Louisiana...

Day 7 - Ohio

2007-04-07T01:44:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-06T20:53:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-06T01:43:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-05T20:00:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-05T01:41:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-04T01:42:00.000-05:00

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?!?

2007-04-04T01:40:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-03T01:39:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-04-03T01:37:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-02T01:36:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-04-02T01:35:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-01T00:46:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-05T01:20:00.000-05:00

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

2007-01-01T19:40:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-31T18:37:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-12-30T19:09:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-30T02:16:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-29T01:31:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-28T01:10:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-28T00:44:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-27T08:08:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-27T00:56:00.000-05:00

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.

Day 1 - Rolling Out

2006-12-26T21:33:00.000-05:00

Mom dropped me off at the departure site this time, instead of Dad. Within minutes, other people began to arrive. As I got out of the car, I saw somebody who I had worked with on my second trip. We had some time to talk and catch up on things that had happened since last August.

Mom was waiting to make sure I would be okay. The volunteers arrived but two rented minivans did not, so a few people had to go to the rental place and pick them up. This delayed our departure, so I went back to Mom in her car and told her it was okay for her to leave. I hugged her goodbye through the driver's side window, and after I took a photo of her in the car, she left. There was a positive side to the delay for the rental vans--the 15 passenger Church Van was towing the luggage trailer, so we had time to pack everything inside properly.

As we hit the Interstate 71 South, I switched on my digital watch's chronometer and pressed "Start." The seconds began to tick away, counting up the length of the drive that lay ahead. Since the group leader brought his laptop and accessories, we had a fairly large screen to watch DVDs on in the 15 passenger van.

Our group consisted of three vans: the two rental minivans and the 15 passenger Church Van. We had most of our luggage in a trailer on the Church Van, along with tools, because this trip was not supposed to focus on damage cleanup: we were going to help rebuild!

The trip from Ohio was uneventful, and we only made necessary stops to get food, gas, and visit restrooms. We did not get delayed in Alabama like we did in August. We entered Louisiana late at night and arrived at Hilltop Rescue. It would be my third and final time spent at C.F. Rowley Elementary School as a volunteer. Hilltop Rescue was to close "Camp Rowley" down in January so that the building could be returned to St. Bernard Parish. As we pulled into the parking lot, I stopped my chronometer, so that it read: 15 hours, 31 minutes, 20 seconds.

Servants Unite had arrived in Louisiana for the 20th time since Hurricane Katrina had made landfall.

Prologue Plus One

2006-12-19T01:22:00.000-05:00

On Sunday a lot of the people who are going to Louisiana for this trip gathered for a pre-trip meeting. So far, Servants Unite has organized about 20 teams of volunteers in the past 16 months. The team leader mentioned the Industrial Canal, where levee breaches flooded the Lower Ninth Ward. Another area, mentioned by the Saint Bernard Parish Government web site is the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, or the MRGO.

I ran a search in Google on the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, and found a (potentially opinionated) Wikipedia article about the MRGO. Take a look.

Prologue

2006-12-14T08:07:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I got permission to go on the third trip. I am taking down the question mark at the end of this blog's name, and changing the title to "My Third Trip to Louisiana."

And I am happy to do it!

(The above information is now out of date. I merged all the blogs into one called "Louisiana...")

This will be a trip of reconstruction: we will get to put drywall and insulation and other things back into houses. I am looking forward to learning how the stuff goes in (construction), rather than how the stuff comes out (gutting).

Fortnight

2006-12-12T01:52:00.000-05:00

I have two weeks in which I must make all things ready, either to go, or to not go. There is still an element of uncertainty in some of the arrangements I'd have to make, except for one detail which I am not allowed to change.

In an earlier post in this blog, I said that if I go on a third trip, I might stay for longer. I cannot do that now, because I've already decided not to try to stay in the Gulf.

One day, God may lead me back, or He may lead me somewhere entirely different. The inverted life is about waiting for God and trusting His plans.

Come Again?

2006-12-10T23:17:00.000-05:00

I mentioned the possibility of another trip to a woman from church. She is a mother of two teens in the youth group. Her children had volunteered in the first trip to Louisiana, which I joined when I found out about it back in June. I noticed that her face lit up when I explained that we might get a chance to rebuild or help work on remodeling houses there. She was interested, and wanted to know some details, so I gave her a piece of scrap paper with web addresses for the Servants Unite! Main Page, the Servants Unite! Blog Page. I also promised to forward her the email I'd received about the upcoming trip.

I sent that email this afternoon, so we'll see where that leads.

It's great to know that I'm not the only person interested in this, and that I was able to spread the news to at least one other person.

Promotion

2006-11-28T23:58:00.000-05:00

Servants Unite has announced a major change in the relief work planned for the near future: there will be a shift from mucking houses (general cleanup of debris inside a house) to reconstruction (repair, remodeling, rebuilding, and other activities). The shift to reconstruction will require more experienced construction workers to travel with any volunteer group - read more here.

There are two more trips planned before the end of the year. The final trip scheduled for the final days of this year. Both trips will focus on debris removal and reconstruction.

Hilltop Rescue and Relief has plans to shut down their volunteer operations in Louisiana very shortly after the beginning of next year. Following that, who knows when and where they'll reappear? I will keep a link to their web site posted on Inverted Life unless they give up their Domain Name Registration.

The changes are not entirely bad. Future volunteers working to rebuild a house will not have to move refrigerators and freezers out of houses. They won't have to worry about finding hazardous materials in the houses they work on. Some of the people from Hilltop Rescue and Relief might show up in other places, staying on to ease the transition, or to join the new reconstruction efforts.

On the other hand, the changes may not be entirely good. When 2007 begins, FEMA will stop paying a 100-percent reimbursement for demolition done on any house. FEMA's share will go down to a 90-percent reimbursement. In St. Bernard Parish, there are still hundreds of houses condemned and slated for demolition. According to the The Times-Picayune the State of Louisiana will cover the remaining 10-percent reimbursement. But the total cost is still millions of dollars.

St. Bernard Parish has responded by issuing more demolition notices and by going to work as fast as possible to get the condemned properties demolished.

As for the final trip of the year, it's scheduled to leave on "Boxing Day," the day after Christmas. The volunteers plan to go all the way to Louisiana on December 26th, work a few days, and stop in Birmingham, Alabama on the way home. The group would return to Ohio on New Year's Day.

As for me, I wouldn't be blogging about that trip if I weren't interested. I hope I can be involved.

Indebted

2006-10-06T18:52:00.000-05:00

I believe that some thing happened to me in Louisiana. For me to go and do something as simple as gut a house, then come back to Ohio with a sense of longing for God, and for another chance to go to Louisiana, something had to happen.

I have prayed on-and-off again about knowing what thing it was that happened. I joked at work later on, saying "I'd like the number of that wheelbarrow that hit me," but I am serious. I may never figure out exactly what God does through experiences like this, but I know that I came out different. There are times when I would like to know the exact cause, and there are times that I pray for it to remain a mystery, so that I remain focused on God.

I am indebted to Him for whatever He did to me. In spite of the risk of using a cliche, I will say what He did: He opened my eyes and He opened my heart. That is one reason why I want to go back. Part of my prayers to God include asking Him to never let me go back to the way I was. I wonder if I would change more by returning to Louisiana, or if that's just the "spiritual junkie" in me.

Do I need to go back to Louisiana to continue in a life centering on God? No. Does God have a plan for me? Yes. But the "Inverted Life" doesn't require me to go to a specific place in the world. It requires me to change my attitudes and change my life:

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." (Romans 12:2)

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

2006-09-28T07:37:00.000-05:00

I still keep hearing hints and suggestions in conversations with neighbors, in the news, in sermons at Church. I still keep "hearing things" that suggest to me that I need to go back. I do not know whether these "things" are a general call that I can answer anywhere I am, or whether they are a specific calling to go to a specific place and do a specific thing.

There are many ways to serve God. All that a person has to do is "get plugged in," or find a spot where there's something to be done. But I keep running across things, even in the worship at church (not just in a specific message that a specific preacher is trying to give) that make me think of trying to return to Louisiana to help.

Our former preacher has found a new calling in Tennessee, and has moved there to serve God. The details of this calling involve job openings for the preacher and his wife, their desire to move closer to their home towns, and the fact that both jobs are "service" jobs. Not only are those jobs their "dream jobs," that they had always wanted to do, but those jobs also serve God.

Since the preacher moved away, our church has had several different people preaching for the past few weeks. For all of them to use the same "party line" seems like more than just a co-incidence. But I do not suspect conspiracy on their part. If anything, God is working "in the background."

Sometimes I wonder if I'm just a "glutton for punishment." But if my life is truly an "inverted life," I have got to ask whether the following statement is true:

"If Chris would come after me, Chris must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24)

I substituted my name to emphasize the point of all this. If I am being called on, I may have to give up what I have around me in Ohio and the (in)security I have here. I have plenty of reasons to go and plenty of reasons to stay, and it's the sorting through them all that's creating the pressure I feel.

Trip Three?!?

2006-09-18T20:28:00.000-05:00

I have no idea whether or not I should go! There are all kind of considerations to be made first. For one, I've used up all of my eligible "vacation" time. For another, my financial situation may be "stable" but it is certainly not "solid" right now. I am certain that at the current rate, I will run out of savings and checking account money sometime after the first of the year, 2007.

