February 17, 2006
Tonight was the night of our special dinner. Not like all of our dinners weren't great because they really were all amazing, but today was to be extra special since today was our last dinner in Mississippi. This made us sad, we loved being in Mississippi to help, and there was so much to do, so many things needed to be accomplished, all of the debris that was left on the properties of millions of people, some dead (tears) some moved away never to return, and some starting to attempt a come back. But I am getting ahead of myself.
We arrived back at the trailers from the distribution center and lots of people took showers and changed into nicer clothes. We wanted to look pretty for our special dinner. I went outside about an hour before dinner and I was kicking around a soccer ball and I saw Tessa. I mentioned Tessa earlier, just not by name; Eva, Lauren, and Tessa were the three Perkins daughters. Anyways, I was kicking the soccer ball back and forth and Tessa came over and started kicking it with me. We were kicking the ball and talking about lots of things; school, her family, life. Then she took me to show me her dog, and the 'pirate ship' she and her sisters had made out of scraps. We had a lot of fun talking, Tessa was/is so adorable. I was glad I could spend so much time with her. After dinner I also got to hang out with Lauren a bit. Lauren was showing me songs that she could play on the piano, and I was singing along with it. And once again, I am getting ahead of myself. Dinner was amazing, the food as always was excellent, as was the company.
After dinner Eva, Lauren, Tessa, and I got out some hula-hoops and started playing with them, having fun, some others joined in with us after a while. After we were done playing we were shown a video that Andrea had made of us. The video was footage of us working, the people we worked for, as well as clips from the devastation before we came. It was a tearful moment. We had been in MS for a week, and even so; the footage ran chills down our backs, and tears down our cheeks. Katrina, in my mind was four things: powerful, awful, devastating, a miracle. There are many different ways to look at it, that was my view. After watching the video we all talked about the trip for a bit, and then we prayed. We prayed in a big circle of all 24 of us, 17 from CCCSH, 5 Perkins, Andrea. It was a very powerful prayer. Now you are probably thinking alright Laurel, your a real genius, 17 + 5 + 1 =23 not 24. The 24th is God. He was there, in such a strong way, in all of our hearts, and throughout the room. His power and might radiated.
After our prayer most of our crew went to bed...but not all of us. Some of us, I don't remember who all was there, about 6 of us maybe...we stayed and talked to Andrea. Andrea is a very fun, interesting person to talk to. She has so many stories and they are all so interesting. She also gave us some inside views on some of the phrases used by southerners, I would go into detail but...maybe another time. So if you weren't talking to Andrea to know the inside scoop on southerners then Bless your hearts, but maybe I'll tell you another time!
Eventually we all figured that we would have a long day tomorrow, lots of plane rides and such, so that it would probably be best to go to bed, and so that is what we did, we went to sleep.
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