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November 25, 2005
it's Thanksgiving, and we're thankful for...
What a blessing it is to have been with family to celebrate Thanksgiving. My aunt Martha hitched a ride with a co-worker from North Carolina to Holland and we picked her up at 7:30 Wednesday night at the exit, and immediately made tracks north. Poor girl, she'd just ridden in a car for something like 11 hours already that day, and we added another 4 to it! But having heard the forecast we decided not to wait until morning as originally planned. We arrived at my parents' close to midnight, only experiencing the really blowy stuff once we got as far as Fife Lake, with only an hour to go.
It snowed last week Wednesday and Thursday, as we were flying out to Houston for Binti's wedding... that's Christin, our old roommate from Cairo. But warmer weather over the weekend melted it all away, until this week Wednesday when it started snowing again! And it's been snowing pretty steady since Wednesday morning. Thursday morning, we woke up on the lake with nearly two foot waves, which is quite a feat for such a small lake that my parents live on. But Thursday night just before bed we noticed that there was no longer any wave action on the lake and it had indeed frozen over! This morning when we woke up, instead of the two foot breakers, there was a very serene layer of snow on the lake, with softly falling snow drifting down just like a snow globe. Beautiful.
We are so thankful to have our family around us. We are so thankful for such a beautiful change in the weather patterns. We are so thankful for such a beautiful and God-honoring wedding ceremony that we experienced last weekend. And we are so thankful for a healthy, beautiful baby Eloise that was born this Tuesday to our friends Neil and Melinda in Cairo.
your host for this episode : carrie; 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2005
"home" again
I've been trying to work on our website, trying to get it updated, but the server continued to deny us access. But we're back live now, thanks to Samuel. (You rock, Samuel!)
Apparently it wasn't just us, but every site and every author through our provider. I suppose that's encouraging, though dissappointing. Forgive me for the tardiness of this update, it is ten days overdue.
I want to thank each one of you for your fervent prayers on my behalf as I went to the Gulf Coast. Every one of our team felt blanketed by the protection of the Holy Spirit. We had no injuries beyond bug bites - from the mosquitos, sand fleas, and black flies - and minor scratches from brush removal. The last of mine are healed over now, and only slightly pink from where I got in a "fight" with a tree branch. Not to worry though, I won. I had the chain saw.
The first week, there were ten of us, plus the two guys "on the ground" there. Chris Koens and Jeff Verway are two awesome men that I am proud to call brothers. They moved down there for three months, on about 3 days notice, arriving around 2 weeks before I did. They are responsible for establishing the assignments the teams get every day.
At the end of my first week, 7 people went home and 11 arrived to start Crew 2.
Trying to put into words the feelings and activities of two weeks, it's hard. Even if you ask me in person, I have a hard time. Each time I talk about it, I remember different details, different bits of what God chose to show me. Dan hasn't even heard all the details yet.
Here's a couple excerpts from my journal, the first is after the first drive up the beach from camp to "work":
"Unimaginable is an understatement. Unspeakable. Unfathomable. Impossible to describe or re-create. Entire roofs were piled on top of other houses and sheds, hundreds of yards from their original locations. Houses built on stilts reduced to a collection of pilings and rubble. Some staircases and the odd couch or patio furniture. There's this one house - or used-to-be-house - that had a gazebo type structure as the top floor. Like the top floor was a bit smaller and round, with glass on every facet. You see the pilings, the shell of the first floor, and all the walls and windows and roof even of this gazebo bit on top. Incredible. The trees all around it are literally snapped off at about 25 feet up, as they are all up and down this coast. But there, there, the upper room was preserved. Don't understand it. Up the road a bit farther you can see the back of a small lawn tractor sticking out of the sand. You know, just the back of the seat & part of the back wheels. It was completely face first in the BEACH."
And another after the first "Mud Out" - affectionately renamed "Muck Out":
"The body at work. Every arm, every appendage, every peice. Some of the people we worked with today: John (as in the Baptist), Karen, Jeff, 'Red Shirt', 'Chickadee' the nurse, a couple of 20-something girls and a guy whose names we never caught. John & Jeff and our three 'boys' - the ones full of spunk I mean - those guys were unstoppable. Incredible. Hauling fridges, freezers, stoves, everything dripping and leaking sewage all over. Carpeting. Couches. And when the fridge wouldn't fit through the door way, they took the door off it. Not the door of the house, but the door of the fridge - and hauled it on out stench and all. Putrid. The word doesn't even touch the odor that still lingers. My first approximation was a bad perm. But Suzanne the stylist has experience with those and this was arguably much worse. Chemical horse manure was another discriptor. Raw. Love on display. I heard tell that the owner couldn't stand to see his place - hurt too much. But the love on display today and the unity exhibited by people who know not much more about our co-laborers than that we are co-laborers with Christ. Moment by moment each of us gained strength from the Almighty. He plugged up my nose today. I couldn't smell - or not like normal anyhow. Praise Him for it. And yesterday and this morning I was feeling cramps or what I thought were. Now I wonder if it's just a barf reflex that's making my stomach lurch. At one point I had sweat running down the sides of my nose and into my mouth (inside my mask). I had sweat down the back of my neck and down my temples. My glasses were so fogged up I could hardly see. But more than one time I was glad to not be dealing with contacts in that crap. I went in the shower at the end of the day glasses and all b/c they were just so nasty. How do you begin to even process it all? I called Dan today, and when I told him that 18 people took a 3 bedroom home from fully furnished and lived in to bare stud walls in less than 7 hours he couldn't believe it. The power of God at work."
It was amazing each morning as we woke up free of aches and pains, after having worked hard, long, exhausting hours in the humidity and the stench the day before.
The emotions that I experienced were more than I expected. Gut wrenching. To see the hope in the handful that had returned was inspiring. Their entire lives, everything that defined who they had once been, were gone. Homes, cars, furniture. And the details, too. Photo albums, cook books, drawings from the fridge. And yet God is drawing people to Himself through this catastrophe. Incredible, but just like Him to "show up" when people are at the lowest lows. More likely it's just our human nature that refuses to see Him until everything else is stripped away.
One statistic I heard, after one week there: 1/2 of 1%. That's how much of the debris has been cleared. 96,000 square miles have been damaged, by Katrina alone, not to mention Rita or Wilma. In Hancock County, where the eye of the hurricane passed over and camped out for approximately 9 1/2 hours, they are using more than 300 trucks all day everyday to haul away the debris. Hauling in the neighborhood of 40,000 cubic yards per day. As of the 12th, a Wednesday, they had hauled 841,000 cubic yards, by that Saturday it was over a million. And that's the day I was quoted the 1/2 of one percent figure. By the Executive Director of the EPA for the region. He and his wife opened their home to Suzanne and I to wash clothes for ourselves and Chris and Jeff.
I was happy to get "home" again, after 2 weeks of peeing in outhouses and showering in a semi-trailer. But it's difficult to feel at home, when there remain to be so many people without one. It was hard to leave that place. Suzanne and I talked a lot on the drive home. We both find it hard to leave a job unfinished. We don't like to quit half way. We felt, and continue to feel, like we need to stay longer, work harder, sweat more, listen more, love more, hold the hands of more women as they try to get their life back. Until the beach is a beach again - not just a strip of uninviting sand; until the town is a town again - not just a refugee camp; until the cinema has a "Now Showing" listing - not just "Not Showing" listing; until the choices for groceries is more than just the tent in front of the old Walmart or a 35 minute drive. We're talking of going again, to try to do more. In December maybe. Wanna come along?
your host for this episode : carrie; 08:15 PM | Comments (0)