I am fairly certain that if I go on a third trip, that it will be extended, because each of the past two times that I have gone to Louisiana, I've wondered why I should not stay.

If you've been reading Hilltop Rescue and Relief, then you know that the need is great. So do I.

It is becoming not just a need that I am aware of, but a need that I cannot ignore.

Any comments that you have at all would be very welcome.

Day 9 - Midday Pickup

2006-08-13T19:04:00.000-05:00

In the morning, I realized that I had packed my sneakers in my duffel bag. That meant that I could not wear them to church. I took this as more of an "opportunity" than as a loss. That meant I could wear my sandals. Since I had worn sandals every day last week (whenever I wasn't wearing work boots), they felt more comfortable to me anyway. At least, they seemed more comfortable until somebody asked if I could help serve during Communion. I thought about serving barefoot to keep myself from tripping if a sandal slipped off, but that might've bothered some people, so I kept them on and took extra care not to let them slip off my toes.

Dad and I left church early (in the middle of the Bible class after worship) so that we could go and pick up my missing luggage. The trip was only a few minutes from our church to the church where the second trip had started. Their parking lot was full now, and I walked into the vestibule leading into the building. To my right was my errant duffel bag.

I checked just to be sure, and took the bag with me to the car. When we got back to church, the Bible class was just about over. Since we had missed the middle of it, it was not easy to comprehend the discussion that was going on when we returned. Dad talked to the teacher after the class for a few minutes, but what I overheard didn't really help me understand it all. This was partly because I had gone to bed very late last night.

After the conversation was finished, Dad and I returned home, officially bringing my second trip to an end.

Day 8 - Returning Home Lighter

2006-08-12T07:52:00.000-05:00

When I unloaded my luggage at home, the first thing I noticed was that there was less of it. That was not good. Either, I had left something in Louisiana (because they have a warehouse full of clothes that nobody wants, they throw away any clothes that volunteers leave behind!), or I had left something in Ohio (when we moved things from the minivan to Dad's car). Since the minivan was a rental, I had to find out fast.

I called the group leader after midnight and apologized. Then I asked if she had seen a purple duffel bag laying around anywhere. It turns out that she had seen it when dropping off the minivan, so she had taken it. She said she'd make arrangements so that I could pick up the duffel bag at the place where the trip started. After the telephone call, I went to bed.

The trip which I thought would end today would officially end tomorrow, when the last of my luggage returned home with me.

Day 8 - The Final Stretch

2006-08-12T07:44:00.000-05:00

We decided to avoid any sit-down restaurants on the way home, and order food "to go." As we drove along, I pointed out many of the landmarks that were not as easily visible in the dark. We left Louisiana, and as we went along, the signs of Hurricane Katrina became less evident in the landscape.

Since the ONN crew had left Chalmette before us, they occasionally called by cell phone to inform us of their progress and of potential driving delays. For example, in Alabama, police were pulling over anybody who was caught driving even a few miles per hour above the speed limit. We stopped for lunch and traded passengers for the next leg of the trip. I switched from riding in the minivan to riding in the car. We passed through the rest of Alabama without encountering any traffic accidents to delay us.

In Tennessee, we traded passengers again at a gas station during refueling. With little delay, we were back on the road again. I became the "navigator" again as we approached Nashville. I used the road atlas to check the instructions from Google Maps and determined that the route through Nashville would be different on the trip home. A cell phone conversation between both vehicle drivers covered the fact that the route was different. I did not get disoriented, and I did a good job of keeping track of exactly where we were on the route. A while later, we were driving out of Nashville.

We stopped for dinner at a gas station with a Subway restaurant next to it, ordered subs to go, and hit the road again. That was in Kentucky, after we had passed Elizabethtown and returned to Eastern Standard Time. We discussed the time left on the trip and concluded that we would be in Ohio before midnight.

As we rounded Louisville and merged onto I-71 North, I got to put away the driving directions and the road atlas. This area of the United States was familiar enough to the drivers that I did not need to be a "navigator" anymore. The sun went down before we reached Cincinnati, and all the city lights were on. As we crossed the Ohio River, I read the sign: "Ohio Welcomes You!"

When we were well into Ohio, we began trading trivia questions again, but this time they had a twist--they were questions about our week in Chalmette and New Orleans. Questions included "how many steps does a volunteer climb to get to the second floor of C.F. Rowley Elementary School," and "how did the refrigerator movers at the Monoplex get extra traction?"

Before we reached Columbus, the driver let me borrow his cell phone to call Dad. It was sometime after 11:00 P.M. when we arrived where we had started a week ago. A few minutes later, as we were saying our goodbyes, Dad drove into the parking lot. Then Dad helped me load up, and we headed home...

Day 8 - The Road Goes Ever On and On

2006-08-12T07:18:00.000-05:00

I ate a hurried breakfast after getting misinformed about what time we were leaving. By the time we actually did fully pack up the van, I had everything ready to go. I packed some of the things that did not fit into my duffel bag, which I had packed into my suitcase for the trip. That meant that everything had a place to fit, but it also meant that I had to keep track of a suitcase, a backpack, a sleeping bag, a pillow, and a duffel bag.

We circled up for a prayer, and then said our goodbyes to Chuck and the other people we had befriended through the week.

We had return trip instructions from Google Maps since we started last Saturday. We brought these instructions out. The ONN crew was already on the road ahead of us, and would occasionally call us to keep tabs on our progress or to share updates with us.

So we began the trip back to Ohio. I gave the first two directions, intending to backtrack the way we came, and thinking that my instructions matched the ones from Google Maps. But as we drove on, we realized that we were not heading the right way to leave Chalmette! After we turned around, I tried to figure out what went wrong. What I figured out was rather dismaying: Google Maps was giving instructions for us to leave Chalmette by way of residential roads! We would have needed to guess, as none of the street signs were still up.

I examined all of the instructions as we exited Chalmette along our familiar route, and saw that our instructions varied significantly in Nashville as well. I made a mental note of this, then tried to make sure I was focused--the week had been tiring and I still felt sleepy.

Day 7 - On a Day Like This

2006-08-11T01:01:00.000-05:00

Today's morning devotional was led by the regular devotional leader (who had been gone most of the week). He gave a message that began with a pair of inspirational videos. The first one was called That's My King, and the second was called Never Been Unloved. The first video inspired me, but I had already seen it on my first day of my first trip. The second video moved me to tears. I needed that.

Later during the devotional, the devotional leader led us in a round of "On a Day Like This" which is a song that I remember from my first trip.

The rest of the team had been to a different house during the time that I visited the clinic. Before we went to our assigned house for today, one of the people from the group drove me to the Walgreen's pharmacy to pick up my prescription. I was worried that I would not be able to go to work, because the pills indicated that they needed to stay at room temperature. But since they had to be taken only two times a day, I could leave the bottle at Camp Rowley after taking one pill. The eye drops were a potential problem, since they couldn't be left in the heat, but I put them into a Ziploc bag and put that into one of our coolers. Finally, since the side-effects of the pills included "nausea, dizziness, and sun-sensitivity," I drank extra water, decided not to transport debris outside the house unless absolutely necessary, and decided to put on a couple of layers of sunblock.

We would be working with a man named Steve today. Chuck was reassigned to work with some of the people who oversee the decision-making for Hilltop Rescue and Relief. Brendan insisted on showing them the work that was being done firsthand, and the best person for that job was Chuck. To me, Steve was just as dedicated, just as motivating, and just as hard-working, even if he was not the same as Chuck.

We met the home owners after stopping to ask for directions. We were in for a special treat today: the home owners had been visiting their house over the past months, spending their weekends removing muck and debris. The house was empty enough and dry enough that I did not need a mask inside until we started working on the drywall. I opened windows in the rooms of the house, and when one wouldn't stay open, Steve suggested: "break off a piece of the baseboard in the house, and wedge the window open with it." That worked perfectly.

We started working on removing woodwork from the house, and I noticed how different I felt, holding a hammer and a pry bar that hadn't been spray painted bright orange. It wasn't that the tools weren't useful, it was that they weren't familiar. They weren't as easily visible against the backdrop of a gutted house.

We broke for lunch, and sat in the van to eat. Steve turned the engine on and used the air-conditioner, which gave us a welcome reprieve from the hot sun outside. There weren't many places for shade, so I was glad to be inside a vehicle where I wouldn't feel the burning of the sun on my sensitized skin. I asked a woman from the group to help me take my eye drops. I am squeamish about anything or anybody touching parts of my eyes (myself included), so eye drops aren't easy for me to take. With no mirror, I could not give them to myself. The woman I asked was finished administering the eye drops before I could tense up.

We went back to work, but time in the afternoon really flew. The drywall removal was almost completed, and we had torn down sections of the ceiling in most of the rooms before we had to stop for the day. We loaded the tools back into the trailer, and then headed back to Camp Rowley.

Dinner was very good tonight--there was ground beef, lettuce, chopped tomato, guacamole, shredded cheese, and all the other things we needed to make some very good tacos or burritos. I piled everything together on my plate, over a layer of blue corn tortilla chips. Some of the people from the group sat together with the ONN crew, and when one of the people working in the kitchen offered us a dessert of chocolate pie, we all accepted.

