Another photo of the day for today

This is my second posting for today so you'll want to keep scrolling to get to my original posting...but this one was too good to pass up.

This not only shows you what a georgeous day it's been today and how beautiful our grounds are but it also shows the camp managers I'm here with. Harold and Dona Peck are from Postville, Iowa and they're just about the nicest people on the face of the planet. They are perfect for this job. Not that it hasn't been a challenge for them. They live in a small town in Iowa and aren't used to a lot of traffic. Beaven advised them on buying their first GPS for the car so I don't think they worry about getting lost anymore. The rest of managing the camp is second nature to them both.

They were raking leaves after picking up after about three huge limbs that fell out of the trees. They were Gustav damaged limbs that had gotten hung up high in the tree until a windy night early in the week.

The air was crisp and clean today. Just cool enough to keep you from sweating when you worked. Cool enough for a jacket in the morning.

God is good.

photo of the week

I had somebody tell me last week that I neglected to say where I am and what I’m doing here. Opps. While I was at the PDA camp in Pearlington, Mississippi with my home church a couple of weeks ago one of the head honchos asked me if I could possibly stay on the coast to help out at one of the other camps in Louisiana. They were getting new managers and wanted me to be at hand in case they needed anything. Easy duty. So Beaven went on home with the church and left me. I stayed and have been living off of a week’s worth of clothing and not much more than my laptop in the way of creature comforts. However, mid-week, (after voting) Beaven came back to spend the rest of the month with me here. I think they’re breaking us in for service in Texas whenever they open the camps there. We’ve ended up making quite a cozy home for ourselves. He even brought the cat. While I train, Beaven is spending his time working on heaters. Heaters are becoming more and more important around here as winter approaches. I already had to spend one night shivering in my sleeping bag and the volunteers have had a couple of cold nights. Since Beaven arrived the heaters haven’t missed a beat. Our current plan is to go back home this weekend.

So here we are. Our camp is on the grounds of the First Union Presbyterian Church of Luling, Louisiana. They have a beautiful campus with lots of old oaks and healthy grass. PDA has put up tents and an outdoor kitchen and dining tent. But our office is inside, thank you, Jesus. It’s very modern with a fax, copier and laptop computer. Very much like any office you would find anywhere.

But I was sitting here just now and noticed a corner where we have three things you would never find in any office, especially stacked together up against the wall with each other.


The cordless drill chargers are ordinary enough. We have another one just like it on my desk. Every single PDA camp has them all over the place. We found one in the kitchen last night. Not many people keep their cordless drill chargers in their kitchen. But our guys plug them in all over the camp. It’s not at all unusual to find construction equipment in odd places like the showers.


But it was the box you see under the charger that caught me eye and prompted me to look inside.


It was a box of keepsakes from one of the houses, or maybe a collection of things found in many different houses. All waterlogged from Katrina. It was mostly photos, glued together by storm muck then dried to a solid set of almost-illegible pictures. There were a couple of letters with a New Orleans address. This storm gathered up peoples’ possessions and stirred in a massive amount of wet muck then receeded, leaving everything ruined. Very often the storm waters picked up boxes like this one and carried them miles away. I heard from one man whose military records were found in their waterproof plastic box two miles from his house. He was lucky. Somebody found him. This old wooden box looks very much like an antique whose owner is long gone. I wonder if he has anyone left who cares about these waterlogged photos?

Then, to the left of the box with the charger on top of it is a memorial cross with pictures of Rich Cozzone on it. Rich was the Volunteer Village Coordinator who died in a one-car crash one evening last December. His death was a huge shock but our loss was deep and to see the memorial touched my heart. It’s a custom here to place one of these by the side of the road at the site of the accident. I’m not sure where this has been. It may have been here on the church grounds. I can tell it has spent time staked in the ground. It has a picture of Rich and a scripture.


Somehow, seeing these three things together against the wall illustrates what we are doing here: Practical and no-nonsense construction. Touching people’s lives in a very intimate way. And at a personal cost.

The cost is rarely more physical than a mashed finger. More often, it’s emotional. We have seen the ferocious strength of the weather. We’ve seen the hopelessness of trying to rebuild without resources. It's being thanked over and over again for something as simple as being here. We’ve seen the emptiness of living outside your own house and the pressure of living in a FEMA trailer. The volunteers who work for PDA see more than they expected and more than they wanted.

It’s a surreal life. But I’d rather live this way in an office where you can recharge your drill battery on your desk than the fanciest office in a skyscraper.

Late breaking and astonishing news:
I found the owner of the box!! Just as a lark I Googled the name I saw on the envelopes along with the word “New Orleans.” The person I found works for Loyola University. It took me only one more Google to get his phone number. I asked if he was a “junior.” He said he was and I said I thought I’d found some of his father’s stuff. I named the street on the envelopes and he gave me the street address.

I told him he might be disappointed because the photos are almost indistinguishable. He said he knew all about that. He had lost all of his things in another house. We didn’t talk much but I hope to see him when he comes to pick up his box.

It’s these small victories that keep us going sometimes. You can be sure I'll report back if I get to meet the guy the box belongs to.

