We went to do mudding work to finish the appearance of the home owner's drywall. This was very different for me, because on my previous trips, I had worked to tear the stuff down since it had been damaged by flooding. It felt good not to see all the studs in the house. It felt even better to see all the spaces between the drywall get filled in and all the screw holes covered up.

But drywall mudding takes up to three coats to finalize it. It has to dry off, and then be sanded before the next coat, so we had our work cut out for us. At the end of the day, we were still not finished, so we promised we would return.

After mucking, this did not feel like work, but I was glad we were doing it.

Day 2 - Dinner Surprise

At the end of the day, we returned to Hilltop Rescue and got to see how much busier the place had become: hundreds of teens from Youth in Action had arrived, so the cafeteria was packed with people.

While we were eating, we were jolted to attention by the most interesting of sounds: a woman at the front of the room had stood up and was apparently hollering at the top of her lungs. "But wait," I thought as my brain caught up with what my ears were hearing, "there is a musical pattern to what I am hearing." She had begun by singing: "MY FATHER IS IN HEAVEN ABOVE..." and then singing a chorus of trilling effects.

"...I CANNOT PRAISE HIM LOUD ENOUGH!" the woman sang. She trilled through her second chorus and then finished. I realized I'd just heard somebody jodeling, and it was nothing like the stereotypes I've heard. Before she sat down, she explained that she was from Switzerland, where the jodel had once been common. She explained that her friends knew she could jodel, so they had begged her to jodel for everybody at Hilltop Rescue. After she finished her story, everybody applauded.