I found out that one of the ONN crew members had been to the clinic for eye problems similar to my own. He'd even been prescribed the same anti-inflammatory eye drops I'd been given. I warned him that the list of side effects for my eye drops included "hallucinations" (I am not making this up), and pretended to warn him:

"If you start having 'visions' of chocolate pie sitting in front of you, don't believe in everything you see." We talked for a while longer, but then the conversation turned to the trip ahead. We split up to pack, wash laundry, and get ready to leave. The ONN crew asked permission to get some final interviews before we left Louisiana.

I decided to spend the last exposures of film in my second camera, taking pictures of group members. At last, with a single exposure left, I found Chuck.

"Do you mind if I take a picture of you?" I asked him.

"Only if you're in the picture with me," he said.

It was a fitting way to wrap up a long week.

I went to bed with almost all my laundry cleaned and packed. I fell asleep for a while, but got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and get a drink. The teens from California had just returned from sightseeing in New Orleans, and I got to speak with their youth leader before we all turned in for the night.

There was a long journey ahead of us, and we would need all the sleep we could get.

Day 6 - I Spy

2006-08-10T15:21:00.000-05:00

We had to say our goodbyes to the ONN crew as we ate lunch. They had a lot of footage to edit and assemble into their Hurricane Katrina anniversary documentary. They also had an interview scheduled with Dr. Phil, concerning the psychological after effects of Hurricane Katrina.

I was about to return to work, when one of the team members spotted the discoloration of my right eye and remarked that it had gotten worse. I admitted that I'd suspected pink eye (from viral causes), but that I'd intended to get it looked at after returning to Ohio. But Chuck wanted to get a look first. He instructed me to pry open my lower eyelid and look upward, then to pry open my upper eyelid and look downward. From what he saw, he decided that I was going to get my eye looked at as soon as possible. I said I'd need somebody to drive me to the clinic to get my eye looked at, and Chuck said he'd make the arrangements. In the meantime, I returned to the back room of the house to clear away more debris.

The son of the home owners came inside with Chuck once the front room had been gutted. He looked at the beams and the studs in the room and had to come to a hard conclusion--the house could not be repaired. If the wood looked as bad elsewhere in the house, then it would be better to demolish it. Immediately following that consent, our working orders changed. We were now to sift debris and search for sentimental items. Debris was to be removed only if it was directly in the way of our search. We dug through the back room, pulling up all we could in hopes of finding a coin collection that used to be in a box. All we could find were handfuls of Mardi Gras doubloons, with the occasional collectible doubloon turning up.

But we did not find the collection before it was time to leave. We returned to Camp Rowley in the middle of the afternoon to pick up another assignment before the end of the day, and to drop me off with the person who had noticed the condition of my eye. Chuck told me that I didn't have to shower and change just to visit the clinic, so I went as I was. After trying to find out which entrance was the correct entrance for the clinic, we arrived at the right place. What usually took "at least three hours" for people who'd visited the clinic before, took a little over an hour. And that time was spent inside a building with air-conditioning. I filled out my paperwork, then I was examined, I was asked about my symptoms, and then given anti-inflammatory eye drops, antibiotic eye drops, an anti-inflammatory shot in one hip, and an antibiotic shot in the other hip. I was also handed a prescription for Ciprofloxacin (antibiotic pills).

On our way out, we met the youth group leader from California and one of his teenagers. She had cut her hand and would only need a few stitches. We left them at the clinic and returned to Camp Rowley. After I'd showered and changed, I searched for Brendan. When I found him, I asked him where I could help out. He referred me to the kitchen, since dinner was almost ready. I arrived just in time to help carry food to the Cafeteria, and then I was allowed to eat and prepare for the evening devotional. Unfortunately, the food prepared for the group was not enough for everybody. Some people ate leftovers, and I think some never even showed up for dinner.

After the devotional, Chuck took me to the Walgreen's pharmacy to submit my prescription. One of the California volunteers came with us to buy batteries for his digital camera. The prescription would be ready to pick up in the morning tomorrow.

Day 6 - Chuck's Way

2006-08-10T14:00:00.000-05:00

After breakfast, we got one final chance to say our goodbyes to the Michigan teens who had worked with us. We took pictures, and had pictures of us taken together. Some of the people exchanged cell phone numbers or email addresses, and then we saw them off on their journey. The group diminished in size, but three people were added: the two volunteers from California, and a third person, who I never asked where she was from. We also had four more people added to our crew: the ONN crew was going to work with us today.

We drove through damaged neighborhoods until we found a house with a bright orange sticker affixed to the center of the front window. It was a demolition notice.

During orientation, we had been told stories of Hilltop Rescue volunteers mucking a house even with the bulldozers across the street from it. Chuck told us that the demolition list for St. Bernard Parish has at least one thousand houses on it. He also told us that a home owner could choose to have a house removed from the list by filing the requisite paperwork. We were going to try to clear out the debris and find sentimental objects, and gut enough to give the home owners a choice. We prayed, and then we got started.

Inside, I discovered that the front window was set in a metal window frame that had no visible hardware, no locking mechanisms, nothing that suggested a way to open it. It was flush with the wall on all sides, so I told Chuck about the problem. He told me to continue opening windows and not to worry about the window in the front room. I managed to open most of the other windows before hitting a new snag: There were some windows in the back rooms of the house that could be cranked open, but the cranks were nowhere to be found. Chuck told me to get pliers and turn the stumps where the cranks attached. It was not easy, but we got three of the windows opened this way.

The last window was in a room piled high with debris. When I tried to turn the stump of the crank here, there was heavy rust all over it. The pliers slipped off over and over again, but the stump never turned. The window was stuck. Chuck tried prying the window panes apart, but there was a threaded bolt of some kind fastening them together. I tried turning the bolt, but it rotated freely, giving me no indication of whether it had anything else holding it together.

Chuck asked me to muck out the room and stop worrying about the windows. I got help from the two California volunteers, and at one point heard a group member remind another that speedy debris removal was less important than salvaging the valuables for the home owners.

Day 5 - Now Hear the Word

2006-08-09T10:35:00.000-05:00

The leader from Michigan used the "Feeding of the Five Thousand" passage and discussed a group of monks who practiced "chewing on the Word." They would meditate for days (sometimes without eating or sleeping), to draw every drop of meaning from what they read. Since we did not have time to do that here, we would only spend about five minutes. The leader from Michigan would read, then let us meditate for a minute, then say "Now Hear the Word of the Lord." Then he would re-read the passage.

I focused on how I had found strength in the Word today. The song "As the Deer Thirsts for the Water" is based on the 42nd Psalm. Jesus provided strength to me, in the same way he satisfied physical hunger among the five thousand. Jesus is also the "bread of life" because he satisfies a spiritual hunger for God.

When devotional finished, our group gathered for a final meeting. There Chuck expressed uncertainty about whether he should stay in Louisiana, or return home to visit his parents. His dad was having an operation, and since he was on medications to reduce clotting, he'd had trouble healing in the past. Then we prayed for Chuck.

Day 5 - The Ohio-Michigan Demolition

2006-08-09T09:59:00.000-05:00

The ONN reporters had interviewed us about the Ohio State Buckeyes and University of Michigan Wolverines football rivalry on Monday. We had not been "rivals" at any time on this trip, and as we headed back into the Monoplex, I thought that our group of volunteers should have a name to show that we overcame any rivalry between ourselves.

At the Monoplex, there were five full-sized refrigerators. If they'd stayed vertical, we could've used a dolly to roll them away, but they had all wound up laying down on their backs. Tipping them onto a dolly vertically would let out all that "wholesome goodness" that people at Camp Rowley call "refrigerator juice." Since we agreed that it is the worst smell we've ever smelled, we did not want to let that juice leak out. So that meant the refrigerators needed to get pushed across the floor.

We caught up with two people who were working to align one refrigerator to get it out of the house. With a couple of shoves, we got it through the door into the garage. Then we gave it a couple more shoves, until it was able to slide down the driveway. We kept pushing it until it reached the curb. One down, four more to go.

Back inside, we gathered around the next refrigerator. I noticed then, that our group of four consisted of two people from Ohio and two from Michigan. An idea for a team name popped into my head: "The Ohio-Michigan Demolition" (Or "The Michigan-Ohio Demolition" depending on which state you're from). We pushed the next refrigerator to the same exit leading into the garage, then down the driveway and out to the curb. Two down, three more to go. This was getting tiresome, at the end of a very tiring day.

We went back in. I suggested trying to put a dolly at each end of a refrigerator and trying to roll the next refrigerator out of the house. I was told that we had only one dolly. If we'd had a flat dolly we might've gotten somewhere, but we did not. The only level path to the curb was through that one exit in the garage, so each trip was going to get longer and longer, because each refrigerator was farther into the house than the last.

The third refrigerator hit a snag, and we had to tip it ever so slightly so that the object could be pulled out from under it. We shoved the refrigerator all the way to the garage exit, but lost traction on leaked refrigerator juice. We couldn't get out of the house. The construction worker asked a woman to help us, but she said she was "whipped." He explained how she could still help: she'd have to try to plant her feet as firmly as possible. This gave him a foothold. His pushing got us clear of the spill and onto dry flooring again. We entered the garage and pushed the refrigerator down to the curb. Three down, two more to go.