SNAFU

Everything out here in Katrina Country is normal. Normal meaning Situation All Fouled Up. It wouldn't be a normal day if we didn't have at least one horrible problem. But we've gotten used to such a variety of horrible problems that they are all starting to look normal. Our heat is usually the most feared problem. I know what to do in Pearlington for heating problems because they have about five boxes of extra blankets. This camp doesn't have any. Or, if they do, we haven't found them yet. I can't complain, and I'm NOT complaining about the heaters...because we have a genuine heaters expert here in camp this week and I'm never one to look a gift horse in the mouth. The first night the heaters didn't work he figured out the problem but not until the next morning after a cold night. Thankfully, most were good sports about it. The second night there was a totally different and unrelated problem with the heaters--and again we were able to fix it but not until the next morning. Again there was only one grumbly camper. Tonight I return from our third problem that was (Thank you, Jesus) fixed before bedtime with only an extension cord.

I cannot tell you how glad I will be to have Beaven arrive tomorrow afternoon. We've uncovered about three problems that I know for a fact he can fix. And there's another 17 other problems that I suspect he will at least know something about fixing it.

And that's not counting all the problems that we fixed already today. When I moved to this camp they gave me a trailer that has sat unused for a few months. So I had a few days worth of problems. No heat for a couple of nights until I got the propane tanks filled. No refrigerator until we found the magic switch. The porta potties guy emptied my holding tank yesterday. So just in my own life I've had a string of problems to solve. Problems have become the norm.

We spent a lot of the day figuring out how to order food using the Sam's on-line system. We had to do this when the credit card got maxed out because they spent it on buying lumber for a new sidewalk.

In other words, dear readers, it's always something. That's normal for me now.

It's late and I don't have much wit or wisdom for you. Life is good, however. I'm adjusting to constantly adjusting. Beaven arrives tomorrow with the cat. This should be interesting. Our neighbor has a pit bull.

Three Years and 45 Days

Greetings from Katrina Country. Two weeks after I left the coast to have a short vacation at home I'm back with our church for our now-traditional week in Pearlington, Mississippi helping rebuild after the hurricane.

This week has become very much like summer camp for adults. We even sleep in tents. There's great food cooked by a rotating group of volunteers and the food is accompanied by announcements from the camp manager and a blessing. And this time it's even better than the camp we knew as kids. We get to have unlimited snacks anytime we want them and there's a whole freezer just for ice cream bars. Our whole day is scheduled for us and we even take our turn at chores like picking up the grounds and taking out the trash. There are devotions every morning and evening and a bible study on Wednesdays if we want to go. Then, for recreation, we have our work assignments. We don't actually get to pick from a list of archery or canoeing but we have a wide variety of other things to learn--sheet rock, painting, siding or roofing. They didn't offer these at the camps I attended when I was a kid but I'm sure I would have had more energy for them fifty years ago than I do now.

Just like summer camp we went to as kids we have old friends from past visits here in town. Everytime I drive past a homeowner I've met from a past trip I have to stop for an update on their house and family.

This is the fourth time our church has visited Pearlington and our fifth trip for PDA. These trips have deepened our relationships with with our brothers and sisters in our home church. A road trip with the folks you spend Sunday morning with provides a different atmosphere. It's good to spend time together outside the church walls. But, since we come as part of the East Dallas Cluster, we also meet a lot of new friends from other churches in Dallas. This trip we have new team members from two other churches. I've especially enjoyed spending the week with Bill Orban from my friend Linda's church. Some of the volunteer groups plan their calendar around the same weeks every year so we see them every time we come. Some come twice a year and I've even met a church that schedules trips four times a year. We were excited to see two volunteer groups we've camped with last year and I know two more groups from when I managed this camp last year. It's Old Home week. We even have a campfire in the evening. This is a lot like my idea of heaven.


But here is the astonishing thing I found this week when got our work assignment: I counted up that we are 45 days past the third year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina yet our assignment this week is to gut a house. Gutting is different from mucking but it's still one of the very first things you do to a house that was flooded.

This house had been mucked out. That's when you shovel out the 3 or 4 feet of dead fish,live snakes, raw sewage and ocean mud that was left when the water receded. The homeowners had gone to the attic when the water rose. But almost immediately after the water receded they started mucking the house out. That really makes a difference because the sooner you can get the house dry inside the less mold you get.

Then, as the wife described to me, they got busy with other things. They spent some time with their kids in another city, almost two years in a FEMA trailer parked on their lot and then the last year in a MEMA cottage that took the place of the trailer.

Phyllis is an artist whose whole countenance lit up when she talked about painting. It reminded me of how I get with words sometimes so I can understand how they were distracted by "life" and didn't get around to asking for free labor on their house.

Then, when they were ready to gut the house and prepare to re-build--when they started asking for help, they fell through the cracks. They just fell through the cracks. This happens more often than you would expect, more often than it should. I think we can all agree that it should never happen. When I called up my friend Dallas to ask how this could have happened Dallas told me that she had told many of the previous worksite managers, including ME, about the house.

