Mississippi Day Five

Wednesday
February 15, 2006

This day was by far my favorite day! I hadn't expected that. I had expected that this would possibly be the worst day on the trip. It was our halfway point, "just get through today and it is all downhill from here". I kept telling myself that. But then God had a different message for me. God was saying "come on Laurel, You're doing so well, I know today can be special for you, just keep an open mind." I was sent on the drywalling crew. I didn't know the first thing about drywalling, I was not too thrilled, I wasn't planning on complaining, I planned to remain complacent.

When we arrived at the house where we were going to be drywalling the owner was not there, we had no one to tell us what to do so we took a walk down the street. We were in a upper-middle class neighborhood. We could walk to the coast in about 5 minutes if you walked at a brisk pace. We just walked along looking at the houses in the neighborhood we were working in, which while not directly on the coast was still badly damaged. After we walked down the street we came back to our drywalling house, and we were told it would be a while before any work could be done so most of us got in the van and we drove around through the neighborhoods leading to the coast. There were so many houses that didn't look like anyone had even come back to see it. It was like walking through a graveyard, passing tombstones and instead of the bodies being buried they were laying all around...please take that as a metaphor and not literally because we didnt really see any corpses.

After we arrived back to the house we were told that we all wouldn't be able to work on the drywalling becasue we didn't have enough tools. We had no where else planned to go to, we were a bit stumped as to what God was calling us to do. Marlaena suggested that we take a prayer walk. Meaning that we walk around the neighborhood asking if anyone needs our help. We went to several houses and asked the people that were working outside and they turned our help down, they were contractors being paid to work, they said it wouldnt be right if we helped for free.

We continued walking along the street praying that God would provide us with someone to help. A car started to drive towards us...it stopped. Sue went over and told the guy in the car (AJ Fountain) what we were doing and asked if there was anything we could help him with. He said yes! His sons house had been completely destroyed and so he had bought a house that needed fixed up. The woman that had lived in there, moved to Oregon and had not come back yet, she had just sold the house as it was. Nothing had been cleaned at all. Debris was all over the yard. We went into the garage and we saw mold all over the walls, it was disgusting. We got to work on the house.

Unfortnately we didn't have any of our supplies with us. We looked around and we said "God, it would be nice if we could find a wheelbarrow"...we found one within seconds of asking, "God, it would be nice if we had a rake." Simone found two parts of a rake and put them together, "God, we really need some bags to put all this insulation and paper in so it doesn't blow away." we turned around and there was a huge stack of bags on the table. Chanel was joking around and said "God, it would be nice if we had a vacuum." Of course we had no electricity in the house and so we couldn't really use a vacuum. So I was joking around and I said "Oh well God isn't that great." Then we all laughed and we joked around more. Then I turned around and against the wall behind me there was a vacuum. It is confirmed God has a sense of humor, he had a good laugh at me after that, we all were laughing. God provides, anyone who doesn't believe that, there is my testimony.

We all worked in that house until lunch. We created a fairly big pile of shingles, and sticks and insulation and other random junk. At lunch we walked back to the drywalling house and met with the others to eat, and to bring some drinks to our new project. While we were waiting for the drywalling crew to get to a good place to stop and join us for lunch we sat on the floor of the garage. We were feeling so great, that God was providing for us and making today so great and miraculous we started to sing praise songs, random praise songs, anyones that we could think of. Marlaena came into the garage and told us that she had been on the other side of the wall and that she heard us singing adn talking about our experience and she became teary. Marlaena was our leader, and seeing us having such a great time working for our Lord made her very proud :-). At lunch we told everyone on the drywalling crew about our experience. (Ham and Cheese today!) After lunch four of us: Sue, Simone, Chanel, and I went back to the house to continue cleaning up while the rest did the drywalling.

The four of us mad egreat progress, we finished the whole front yard very quickly. When we were working two of the neighbors came over to us. Jeanette (Sandy) Wisdom, and Bob...(We never found out his last name. We tlaked to them for a few minutes and then Bob went back to his trailor. Sandy invited us over to her house to look around. She had contractors working on it. We went over to look, it had obviously been a gorgeous house, and it was obviously going to be gorgeous again. She (just like Mr. AJ Fountain's sons new house), had 10 feet of water in her house. She did not have flood insurance because she was told by numerous people, including FEMA, and her insurance company, that she was outside the flood plane, so she did not need, and couldn't get flood insurance. So when she filed her claim to her insurance company they would only pay for the Hurricane damage (she did have hurricane insurance) , in other words only things destroyed above the 10 foot flood line, since she had a one story house, this wasn't much room at all.

She had written a letter and sent it out to people about her situation adn the help she needed but no one had responded. She read the letter to us and started to cry. We all hugged her, she gave us the letter to keep. We prayed for Sandy and then we went back to working in the other house.

By this point we were tired of cleaning the lawn, and it was pretty much done, so we were all thinking, "God, it would be nice if AJ Fountain came and told us what to do." We saw a shed by the house that was completely wrecked. As we were thinking how nice it would be if Mr. Fountain came his car pulled up. Sue asked him what we should do with the shed and he said that everything in the shed could be tossed out and he's going to get rid of the shed, but its probably too hard for us to carry it to the curb, so he will hire someone to take care of that so we dont need to worry if its too heavy. We said ok and he left. We went over to the shed and started throwing away the contents of the shed.

The contents of the shed were very odd. We found normal stuff that u would find in a shed, tools, folding chairs, paint...that poured on the ground...and some other stuff. Behind the shed was a grill. The propane tank on the grill was open so that was interesting. We were all sorta afraid that we would blow up, because of all of the propane and the spilled paint, and the open gas container. But ofcourse we were all fine. We were able to quickly clear out the contents of the shed. Then we started to feel ambitious.

We wanted to move that shed to the end of the driveway. We decided that even though it was huge and made of metal that we could carry it. And we did, we flipped it so it was in a good position and then the four of us picked it up and carried it. Once we got it to the pile we felt so proud. We were so happy to have gotten it there, God had given us the required strength. After we moved the shed we moved a big piece of fence and raked up a bunch of leaves and trash. At one point Bob stopped over and talked to us some more. He gave us some bigger garbage bags which were certainly helpful. He told us about he used to leave near Pittsburgh, he was an orphan and then he moved a lot, he has lived almost everywhere in the U.S. (not literally, that was an exaggeration, but you get the picture.

At about 5 we had our pictures taken in front of the big pile that we had made. We were very happy, and excited. We went back to the drywalling house and got into the van and we drove past our pile on the way back to the trailers. It was a great day...and it wasn't over!

When we got home we all washed up and put on nicer clothes because today was our day to eat out. Today was the day where we gave a break to our wonderful chef. We all went: the 17 from our church, the 5 in the Perkins family, and Andrea; all of us to CiCi's Pizza! It was really nice, it was a great chance to relax, and to hang out. We all enjoyed our pizza and our conversations.

I didn't mention this earlier in the post, but today Anna was very sick, she had a fever and was not doing to well. She was at the drywalling house, she refused to stay home, she wanted to work. Partway through working she hit her limit and had to go lay down. She went to the backyard, lay down and went to sleep for a while. Afterwards she felt better, we were all glad because we had been praying for her a lot, we didn't want her to be sick.

After CiCi's we went back to the trailers and went to bed. It was an amazing day. A huge God day for those of us at the other house. We loved it. That was my favorite day of the trip. Although really they were/are all fabulous. It is great helping people!

Luv ya all!