We walked three-fourths of the way back through the Monoplex to get to the next refrigerator. I was getting tired, and each time we stopped for rest, I prayed for strength by reciting a line from "As the Deer Thirsts for the Water:" I pour out my soul deep within me / Deep within me I pour out my soul! We finished pushing the refrigerator to the curb. As we turned to get the last refrigerator, Chuck and another woman from our team came out of the garage with it.

There was one other refrigerator, but it was a wine cooler, not a full sized appliance. It took little effort to tip it onto a dolly, and it took only one person to roll it out of the house. The rest of us watched and made sure it never hit a bump or leaked on the way out.

Some of the people from the group then gave in to their curiosity and decided to peek inside the refrigerators. I did not care to look. We had a prayer before heading out. When we got back to Camp Rowley, we had hamburgers for dinner. Two of the people who helped move refrigerators ate a total of eleven burgers.

The youth group leader from Michigan led the devotional tonight.

Day 5 - A Second Chance

2006-08-09T08:35:00.000-05:00

We had known since Monday that the teens from Michigan would have to leave on Thursday, so this was our last day to work with them. After breakfast, we found out that we would be going back to the Monoplex today. We were delayed, however, when Dr. Phil McGraw visited the FEMA camp next to Camp Rowley. Because his vehicles and his crews inadvertently blocked Madison Avenue, we had to take a different route. Some people disagreed with Dr. Phil, and some people agreed with him--as long as he carried the message that people still needed help in Louisiana and in the rest of the Gulf.

At the Monoplex, we were surprised to find that the piles of debris that we had left on Monday were gone today. We took that as a blessing, because it would give us all of that space again, to pile up today's debris from the house. We prayed together again, then got to work.

There was a lot of woodwork to remove from the walls, from baseboards and door frames, to paneling and shelf brackets. We went through the rooms removing the woodwork and cleaning out the rest of the debris. I was on my way out to the pile with another loaded wheelbarrow when the second ramp began to wobble. I struggled to stay balanced, but had to step down off the ramp to keep from falling. I stopped using the second ramp after that.

Later, I wound up helping in a closet in the back of the Monoplex, trying to figure out how some shelving was mounted on the wall. Wire shelf supports had been screwed down to some of the wooden shelf supports. After finally detaching one, I learned how the rest of them were put together. The work got easier after that.

We took a break for lunch and returned to tear out more woodwork. Chuck inspected the rooms as we went, and gathered us in one of the front rooms for a "Master Class" in drywall removal. This time, he had actual drywall to work with. As he gave step-by-step instructions, he worked on the wall. At the end of his instructions, he and another group member had a chunk of drywall that was as long as the wall, and still in one piece. They carried it out to the pile and returned. Chuck pointed out that some of it will always break off and wind up on the floor, but this method was definitely better than using a sledge hammer. There was much less mess on the floor, which made for less work cleaning it up later on.

We split up into teams of two and three, and spread out through the Monoplex. As we began removing drywall, rain moved in again. The group I worked with cleaned out one room and its closet, then worked its way down the hallway. At times, we helped push drywall off so that people on the other side of the wall could take it to the debris piles. We even got a drywall piece big enough that it took three people to carry it out to the debris pile. But time was running out. And there were appliances to be moved out.

It was already the end of the day, and tools were being loaded up in the trailer. I threw my dust mask away, when one of the teenagers from Michigan turned to me.

"They're probably going to need more help in there with the refrigerators," he said, "We should go in."

Day 4 - Putting a Face on the Work

2006-08-08T21:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, we never got to see the home owner. On Sunday, we had seen people in the neighborhoods we "explored." On Monday, we talked to neighbors who were in the area of the Monoplex. But we never saw the home owner.

Today we did. She was an 81-year old, living in her FEMA trailer right beside a duplex house. This one happened to be an authentic duplex, and we found out that half of it had already been gutted. We prayed in the yard, and then got to work. The ONN crew interviewed the home owner and a few more team members, then went to gather more footage.

None of the windows inside the house would budge. I quickly discovered why--they had been nailed shut. I had to pry up four nails from each window pane before I could raise it. One of the people from Michigan helped me open windows in the back of the house, where they'd been caulked shut. He used the straight end of his pry bar as a chisel. He also helped decaulk, dismount, and remove a window air-conditioner. I asked him if he'd had any experience in construction, and it turned out that he had. I made sure to watch him when I could, and noticed he used his hammer to drive the pry bar into the kind of crevices and cracks that I'd always had trouble getting pried open.

Outside, Chuck orchestrated the setup of a ramp using an extension ladder and boards scavenged from a debris pile nearby. Inside, Chuck was ever-present to give a helping hand, and a hint on how to make the work easier: "Pry sideways, instead of up-and-down" he told me, "and you get more leverage." Sure enough, he was right. "That door frame will come off easier if you pry out the threshold first." He was right.

Later on, I broke part of a window frame, so that the windowpane would not stay in place. Chuck came to help me, and started by pulling rusty nails from different studs. He pounded the nails partway into the window frame, then tapped them on their sides until they bent like hooks. We hung the windowpane on the hooks, and Chuck secured it with more bent nails until it didn't shift when we let go of it.

After lunch, Chuck gathered everybody in the front room to show us how to remove drywall. He punched a hole in the wall, pulled out a chunk of particle board, and then changed his mind.

"This stuff is beaverboard. It doesn't work like drywall, so just get the biggest chunks you can and throw them in the wheelbarrow." He instructed us to spread out (to give each other room to work), and begin to tear out the wall material. In another room, we discovered four layers of wall material: wallpaper, paneling, drywall, and more drywall. In the midafternoon, the construction worker from Michigan climbed up into the attic, and began dropping the ceiling panels down onto the floor. He progressed from room to room. For safety reasons, we would stay out of the room he was above, until he finished. Then people would return to clean up the ceiling panels. Some were big enough to simply carry out to the pile--the exact thing Chuck suggested when dealing with drywall.

Toward the end of the day, we were running low on time again, and again we decided to stay longer and try to get more done. This time, we succeeded. After rounding up all of the tools, we got ready to say our goodbyes to the home owner. She insisted on hugging every one of us even though we were covered in sweat and dirt. When a person from Michigan said that reminded her of her grandmother, the home owner replied that we could call her "grandma" if we wanted to, since everybody else did. As she hugged me and said thanks, I said "you're welcome, Grandma."

I noticed yesterday that the devotional leader that had been at Camp Rowley was not there. In the evening, the youth group leader from California led the devotional. The same thing happened this morning and in the evening. I found out that anybody could volunteer to speak for a devotional, so I volunteered. The youth group leader from California asked me to talk to Brendan to make sure it was okay. But when I talked to Brendan, he asked me to talk to the youth group leader from California. In the meantime, two people had already volunteered to lead devotionals tomorrow, so the soonest I could speak was Thursday.

Since I don't consider myself to be that good of a speaker with crowds, I started thinking of ways to make an idea I had worthy of retelling.

Day 3 - Teaming Up

2006-08-07T20:46:00.000-05:00

Breakfast was followed by a short prayer, and then cleanup of the Cafeteria. We had found out last night that the minivan did not have a trailer hitch, so that ended our idea of being an independant team. There was no way to carry all the tools and coolers and supplies that we would undoubtedly need. After all of the volunteers helped clean around the area and take out trash, we found out that our problem had already been solved for us.

I was told to leave the wheelbarrow full of tools that we had prepared last night--"we would not be needing it." I found out why when I met Chuck beside his tool trailer. Chuck was a staff sergeant at one time, so he had a way of organizing that would make the rest of the week's work go so much better. We had been assigned to work with Chuck, along with a youth group from Michigan, and two college students who came alone from California to volunteer. Problem solved. Chuck had just spray painted all of the hand tools bright orange so that his yellow hammer and his yellow pry bar would not blend in with them. It also made the tools easier to see. No matter where they were laying the tools wouldn't get lost easily. Chuck asked for pairs of volunteers and assigned them different tasks, from preparing and packaging the next day's lunch and bottled water, to opening windows (I got assigned to that), to opening doors and removing them from their hinges, and on down the list.

We formed a circle, prayed for a successful work day, and then got into the van. We would be needing that prayer when we found out where we were going. After a drive into New Orleans, we arrived in front of a duplex home. Inside, however, some walls had been taken out, converting the building into a large family residence that we nicknamed "The Monoplex." It had 19 rooms, and they were all full of debris. We got our masks on, we got our work gloves on, and following Chuck's lead, we got down to work.

I began opening windows and taking down curtains and blinds. As I struggled with a curtain rod, Chuck appeared and said "It's easier if you pry them like this." He demonstrated, and the curtain rod came away easily. Later on, I was dumping a wheelbarrow full of debris, and there again was Chuck: "If you give it a push before you reach the pile, you can get it to tip up." He grabbed the skids from his wheelbarrow when it tipped up, and overturned the wheelbarrow. When he dropped it back down, it was completely empty. When I tried his technique, it really was easier to fully empty the wheelbarrow.

