JoyUnspeakable

Right down the street from the house I have been working at is a beautiful new park. A portion of the park is dedicated to the volunteers. It’s really nice. I walked down there last night, and there was a girl there reading the plaque. Across from the park is the hospital, which is all damaged. I was told the tornado moved the hospital six inches off the foundation. The girl told me her mother was born in that hospital. I asked if she was from around, and she lives 30 minutes away. I told her I was from PA and was working on the house up the road, and she was so thankful that I came out to help. Everybody here has been very appreciative of the volunteers.

This evening, after a cookout of burgers and dogs grilled by Joel, we were witnesses to the baptism of Giff and Karin. Pastor Joel did the baptism right here at the church, where there is a big baptism pool right on the stage in the sanctuary. Those in attendance included the nine from our team, plus Don, Larry, and Pastor Pete. Karin and Giff each shared why they wanted to be baptized, and then they each entered the pool and were baptized. Afterwards, we celebrated with cake. Outside, we could see Venus northeast of the moon.

Finally, the guy showed up with some more j-channel for the siding, and the sprayer for the walls. I spent the afternoon working with Giff, spraying joint compound on all of the walls an ceilings. It was our way of adding texture to the walls do we didn’t need to waste any more time fixing all of the drywall. We didn’t quite finish spraying, but the rooms that did get done should be ready to paint tomorrow.
Buck spent all day outside working on siding again. He’s making good progress. I was able to help out a little, and even cut one piece to fit around a window.
The rest of the team went to work at another house today. I believe the other house had some minor damage from the wind, but more seriously damaged from the rain. Also, the lady is a hoarder, and all of her stuff was water damaged, but she still doesn’t want to get rid of her stuff. Also, she has five dogs, five cats, a horse, and a ton of mice. I was told there were so many flies that you needed to push them away with your hands. The team spent the afternoon digging a trench around the outside to assist with the drainage, weed whacking the grass, which was about four feet tall, and attempting to throw away boxes of stuff from the garage, which went to the ceiling. What a job!

After a nice hot breakfast, we headed back to the same house we worked on yesterday. Buck and Brody are working on the siding, and the rest of us sanded a bunch of the mud that was done yesterday. Joel, Karin, Curt, Vi, and Sara went to the dump to drop off another load at the dump. We put in some insulation around the windows, and now we are going to sit down and enjoy some fresh baked donuts from Dude’s Daylight Donuts.

I have to be honest with you all – this trip has had quite a few disappointments. I already told you about how the previous volunteers did a sloppy job on the house, and we spent a lot of time redoing and repairing their work. But worse than that was that the group responsible for assigning us the house didn’t know how bad it was, nor did they seem to care. They basically dropped us off and said “wow, this is all messed up.” We had to go to Home Depot and buy our own materials and some tools. It was very disappointing.
We also are having problems at the church we are living at. When we first arrived, there was one group there, and they were staying in two small rooms with bunks. We went into the very large room with many bunks. Another very large group arrived a little after us. So big, they couldn’t all fit in the main room with our group of nine also being in there (so some of them needed to use cots last night). Knowing those in the two “private” rooms were leaving today, we called “dibs” on those rooms. But when we got back from work today, there were people moving in to the rooms. Fortunately, we were able to kick them out, but not without some attitude.
And finally, the very large group has taken over the kitchen area. Fortunately, there are several kitchens in this very large church. But the people in charge keep changing their mind about what kitchen we are allowed to use, and telling us that we need to be out of one kitchen and go into another at different times during the week. It is all very complicated and frustrating.
I’m wondering if the organization we are using for this trip has gotten sloppy and is starting to take for granted the volunteers that are coming to help restore their city.
On a positive note, dinner was excellent. Karin had made a bunch of food and brought it along. Tonight, we ate baked ziti, meatballs, and salad. There was a huge loaf of bread, so I turned half into garlic bread. And there were some baked goods for dessert. Everything tasted great. It was a nice filling meal after a long day.

When we got back from the dump, Russ was at the house working on the siding with Joel and Buck. Thank God Russ showed up. He was a huge help, and from what I know, he should be stopping back again this week to help out some more. He shared some stories about the hurricane, about the relief efforts, about the Extreme Home Makeover, and more. Here is a pic I took of Russ.

Literally. Curt, Vi, Sarah, Karen and I just took a load of wreckage to the dump from the house we are working on. It was just under a ton of stuff, and cost us $18 to drop it off.

This is the homeowner, Lois. She is 76 years old. She came by to thank us for helping work on the house.

This is the first house we have to work on. Looks like the people who were helping out before us didn’t really know what they were doing. We wasted a bunch of time redoing a bunch of stuff they had done outside. So far, I put up some siding, and others did some mudding and sanding. A local driving by saw me sizing up a piece of siding and he decided to stop and give us some advice. His name was Russ, and he does siding for a living. It was great that he stopped and gave us some tech advice. He was wearing a Confederate Border Patrol hat that said “Keeping the Yankees Out Since 1867.” Anyway, Russ was very nice, and he even let us borrow one of his ladders and a plank. And he offered to help later in the week. How cool.

After an okay night’s rest, and a nice breakfast of pancakes and sausage, we are now at the Spring River Baptist Association, where they are going to assign us our first assignment. While at the home office, we picked up these cool shirts.