Day Two

February 25, 2007
Biloxi Mississippi
Day 2

Sunday, the day of rest and worship. It was weird not working on this day, we had all settled in the night before, and by now we were all restless. We wanted to work. But Sunday was reserved for worship, not work. We all got up for breakfast at 8 and then we all did our own thing until church. I took out my chemistry homework...I got a little done, I'm so bad at chem. But, there were lots of people that were smart enough to be able to help me. We split into two groups to go to church. One group went to a baptist church, and the other went to a contemporary church. I was part of the contemporary church group. It was a nice service, the pastor was very funny, and I loved the music. From what I heard about the baptist church it was amazing, their service was about the hurricane. So that went very well.

When everyone got back to the village we put a group together to go in search of fast food places. Ryan, Bri, and I went out. We stopped at McDonald's so I could get a salad and so we could get pie for Ginny. Then we went to subway. We sat in the van and got the orders from everyone. Ryan was on the phone and he would tell me what they said and i would write it down in very fast short hand. Then we went inside with a very long list of sandwiches. When we went into subway there were not many people, we were waited on right away by a very nice girl. I read off the sandwiches to her and she would make them one at a time and then wrap them up and Ryan or Bri would write on the wrapper the name of the person who it was going to. Partway through the order another girl came to try to hurry the process up. She was rather rude, and very snappy and I didn't like her too much. At one point she said to Ryan 'You better be giving a good tip for this' It didn't sound like she was joking. Ryan told her he would, because he had been planning on tipping, but that was rather rude, the other girl pulled us aside and said not to tip, because the rude girl should not have said that. In the end Ryan tipped them anyways.

After that we stopped at a place to buy flowers. Ryan said that every month he bought Anna flowers, and since this month on their anniversary Anna's dad bought her flowers for valentines day Ryan waited until the trip. So he bought them and we put them on her bed. It was difficult to get her to go into our room without telling her why but eventually she went in and saw the flowers and she was stunned, she kept on asking us if they were really for her, and we told her yes, and she asked us why, and we said because someone loves her a lot. It was very cute.

So after we all ate we went to walk a few blocks to the beach. Ginny was already at the beach so we took her food to her. It was interesting walking down to the beach. I should have known better than to think that the debris would be cleared. The closer we got to the beach the more ruins we saw. We couldn't help but walk up to the front steps that led to...nothing. It was a terrible sight. The houses were flattened. It was nice to walk on the beach and look out into the water. It was very calm and relaxing, unless you looked too far and saw the ruined docks, or if you turned around and saw what had been beautiful mansions. My mom and I walked through the spot where a very fancy house had been. Nothing had been removed from this spot, it was obvious the owners had not returned to clean up.

On the way back we walked up to where one house had been, but now only the floor was left. On the floor was something that made me cry. There was a dead mother opossum. That was not the very sad part though. The sad part was that around the mother were tiny baby opossums trying to get milk from their mother. You knew that the babies would die, they were only newborns. Too young to be by themselves, perhaps only a day or so old. I asked if we could call animal control or someone else to take care of them, I was informed that animal control wouldn't take care of them, they would just kill them. This is when i started crying. I am truthfully not the big animal advocate...but this was disheartening. We started walking back to the village again, but tears were brimming my eyes and then falling to the ground. I went and told my mom about it, that only made me cry more. They were only babies, they had no chance in the world. They did not deserve death.

Sunday night was our special meal out together. So we went to a nice seafood restaurant. It was really fun and delightful getting to know everyone better. We also found out something about Uncle George. We all know that George is the smartest man ever, and that he knows everything, but we didn't realize that everything included being able to turn napkins into pretty origami flowers. They were pretty, and now we know that Uncle George really does know everything. After dinner we headed back to the village where we hung out for the rest of the night. Eventually we all went to bed. We needed our rest for our first work day.


Loving you!Special Love to my mission team!