We had two injuries, unfortunately. Somebody stepped into mud and a nail went through his shoe. Somebody else stepped into mud in a different place, and a piece of glass went through her shoe. Since Chuck had assigned two volunteers to be "medics," the injuries were quickly taken care of.

During the first half of the work day, the ONN crew interviewed several of us when we took breaks to drink water and rest. They later drove through New Orleans and collected more footage. There were plans for an "Anniversary" documentary covering the lasting after-effects of Hurricane Katrina.

In the afternoon, we got all the way to clearing out the flooring from the rooms. Some photographers from Europe paid us a visit during a clearing in the afternoon rain, and asked me not to empty one wheelbarrow of debris. The photographers wanted pictures of the group, so we gathered around that wheelbarrow, decided not to smile, and had our pictures taken. We got back to work a few minutes later.

I took a wheelbarrow out once, and it was full of tiles. They were heavier than they looked, which was heavier than I was. As I went down the ramp on the porch, the wheelbarrow sped up. I had to speed up with it, and found out that I could not slow it down. There was another set of steps with another ramp in front of the Monoplex, and since I could not slow down, I aimed for the second ramp and hoped for the best. The wheelbarrow sped up again, and rolled through mud without slowing. It rolled through an inch-deep pothole in the street, and slowed down a little. It was just enough to let me get back in control and stop it in front of the debris pile. When somebody commented on the amount of energy I still had, I explained that I was only trying to control the wheelbarrow.

Later in the afternoon, carpets were rolled up and pitched onto the debris piles, but the day was coming to a close before we could handle the drywall. The team decided to stay working for longer than usual to try to get as much finished as possible.

We found such a large number of sentimental objects in the Monoplex, that it took some time getting them all inside the house again so that we could leave the house alone. After that, we loaded up the van and headed back to Camp Rowley. We arrived with barely enough time to shower and then eat quickly before devotional. Most of us were hungry enough that we ate first, outside the Cafeteria on picnic tables that were set up for that purpose.

I resigned myself to the possibility that we would not get to finish the Monoplex. I spent the time after devotional washing my work clothes, preparing tomorrow's clean clothes, and getting ready to go to bed. I did not have any trouble falling asleep.

Day 2 - Sunday in Louisiana

2006-08-06T07:27:00.000-05:00

In the morning, we were informed that there was a church nearby that was open again. Worship began at 10:00 A.M. Inside their building, the walls were up but not fully painted, parts of the framing of the building were still exposed, and we all sat on folding chairs on their concrete slab floor. But anybody could see signs of life in the people. Greeters at the door welcomed visitors with a hug or handshake, prayers and Bible verses were written all over the walls, and when the pastor called for everybody to gather to pray for revival in the community, everybody gathered.

After church, we returned to Camp Rowley to have lunch. We cleaned up the cafeteria, and then we went out to "see the sights." We stopped in one neighborhood and took pictures of some of the storm damage, including a shrimp boat sitting in the middle of the street (it has been burned down since we visited). The ONN crew followed us in the neighborhood, and took pictures of their own. We also headed into the Lower 9th Ward, something we did not do in my first trip. We saw all kinds of devastation, crews cleaning up in some areas, and houses moved off their foundations. One of these houses was stacked on top of an upside down pickup truck.

We then drove into downtown New Orleans. It was similar to my previous experience--for the most part, downtown New Orleans has already been cleaned up or rebuilt. We parked on Bourbon Street and I got to see more of the sights than I did in July. I bought a couple more souvenirs as we walked the street.

For dinner, we ate at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company in New Orleans. Then came the return trip. On the way back, I thought about the damage we had seen, and the fact that we were there to reduce just a small amount of it.

We began preparing for the next day, getting new "Hilltop Rescue" identification cards, and getting ready for orientation. A 26-member group from California arrived, and orientation began. After that, the other "veteran" on my team took me to help get tools for work tomorrow. The one problem we had, was that we only had seven people from Ohio. We did not know if we would be added to another work detail, or whether we would work alone. We were advised: "prepare as best as you can for your team to work alone, just in case your team actually has to work alone."

Day 1 - Hitting the Road

2006-08-05T01:54:00.000-05:00

When Dad dropped me off where the group would depart, we waited for a couple of other people to arrive. While we waited, an Ohio News Network news van arrived also. The Servants Unite blog had mentioned the possibility of a news crew accompanying the group, but I did not know what that would entail, and sometime during the week, I had forgotten about them.

We packed all of our luggage into two vehicles, a car that the group leader would be driving, and a minivan that some of us would ride in. This trip was going to be a nonstop trip--no stop in Tuscaloosa on the way down, no stop in Tennessee on the way back. I estimated 16 hours, based on what the youth minister had told somebody at Hilltop Rescue back in July. It was after 8:00 A.M. when we prayed and got ready to go.

I wound up being "navigator" for parts of the trip after we reached Kentucky. Ohio was fairly familiar territory to the drivers on the trip, but we had road atlases and instructions printed from Google Maps. I had already taken this trip once, and there was another member of the team who had also been to Louisiana in April. We got to share some of our experiences together on the road.

The drive from Ohio was relatively uneventful, until we got backed up in traffic by two different accidents (and drove past a third one) near Birmingham, Alabama. After that, we passed a sign marking the "Alabama Adventure Parkway." We joked that we had seen enough tragic "adventures" for one day. We stopped in Alabama to eat dinner at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, then hit the road again.

In Mississippi, as we got close to the Louisiana border, the drivers struck up a trivia game using the walkie-talkie function built into their cellular phones. We traded questions from "naming the Seven Wonders of the World" to "giving the reading from the mile marker that we just passed."

I was right about not getting to see the devastation on the way into Louisiana--in the dark, it was difficult to see some of the damaged areas, although not impossible. The lights were on in some places, and not in others. As we searched for Madison Avenue in Chalmette, we had to switch from using the Google Maps instructions to landmarks and dead reckoning. Fortunately, the other "veteran" was in the van and reminded me of some of the landmarks that he remembered.

The only "problem" we had arriving in Louisiana was finding our rooms upstairs at C.F. Rowley Elementary. One of the workers told us to look for the rooms marked "Servants Unite!" but when we carried our luggage up--we couldn't find the signs. We returned downstairs, and by the time we got back upstairs with the next load, the signs had been posted.

I traded my mattress for a cot, because my body is too long to fit on the donated mattresses. There was a man from the news crew who was slightly shorter than me, so I thought it'd be a better fit for him. The cot was a better fit for me. I could stretch my legs all the way out after being in the van for so long, and not have my feet dangle off the end at all. I was so glad to be back, that I could not fall asleep easily tonight either.

There would be a difference this week. Last time, I forgot to get a camera. This time, I had brought two single-use cameras. I'd be taking pictures this week.

Day 1 - For Your Eyes Only

2006-08-05T01:47:00.000-05:00

I looked up "pink eye" at a web site and was able to read a bit of it before leaving home. From what I could see, there were three causes: allergens, bacteria (highly contagious), and viruses. Doctors treat the bacterial kind with antibiotics, but the viral kinds aren't treatable that way. I supposed that I might've had an allergic reaction to something--I'd had it before at Fort Hill Christian Youth Camp in the summer of 1997 and it had been diagnosed as an allergy. It had happened to only one eye, caused it to become extremely red, and had gone away when I took Benadryl. That did not happen this week, so I decided to give up Benadryl.

My eye became less reddish after going off Benadryl than it had gotten while I was still taking Benadryl. I thought this was "interesting." For most of the trip, my right eye would stay a light shade of pink whenever I looked at it myself. This would factor into how I would be spending part of the week later on.

Prologue Plus Two

2006-08-04T19:04:00.000-05:00

By the end of the week, I had printed all the necessary forms, signed them, and even packed my luggage--early this time. I finished laundry on Wednesday night, and folded all my clothes. I separated them by work clothes and off-duty clothes, and hung notecards on the drawers so that I knew where my things were for packing. I packed on Thursday night, getting all of my work clothes and all of my off-duty clothes into one huge suitcase.

As I got ready to leave work on Friday, one of my co-workers wished me luck, then said:

"I suppose you're not going to get any sleep tonight. You're probably so excited about getting to go to Louisiana again!"

I said I hoped that I would sleep, but I had a feeling he was right: "I am excited," I answered. I had a good reason to be.

He turned out to be right. I probably lay in bed from a little after 1:30 A.M. to about 5:30 A.M. on Saturday morning, before I finally fell asleep. That didn't do me any good. To be on time at the place where this group would leave from, I had set my alarm clock to 6:45 A.M.!

And so I "prepared" for my second trip.

Prologue Plus One

2006-07-31T15:11:00.000-05:00

Because I work in a store selling Ohio State Buckeyes memorabilia and souvenirs, work gets busy around football season. With the Buckeyes being ranked Number One in the pre-season polls, and with the first home game and the Texas game coming soon, we were gearing up for high-demand business. That gearing up period was about to begin, so I was not sure if my boss would give me permission to go away for another week.

On the walk to work, I confronted my worries in my mind. The worst-case scenario was not really that bad. If I did not have permission to go, I would have to email Servants Unite! and tell them that I could not go. In the best-case scenario, I would be allowed to go. Then I would still have to email Servants Unite! and tell them that I was able to go. So, either way, I reasoned, I would be writing an email to Servants Unite!

