Day 4 - Working for Real

The volunteers who stay behind are the "heart" of Hilltop Rescue. Without them, food would not be ready for the volunteers returning from gutting houses. Without them, the building would get dirtier and become unsanitary enough to be a health risk. But the volunteers who go out to gut houses are the "body" of Hilltop Rescue. Neither has a purpose without the other.

I was about to see what it was like to be in the "body" of Hilltop Rescue. During morning devotional, Tim (the devotional leader) taught us a new song, called "On a Day Like This."

Loud: On a day like this (clap twice)
Louder: On a day like this (clap twice)
Loudest: On a day like this
Oh! Oh! Oh! (clap once)
Shouting: I need the Lord to help me!!

I found out later on just how much singing that song could help.

The drive to the work site involved a couple of turn arounds, because the residential streets still have not got signs. After a few minutes, we found the house. We all got out of the van, met with the homeowners and prayed for success during our work day.

We got our work gloves and our masks on, and then we went inside the house. There was a lot of work to be done, and at first I was stunned. I asked myself "Where do I start?" As I had expected, I was mentally unprepared for this, even after what I saw on the trip. But then I noticed something: all the objects I saw were wrecked, but I could recognize them after a couple of moments. I started talking to myself, telling myself each object that I saw. Each time I picked up something, I told myself "This was a ______."

It helped me to understand the magnitude of what had been lost, and it helped me keep going. The work was hard but the homeowners helped where they could, and after lunch, we started to realize that we were running out of time. With the home owners, we prayed for a "power hour" and got back to work. By the end of the day, all the furniture was out of the house, some drywall was being removed, and we realized that carpeting has to come out first, before the drywall. I was asked to help carry a carpet out to the debris pile a few minutes before we stopped working. Even though we had four other men helping, that carpet wore me out too much to keep going.

A couple of minutes later, the youth minister from my church asked everybody to gather up all of the tools. We were sad that we hadn't finished the house, but the home owners were glad that we had left our mark. Before we left, I stood amazed at the house-sized pile of debris that we had removed from inside the house.

When we got back to Camp Rowley, cleaned up, ate, and finished devotional, I was grateful for that cot that was my bed for the week. I fell asleep, knowing that we were scheduled for two more days of this kind of work.