What can I say? There's no real defense beside plain old human error compounded by the number of people involved. I have no other excuse. And what made it even worse is that the house is practically next door to the PDA camp. But it's shaded and veiled by large trees and bushes that make it fairly easy to drive right past the house and not pay much attention. I had to take a photo from the side of the house to really see it:

Our team went out Monday morning to find one of the most fascinating houses I've ever seen. It was built about 80 years ago for the owner of a lumber company that operated nearby in a place called Logtown. The interior walls were all made of cypress: walls, floor and ceiling. Cypress if one of the most durable and waterproof of woods. This might explain how it stood up to water that reached to the ceiling for about a day or so. But the sheetrock that subsequent owners put over the cypress had to come down.

I had a great visit with Phyllis and enjoyed seeing how passionate she is about her painting. But that didn't keep me from still being suprised at how many vases she has collected. She paints flowers but the vases in the picture are as important to her as the flowers. I was so overwhelmed by her collection I just had to take a picture.

Our guys have worked so hard we had to make them leave today before they all dropped dead of heart attacks. But now I've seen what happens to a man when you put a crowbar in his hand and tell him to tear sheetrock off walls: it's not pretty.


But the walls underneath certainly are. I would love to have a house this solid..


I have so many thoughts on this project that I think I'll have to wait a couple of days to let things gel on my mind before I can make sense out of it.

In the meantime, I'm having fun helping Mrs Rawls and Mayola cook lunch every day. I now have the secret recipe for their cornbread. I have been inducted into their sisterhood. I am honored.

ps-notes after this evening's devotional: I have a new phrase to enjoy: We should rejoice in such a way that we "ooze Jesus." Our guys certainly oozed this afternoon but I don't think it was Jesus.

Bossing God Around

Sorry I'm a little late today. My schedule is all out of kilter and I forgot it is Wednesday. I got home from New Orleans on Thursday by driving straight through and arrived so tired that my body still vibrated from the road for another couple of hours after I got out of the car. Saturday I went into Garland to see my old friends from Guatemala.

I can't remember how long it's been since Linda Terpstra and I came up with the idea of having them come visit us for World Communion Sunday but I vividly remember thinking, "Yeah, like THAT'S gonna happen." There were too many barriers of funds, visas, and time from their work. The visas alone are almost impossible to come by for the average Guatemalan, not to mention the money for airfare. My government wants them to prove they will go back home once they get here so there are strict requirements. They have to prove they have family and money back home. The only ones I knew who were able to come in the past did it with the backing of our national church who did the paperwork for them. Coming to the US just so Linda and Jane could share communion with them was just about the feeblest reason I could imagine. I still don't know how they pulled it off but they did it.

Seven men and women from Presbiterio del Norte came. All but two were old friends to the extent that I've had a cup of coffee in Sonia's living room and met her kids and grandson. I've met Ludin's mother and Candido's wife. I was part of a group who gave Guilder a guitar for graduation from college. I've even borrowed money from Carlos. Except now I call him Tio Carlos, Uncle Carlos.

We are far more than friends. We are what they call in Guatemala "Hermana y Hermano",--sister and brother in Christ. I have prayed for Rumaldo's daughter who has Lupus and Candido's wife who has gone blind in one eye. I mourned Sonia's husband, Hector's death but wasn't surprised because I knew being diabetic in Guatemala makes it hard to manage the disease. And the first time we returned to Guatemala after his death we went to visit Sonia to do exactly what we do here when someone dies, we visited her at her house and shared stories of him.

And that's the remarkable thing about our friendship with the Norte Presbytery. From just one week's visit a year we have carved out deep friendships. We are welded together by the iron of Christ. When the language barrier tries to separate us we turn to scripture. I can point to a verse in my English bible and they can read it in Spanish in their bible. The one occasion we don't even try to translate is when we pray aloud. We understand that for once we aren't trying to talk to each other but our common Creator who understands both languages. God doesn't need a translator.

I made the mistake of giving God an assignment and a deadline this week. Silly me. I should have known God is much like a husband who rebels when I decide it's time for a haircut. Beaven once did this until his boss finally told him to get a haircut. Except God doesn't have a boss and can wait forever.

That's a little problem I have with God. God has eternity. I don't. I'm an old lady, I don't have that much time left. I'm on a schedule here and can't sit around and wait forever.

I want to get this book out and I had decided just how the book would end. The last chapter would be the Communion service last Sunday. It would wrap everything up with a tidy bow. The book starts with Guatemala, then goes to Hurricane Recovery. I thought how cool it would be to end it with Guatemala and some profound theological insight.

I tried to boss God around and as you might expect, God balked at the idea. I sat there in church Sunday madly taking notes, waiting for inspiration. Nothing. No great insights. God was uncharacteristically silent.

The only trick I have left to try is to mow. Mowing is a good mindless activity for me. It's good for me to have the time to just listen. We've got 23 acres out here, folks. I might be all day at it. But the weather is perfect today. I can take all day if I want.

And I just did it again, didn't I? I gave God another time limit. Never mind. Maybe if it comes to me on my deathbed my daughters can tell you. Or maybe the end of the book won't come until after my time has expired and it can be published post-humously and incomplete. I give up. Do what you want, God.

But I do humbly and sincerely Thank You for this moment.