I asked my boss for permission as soon as I saw him in the morning. He said "yes." On the outside, I thanked him, but on the inside, I was shouting "YEAH!" and jumping around the room.

I got an email before I got an opportunity to send a message to Servants Unite! The message asked me to contact the team leader for this trip. I phoned in my news, and was told that I was going to be added to the list of team members, and that I would soon get some "sign-up" information from Hilltop Rescue and Relief.

Prologue

2006-07-30T14:07:00.000-05:00

We stayed at church to help prepare for Vacation Bible School. VBS would start tomorrow, so we had a lot of work to do with decorations. We had a "jungle" theme, which involved making tall palm trees out of wood, cardboard tubes, paper, and wire. I had helped produce a large number of "leaves" for the trees a week ago, so we were mainly cutting the final leaves out, taping them to coat hanger wire, and then taking them to the people building trees to attach at the top.

In the morning, I had taken Benadryl to help get rid of something bugging my eye. I'd been bothered in the past by allergies that made my eyes red, itchy, and watery. Because I was taking Benadryl, my eyes were clear but my head was foggy.

I had been interested in getting another chance to go to Louisiana, and I had read the Servants Unite! blog a couple of days ago. There, I saw a post about another team heading to Louisiana. There was mention of some kind of news crew, but the arrangements weren't definite, and that fact did not stick in my memory for long. What I hadn't realized was that the meeting was today at 3:00 P.M. It was impossible for me to get there on time, since we stayed to work on VBS decorations until well after 4:00 P.M.

I considered the trip prayerfully, and recalled being told that I had three "personal" days left for this year. We use those "personal" days to handle things that aren't "vacation" time, like family emergencies, events that come up unexpectedly, and other similar things. Since they expire just like vacation days at work, I had to "use them or lose them." Anyway, I sent an email to Servants Unite! and asked if I could know the details of the trip and told them I would sign up if I could get permission to take my personal days off.

They sent me a reply that the trip would be for one week, just like my first trip. Arrangements might change based on needing to add more people to the crew, but in any case, they welcomed my coming along. All I had to do was get permission from work.

Day 8 - Returning Home

2006-07-15T08:01:00.000-05:00

We received a cell phone call stating that the replacement bus had arrived. Everybody gathered in front of the Opry Mills Shopping Center, then we trekked across the parking lot, wondering what the new bus would be like. We were surprised when we arrived, because the bus drivers told us that they had transferred everything from the lower compartments of the first bus into the lower compartments of the second bus. All we had to do was get our other things from the overhead storage.

We completed the remainder of the trip with little delay. In Kentucky, we made a stop at a rest area for people to stretch and use the bathroom, and our next scheduled stop would be for dinner. North of Louisville, we stopped at a Wendy's and the youth ministers advised all of us to order our food "to go" so that we could avoid delays in the trip.

In Ohio, one of the teens offered me her cell phone so that I could call Dad. Dad asked for another notification once we were "in town," and I explained this to the person who loaned me her phone. She agreed. As we reached Columbus, she let me use her cell phone again so that I could call Dad again. He said he'd be on his way.

As we drove through Columbus, the youth minister from the other church revealed his "Quote Book." They traditionally record all of the notable quotes that happen during a trip--and this week's trip had amassed quite a record. The youth minister read the quote book, providing an explanation of each quote, including my "sound out" quote.

Finally, the bus left the freeway and drove the main roads and took a final turning. In the distance, the steeple of the church we had left a week before was visible in the distance. The teens from that church began a slow clap that increased in speed and volume. We joined in, shouting along with them as the bus turned the last corner and pulled to a stop in the parking lot. My trip to Louisiana was finally over.

At the time, I did not know that it was only my first trip.

Day 8 - Nashville: Killing Time

2006-07-15T08:00:00.001-05:00

In the morning, the youth minister from my church took one of the teens and the bus driver. They went in search of food, and returned with McDonald's breakfast food, orange juice, and milk. They also returned with news. There was a basic choice we could follow--we could stay for a while in Nashville and kill time waiting for a replacement bus from Tennessee, or we could head for Cincinnati, where we could meet up with a replacement bus from Ohio. The decision was made not to keep us on a hot bus, but to wait in Nashville. After we ate breakfast, we were informed of the decision not to continue homeward until we had a bus with working air conditioning.

There would be an activity provided to occupy our time, one of the best activities possible for killing time with a group of over 20 teenagers--the mall. We rode in the original bus to the Opry Mills Shopping Center in Nashville. Again we split into groups, but rather than require adults to be in each group, the so-called "chaperones" were simply people carrying cellular phones. That included almost everybody, so phone numbers were exchanged to keep everybody in touch.

The mall sprawled across acres, all of it indoors, all of it air conditioned. My sandals, which I wore to keep my feet cool on the original bus, occasionally flopped off my feet as I walked, but I managed not to trip. I had gotten used to this during the week, since Hilltop Rescue never let us wear dirty work boots upstairs in the sleeping areas. We had all kinds of fun.

In the Bass Master store, we tested flashlights that operated on power generated by shaking them. I saw a solar and dynamo-powered radio flashlight combination, we looked at a travel poker set the size of a small briefcase, and we examined all kinds of travel drinkware, hunting accessories, and more. We visited a sports souvenir store where everything was autographed and therefore expensive. Some of the teens allowed professional masseuses to give them free 5-minute massage therapy sessions.

We ate in the food court, and I returned to a souvenir store that sold American flags, patriotic memorabilia, and sports team merchandise. I bought two replica embroidered patches, a gold star, and a "NASA" patch.

Afraid that we would arrive late in Ohio, some of the teens discussed the length of the trip. I mentioned that when we returned to Ohio, my watch would be correct. The current time was only 1:00 P.M., I stated. We would not be very late in Ohio.

Day 7 - Traveling to Tennessee

2006-07-14T13:14:00.000-05:00

With the song still running in my head, I paid less attention to the fact that the bus was not very cool. Even up front, the bus was still warm. At this point in time, that fact changed from something unremarkable to an actual problem. The youth ministers were well aware of that problem, and so was the driver. The air conditioning had broken. Before noon, the temperature of the bus began a steady increase--something that could not be ignored.

The church where we would spend tonight called us at a point on the road. They told the youth ministers that a funeral was scheduled for the evening at their church. Because of this, we were asked not to arrive too early, but instead try to arrive after 10:00 P.M. That gave us the leeway for some things we might not have attempted otherwise...

We stopped for lunch at a gas station in Alabama, where there was also a Subway restaurant. After the eating was done, we all piled back into our hot bus, which had gotten hotter since it had been sitting out in the sun. As we headed back toward the freeway, the bus driver saw a "Peterbilt" truck service sign. The plan to leave was revised by the youth ministers--we would see if the truck service station could service our bus' air conditioning first. At the service station, the staff let us get off the bus and sit in their air conditioned lobby. We played cards, talked, and enjoyed the cool air. Because a part was broken on the bus, and because that part could not be shipped until four days later, we had to get on the bus again and head for our stop in Tennessee.

I considered how hot it was in the bus, but decided to ignore it for the most part. Since I wasn't working on drywall, or carting wheel barrow loads away, I could just drink water or pop to stay cool. But the bus got hotter and hotter, and soon, we had to stop for something. We pulled in at a Travel America center, and the youth ministers went inside looking for parts. They came back with a temporary reprieve: an AC adaptor for the bus' power, a splitter that let them attach more than one appliance to that power supply, and two travel fans. The bus still got hotter.

Outside of Huntsville, Alabama, we stopped at another Travel America center because of rush hour traffic. The youth ministers called cell phone numbers and tried to see if the bus could be replaced, but the soonest that could be done was in Tennessee or later. In the meantime, we conversed, used the bathroom facilities, and bought things for the road. Before we headed back to the bus, I bought a pint of Ben and Jerry's coffee Heath ice cream. It was good, but I did not eat all of it. On the bus, I held it against the inside of my elbow joint, where it could cool my veins.

Rain overtook us as we neared Tennessee. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel restaurant for dinner. I bought an Amy Grant CD called "Hymns for the Journey" because it felt appropriate to buy, now that I was returning from this "journey."

North of Nashville, we finally stopped at a church which opened its gymnasium for us to sleep in. It was 11:00 P.M. by my watch. I had kept Ohio Time for the whole week, so I quickly calculated that we had arrived just on schedule to accommodate the church's funeral arrangements. We were led into the gymnasium and shown where the bathrooms were. As soon as I finished brushing my teeth and rolling out my sleeping bag, I tried to get to sleep. It wasn't hard, even though I was sleeping on a cool hard basketball court floor.

Day 7 - May My Steps Be Worship

2006-07-14T13:04:00.000-05:00

Friday morning began in the same way that the other mornings had. We had breakfast and a devotional at Hilltop Rescue, but then things changed. We were getting ready to go back to Ohio. Mattresses and cots were stacked to one side of our classroom. The floors were swept and then mopped to get the room ready for the next group of volunteers. To make it easier for us to deal with a stop halfway home, we were instructed to pack a clean change of clothes and toiletries in a garbage bag to take on the bus. Then, in Tennessee, we wouldn't have to unload the whole bus.

We unpacked the bus before we packed it--we had brought bottled water, which we took to the storage areas near the kitchen and dropped off. Then we loaded up in the bus. On our way out of Chalmette, and out of Louisiana, I saw all the devastation I had seen on the way in. It was harder, I think, to look at things in reverse.

I was leaving Louisiana behind with so much work done--but I was also leaving with so much more work undone. The ride away was a lot quieter, since everybody was tired from the week. I remembered one of the songs from this morning's devotional--a new song...

Father God (also known as "Just For This Day"):
Verse:
Father God, just for this day
Help me to walk, your narrow way
Help me to stand, when I might fall
Give me strength to heed your call

Chorus:
May my steps be worship
May my thoughts be praise
May my words bring honor to your name
(repeat)

Thinking of the devastation we were leaving behind, the homes we were leaving behind, and the lives we were leaving behind, I wondered how I would feel when I did get back to Ohio.

Day 6 - Mission Possible!

2006-07-13T18:17:00.000-05:00

A prank in the night resulted in trouble figuring out whose boots belonged with which set of laces. All the boots had been unlaced, which slowed us down but did not stop us.

We found out some very good news over breakfast--we had been reassigned to the same house we worked on yesterday. That meant we had a chance to finish the house. Neither of the two work teams of our 26-person group had managed to finish a house yet--but both would be getting the chance to finish one.

Overnight, part of the smell of the mildew, the mold, and the leakage from the refrigerator had dissipated. Still, there was enough dust inside that we would need to wear our masks. We began by emptying out the remaining rooms. They were, for the most part, mostly empty already. We continued to search for sentimental belongings for the homeowner. The youth minister sent two of our smaller teens up into the attic to check on what was up there, and a lot of that turned out to be salvageable. Another group split off and began to empty and gut the garage workshop behind the house.

We hit the drywall more than an hour before lunch and began tearing it down. Paneling, cabinets, and other woodwork had to be removed first, but that didn't take very long. Before we knew it, we were practicing our drywall removal technique.

The best way to remove drywall is to pull it down by the sheet and carry it to the pile. You punch out a single hole, work your way along the edges of the sheet, and wiggle it, until all of the nail heads break through the wall. Then the drywall is no longer attached, so you just carry it away. This is much easier said than done.

I joined two other people in pulling down one sheet near the kitchen. It came loose and turned out to be heavier and more cumbersome than the three of us expected. It fell down on the center person, cracking itself to pieces on her head! The cleanup continued, and I was told to find a "spot" to work on so that I wouldn't interfere with another person's drywall removing work.

Alone, I began practicing the drywall removal technique and detached a huge piece. Before I could be proud of myself, though, I realized I couldn't control it by myself. It tipped from the top instead of the bottom, and I ducked my head in time for the impact. I was now standing in a circle of drywall debris just like the team of three had produced, holding the largest chunk in my hands. Another team member quickly came to help me by picking up the other end of the big piece. She helped me get it thrown away on the debris pile, then helped me get the smaller pieces.

We took our lunch break across the street, where the youth minister discovered that the "Hooah!" energy snacks we had were better for throwing than for eating. A couple of people had walked about two houses away to sit under a shady tree. Our youth minister was able to land the "Hooah!" right to where they were sitting, but they couldn't throw it back.

After lunch time, at least half of the drywall was down, and in some rooms, we were shoveling the leftover drywall rubble into wheelbarrows and sweeping up dust. It looked like we were going to get done, but as time wore on, some parts of the work slowed down. Bits of drywall clinging to nail heads had to be removed also, so I began pulling out nails. I later found out that you don't need to pull out the nails to get the drywall bits down. I also removed a few missed pieces of drywall in the window recesses.

Soon enough, it was possible to see through the studs from one room into another. I got overheated, so I stopped for a bottle of water. Outside, a garbage truck stopped and a worker picked up a bag. It took me a second to realize what pile that bag came from.

"Hey wait!" I said, "that's stuff from the house we're working on. We're saving that for the home owners." The worker climbed back onto the truck and the truck drove away. I do not know if he'd already taken something from the pile, but I hoped that he hadn't.

Work continued, and some of us tired out and sat outside for a few minutes drinking bottled water. I managed to cool off enough to return to working. I was just finishing up the nail removal in the kitchen when the end of the work day happened. Rain had begun to fall outside, so we brought in all of the sentimental items we had found. Then we gathered inside for a final picture, taken at an angle to reveal the fact that we could see from one corner of the house to the other.

We gathered up all our tools, marveling at the emptiness of the house we started yesterday, and the difference we had made. But as we took the last load of tools, somebody walked through the house, taking pictures of the empty gutted rooms. She noticed one piece of drywall near the front door. In a moment similar to the completion of the transcontinental railroad, we all watched as the youth minister finished the work, prying off bits of the drywall and passing it to us to throw onto the debris pile.

On our van trip back to Hilltop Rescue, the youth minister's wife called the home owners on her cell phone. She shared the good news with the home owners, and relayed their thanks to us.

Back at Hilltop Rescue, the group member we had left behind had finished washing loads of laundry that she had collected from each of us. With mostly clean clothes for the return trip home, packing up was a lot easier. It was hard to believe, but it was finally time to return to our "normal" life in Ohio.

Well after lights out, I was still restless. So were some of the others in the converted classroom where we were supposed to be sleeping. They tried three times to lift a sleeping person and carry him out into the hallway as a prank. None of their attempts succeeded, the person woke up before they could reach the door, so they finally gave up.

Day 5 - Seeing the Sights

2006-07-12T00:41:00.000-05:00

After showering, and taking several minutes trying to find some items in my luggage, we finally loaded up in two vans (all 26 of our group), and drove to New Orleans. We parked in the French Quarter and found a restaurant that had enough room for our group. After dinner, we split into smaller groups to see the sights. I was asked to join one adult and his group of ten teenagers. Since I was one of the adults in the group, I brought up the rear, with the other adult taking the lead. I did not see as many sights because I kept having to count heads, but it was still fun. We heard street musicians, saw Jackson Square, and then stopped at Cafe du Monde.

The waiter memorized all of our orders, shared his story of surviving Hurricane Katrina with us, told us how to see the sights of Bourbon Street without winding up in the bad parts of it. We drank our cafe au lait (I had mine iced), ate beignettes, and I noticed two of our group members pouring off all the excess confectioner's sugar. They funneled it into one iced cafe au lait and then achieved the ultimate sugar high.

Then we walked along the river walk. This was the farthest south that I had ever been in my life, only my second time seeing the Mississippi River, and I was amazed that my home in Ohio was all the way on the other side of the United States. We saw Bourbon street, including souvenir shops sporting t-shirts reading: "FEMA, the other 4-letter 'F' word," "Make levees, not war," and a variety of other political sentiments. I bought some magnets with the French Quarter street names on them, and a book with photos of the post Hurricane Katrina damage. Our 26-person group gathered together again after our sight seeing, and we had one large group photo overlooking the River again.

We returned to Chalmette, Hilltop Rescue, and bed. After all, we had another work day on our schedule before we could go home. Apparently, the sight-seeing had gotten our group too excited to sleep. Even after lights out, some people kept talking. Finally, I shouted:

"Hey, everybody! Let's take 'lights out' as a metaphor that really means 'sound out!'" After some laughs, that settled the matter. We did not realize we would be in for a special opportunity on Thursday.

Day 5 - Being the Body

2006-07-12T00:15:00.000-05:00

I woke up with aches all over my body, and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom. As I went, I said "ow!" whenever I took a step. I felt good that I had helped yesterday, but today, I was feeling the after effects. I tried my best to keep moving, and by the time I shuffled out to the Cafeteria, I had loosened up a bit.

We headed out to the next assignment. I was told that we do not typically get re-assigned to the same house, so we weren't finishing the house from Tuesday. Instead, we took a few more wrong turns trying to find the house we were to do today. We stopped for directions once, and some people had a chance to see a fully gutted house before we had to get back in the van.

The home owner told us how the ceiling in their house had caved in after the storm surge drained away. The floor was covered in the first real "muck" that I saw. It was a mixture of ceiling, debris and belongings from the house, and insulation. The home owner also told us that when oil leaked from a tank at the refinery, it had also gotten into this house.

We faced the problem of having to get the big items out of the house, while also having to deal with the junk on the floor to make it easy to carry out the big items. We worked in groups, shoveling up junk until we made it to the refrigerator. As we had done yesterday, we all evacuated while two people carted it out of the house. The smell of rotten food mixed with oil and storm water is literally the worst smell anybody could ever smell. Yesterday, I had a dry heave, from all the way across the street, upwind of the refrigerator that got taken out of the house.

We found a couple of crucifixes, a couple of small rosaries, and some paper weights for the home owner.

Though it was hard work, we got to stop early today, because we were going to see New Orleans. We still prayed for a "power hour" as we got close to our time to leave. There was a lot done, but a lot more left to be done as we packed our tools up and headed back to Hilltop Rescue.

Day 4 - Working for Real

2006-07-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

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.

Day 3 - On the Job

2006-07-10T20:45:00.000-05:00

One of the things I liked a lot about Hilltop Rescue was that things were organized. On the trip down, I had no idea how well-oiled the operation would be, since I'd heard rumors of things not being as organized early after Hurricane Katrina. One of the things that helped things stay in order was the policy concerning volunteers--each day, a volunteer from each group was asked to stay behind at the Rowley Elementary School. This created a pool of workers to handle cleaning, cooking, and handling upkeep on the school grounds.

I joined this group and was put to work immediately after the morning devotional. We cleaned the tables in the cafeteria, arranged the chairs, then swept the floor. The cafeteria isn't connected to the main building, so it has its own air conditioning--through a boarded-up exit where tubes and machinery softly rumble. I had to get a mop from the main building, and on my way across the parking lot to get there, I broke out a full-body sweat.

I had barely started working. I realized I'd have to get used to this, because I might be working on houses tomorrow.

At about 10 A.M., after I had helped by cleaning one bathroom upstairs, a truck delivered supplies to the kitchen. I got involved in dish washing after solving the problem of getting cooked-on scrambled egg residue off the industrial-sized cooking pans. Jenny (the head cook) found out about my success (I scraped the pans with a heavy-duty metal spatula), and asked if she could keep me for the week. I told her that was up to the rest of the people in my group.

I continued washing dishes for the rest of the day. Some of the same dishes I saw clean came back dirty a few minutes later, got washed, then got dirty right after that. I soon understood why there was a janitor's sink in the kitchen. I started filling it with soapy water when another volunteer joined me. We pressed on, satisfying the demand for clean dishes. Dinner for the day was spaghetti--in massive quantities, boiled outside over a propane flame, in a pot big enough for me to squat inside.

We got done just in time to help serve dinner. With over 400 people at Hilltop Rescue this week, serving dinner took quite a while. Everybody loved the spaghetti, though, even me.

After evening devotional, I helped empty the giant spaghetti pot. One of the people from our bus load of volunteers helped me carry it outside and dump it. It was half-full of water and was very heavy. When we dumped it out, it was still as heavy as it was when it was full! Back in the kitchen, I used a spray hose to add water to the pot, and (almost) had to use a mop to clean it. I found a scrub brush (like a bottle brush for washing dishes) could do the job. But what could I use to rinse the soapy water out of the pot?

I jokingly said "I need a victim--I mean volunteer--to help me rinse this pot." A hapless volunteer approached. I turned her down and said I needed a man, then explained why. My hare-brained idea was genius: I was going to "rinse" the pot in the Men's Showers, where women were not allowed. For that, I'd need a man to help me. After the rinsing of the pot in a shower stall was done, and after we put the pot away, Jenny told me I could hit the showers too and call it a day.

We hugged, and I told her it was a pleasure helping in the kitchen. I also told her that I was going to be replaced by a different volunteer from my group. I had no idea what I was about to face in the morning.

Day 2 - Arrival in Louisiana

2006-07-09T21:17:00.000-05:00

We crossed over at least one levee, and drove into St. Bernard Parish. There were buildings with the "X" symbol on the side. One of the teens from the other church explained what that meant. The date went on top of the "X" and the Company name (of the National Guard or the Army) went on the side of it. The number of bodies found in the building went under the "X." We started to spot buildings all around us, but there were zeros under most of the "X" signs. Then somebody pointed to a building with a "3." It was sad to see that.

In Chalmette, we stayed with Hilltop Rescue and Relief, a Church of Christ relief organization that helps home owners in New Orleans rebuild. Hilltop Rescue operated from C.F. Rowley Elementary School, which doesn't have enough students to stay open as a school. So St. Bernard Parish lets them use the building for free. We arrived just in time to unload, unpack, and get our identification cards printed. Then we went down to have Jambalaya for dinner.

After dinner, Brendan got the two groups from Ohio together for "Orientation." He told us about mucking houses--our goal for the mission. We would go in, take away all the furniture inside, take away the carpeting, tiling, and baseboards, and then take away drywall and insulation. Brendan, who manages Hilltop Rescue, explained how to split up the garbage into piles for "electronics," "general junk," and "hazardous materials." We were also instructed in how to handle firearms, knives, and other weapons. This involved calling the police, calling Hilltop Rescue, and then setting the items aside in a fourth pile. After Brendan took questions and gave answers, he sent us to prepare lunch, snacks, and plenty of bottled water for the next day.

After that, we divided our group so that we could be two teams. People from both churches mixed to make each team. I don't know how Xenia divided. Since we were two teams, we were able to take on two house assignments each day instead of just one. We went to bed wondering what was in store for us.

Day 2 - Traveling to Louisiana

2006-07-09T21:06:00.000-05:00

We got up in the morning for Sunday worship, but instead of going straight there, we were invited to have breakfast--another thing we did not expect. The food included doughnuts, juice, milk, cereal, muffins, and cinnamon twists. Even after our group ate, and the group from Xenia ate, there was still breakfast food left over.

Worship was in an auditorium that's a made-over gymnasium. There were songs, and a good message for what we were about to get into. The message was about "identity theft" and the fact that we should live our lives under God's guidance, instead of trying to "steal" control from Him.

After worship, we loaded up in the bus again, and noticed just how hot it still was. By now, we had the problem of knowing something was wrong but being stuck with a schedule that meant we needed to arrive in Louisiana by evening. We drove into Mississippi. Along the way, we stopped for food at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Laurel, Mississippi. Then we started going again, and I started noticing things.

I could see trees with branches only on the north side. I saw businesses with signs missing letters. And then we crossed Lake Ponchartrain. The Twin Spans Bridge is rebuilt, but it was obvious where the damage was done. We drove across metal trussworks instead of concrete slabs. Sometimes there were modular concrete barricates (like what they use in construction zones) to replace the original guard rails. We drove past Six Flags New Orleans. The entire amusement park is empty, but the parking lot was full of FEMA trailers. I saw high water marks on the concrete supports of the freeway.

Day 1 - Traveling to Alabama

2006-07-08T20:50:00.000-05:00

The first time that I went down to Louisiana, I joined the teenagers from my church youth group, the youth minister, and the teens and youth minister from a different church. We numbered 26, which was enough people to put one person in each seat of our charter bus.

After we had a prayer, we loaded up and got ready to go. Little did we know the things that would await us. I am sure that I was mentally unprepared for what I would see, no matter how "ready" I felt about actually taking the trip. They are definitely two very different things.

On the trip, we played a version of "speed dating" which we did to give everybody a chance to get introduced to everybody else. We stopped in Kentucky to eat lunch at a McDonalds. When we got back on the bus, people began to notice how hot it was in the back, but there was no real way to figure out what was happening. So we decided to put up with the experience.

In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, we stayed at the University Church of Christ. They use their church as a "way station" for groups that are headed to the Gulf to help in the reconstruction work. A group from Xenia, Ohio got there a few minutes before us, so all the food was set up and waiting for us when we got there.

That's right--I said food, and I mean FOOD! We were expecting a place to roll out the sleeping bags, not "full service hospitality." We had barbecue, squash casserole, green beans, dinner rolls, salad, all you can eat. Since their building is a remodeled gymnasium or school, they have a locker room with showers, which they allowed us to use. They even invited us to stay for Sunday worship.

Everybody wished that we could stay, but we knew what we had signed up for. Everybody wished that we could come back and stay in Tuscaloosa on the way back, but we didn't get that chance.

Prologue

2006-06-23T07:32:00.000-05:00

At my workplace, the vacation time a worker has from one year expires during that year. If it is not used before the time limit, it does not get added onto next year's vacation time. I had held out for a long time, looking for a chance to use my vacation time on a family trip to Tennessee, but this year, we did not even know we were going.

As June approached, I figured I might as well use my vacation time on something. I finally decided that I wanted to take Fridays off in June. After asking management if this was permitted, I was scheduled to work from Monday to Thursday each week in June. At least, that's what was supposed to happen. But the back of the May 28th Church Bulletin changed all of that. In the area for announcements for the youth group, I saw a list of dates. The last one read "July 8 - 15 - Mission Trip to Louisiana."

So I found the Youth Minister after worship and spoke with him about the trip. He said there was no age restriction, and that some adults from our church were already considering going along.

On Friday, since I turned out to be scheduled anyway, I saw the manager that I had planned my vacation time with. I asked to change my vacation time to the week of July 9th and explained the sudden decision. The schedule was changed for me, and after that I was working Monday to Friday in June.

On Friday, June 23rd, Dad dropped me off at the church where we would leave from. We attended a meeting in their teenagers' classroom, where we introduced ourselves, learned more about the trip, and received information about what to bring and what not to bring, and the details of what we would be doing in Louisiana. At the end of the meeting, the youth ministers decided to play some "non-competitive" kickball, so we headed out to a field by the parking lot.

We kept a rudimentary score, but did not track who won. I wound up getting a couple of shots, making a two base kick the first time, but on my next turn to kick the ball got caught, so I was out. In the last "inning" we played "unlimited outs" so that everybody could get a turn kicking. I managed to kick the ball at a runner and tag her "out" as she rounded third base. When everybody had a turn, we said our good-byes, and my church's youth minister drove me home.

I had two full weeks before the trip would begin. Even though I would try to "psych" myself up for the trip--I knew I had no way to completely prepare myself.

Comments

2006-06-23T01:02:00.000-05:00

Don't have a comment that fits a particular post? Please post your comment(s) here...