Daily Postings from our Katrina Team
Daily Postings from our Katrina Team
Posted on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Well, I apologize for missing a day but I had no time to complete this blog on Friday night as our Bible Study got started late and went late. We had such a good time Friday night and as it was Stu and Cliff’s last night we spent extra time with them. Amanda suggested that we each write an affirming statement about each of the others in the group to take with us. What a great idea. We have become a real working team and truly enjoy each others companionship. All teams don’t work this well together and we are blessed that we do.
On Friday morning the CA and FL teams left making our team the only one here. We had to stay close to the church in order to cook dinner and provide the drive through food distribution and replenish the food bags to hand out. Each day we separate 50 pound bags of Quick Oats, Corn meal and rice into gallon “baggies” for distribution. The apples are divided into bags of six each. We are low on bleach, shampoo and size 1 diapers.
Gina is the master of the kitchen now. She and Mike keep whipping up great food. She is using a McCalls Cookbook that was donated and finding ideas for meals and then just “mixing a few things together” and generating ten pans of Apple/Peach cobbler or Apple Spice Cake with some fruit cocktail for deserts. We had tomato sauces on pasta, green beans (with bacon and cajan spice), and dessert. We have water and Sunny D for drinks. I bought some Cokes for the staff refrigerator since I don’t drink coffee or tea.
Once Dinner on Friday was making it’s way along, Paul Ramsey, Stu and I went with Pastor Jim to buy a chain saw. One parishioner Marry loaned one that was returned “not working” and we had a job to finish. Trinitarian Congregational Church has provided the new one for Riverside. The house is just two blocks over so Pastor Jim dropped us off and we walked back. Paul (Bunyan) Ramsey quickly attacked the remains of the tree which was originally in the neighbor’s yard but had fallen horizontally over the four foot chain link fence and onto another neighbor’s garage and partially on Mary’s house. Stu and I carried the logs to the curb.
On Saturday we again stayed home for drive through and dinner. Stu and Cliff left cutting our team to just six to man the fort until the twelve new troops arrived at 4:00 p.m. from Oregon. There are five guys and seven gals. They immediately stepped in to serve dinner which was a great relief for us. I think that is the first time we have sat at dinner as a Boston Team. During the day Paul Ramsey and I passed out food at the drive through although there were only about sixty cars total all day. Paul and Shirley washed in the kitchen while Gina and Amanda cooked. During breaks in the cars I followed up on Paul’s idea and swept the men’s sleeping quarters and mopped the tarp on the floor which covers the plywood. We had to return the propane fork-lift we were borrowing so we now have to move the pallets of food with a hand jack. That was donated by a church member and was not in prime condition so I walked over to the gas station, bough a quart of oil and Amanda and I worked at oiling the wheels. It really needs grease but oil makes it work much better now.
After that I started stripping and cleaning the “downed” chain saw to see if I could get it running. It was packed with oil soaked saw dust but otherwise in good shape. Pastor Jim emptied the old oil/gas mixture which we were not sure of the ratio and replaced it with known 40:1. I got the saw running but it still stalls when you release the trigger after use. May be an adjustment. At least it runs and is probably not permanently damaged.
After dinner Gina gathered the new arrivals and did a knowledge transfer about kitchen and other duties. The Oregon team seems well adjusted and will do well here. We will see after breakfast.
This morning we are looking forward to church and meeting some of the regulars here. We also may have a time after church where we can walk down to the river which is only about three blocks away. Stu had gone a couple of times and the girls went last night but it was too dark to see anything so we are going back again today.
We are starting to know the “regulars” at the drive through and at dinner. We have made many friends just in this short time. It will be a real loss on Tuesday when there is not dinner served here in the neighborhood. Pastor Jim has a great ministry here and is looking for many ways to serve this community. The Lord has given him an open book to try all sorts of new ideas. He leaves Monday to drive back to Atlanta, GA to collect his wife and two children (boy 6 and girl 8) and bring them back here to River Ridge.
Day three. Stay at home day.
As I said in my previous email we sent the Tennessee contingent home this morning around 7:30 a.m. We were “in training” today to take over when the CA and FL delegations leave on Friday morning. We are the only visiting group left. A group from Oregon will arrive on Saturday night but until then we have to run the show, run the drive up, prepare dinner and clean up. The CA group did clean up tonight.
I spent the day in the kitchen with Gina, Amanda and Shirley baking cookies. You see, we have these 50 pound bags of oatmeal that just needed something done with them. Why not do cookies? That required a recipe and eggs and brown sugar which in turn required a trip to the grocery store. Gina and Shirley went but reported that while this was a fully open store, there still was not much on the shelves. We did get the brown sugar but we compromised on the eggs and used half powdered and half real (don’t tell anyone but they were great).
The girls mixed and dabbed and ate raw dough and baked so the least I could do was wash up. In the mean times Ken and I prepared a gravy from some soups we found, some vegetable chunky soup, celery soup and some chicken gravy to go over the sliced chicken. We also prepared lunch of spare ribs and left over roasted chicken, some fruit cocktail, sweet potatoes and, you guessed it, Oatmeal cookies for dessert. Some surprise cookies had just a bit of peanut butter added at the last minute before baking. We are not lacking for good food. Someone provided some frozen lobster patties so we had some of that for snack in honor of we Bostonians!
Paul, Paul, Cliff and Stu set about to reorganize the storage room, making sure that the baby formula were all sorted, disposable diapers were stacked neatly (we have lots of size 3 if you are wondering), and even some swim diapers although not many takers there. We have cases of Theraflu and Kopectate but no aspirin or ibuprofen and we even have some Early Pregnancy Test kits, just in case. We’ve concluded that no one should ever eat a Harvest Power bar of any flavor (if flavor is what you want to call it). We did get seven cases of Johnagold apples from Chile! What a treat after eating everything out of a can or frozen or reconstituted from a powder.
We are still meeting people under the tent at night with sad and struggling stories. “Nana” lived in Lakeview near the 17th street levee breach. Water in her house up eight feet. She needs to have all of her walls stripped of all sheet rock and replaced as well as rewiring. She is alone. She has taken out the carpets, appliances, refrigerator and all of her belongings and placed them on the curb for pickup. The small apartment behind her house is in like repair and that rent she relied on for some of her income. She is a Catholic but comes to Riverview Baptist because of the work of Pastor Jim. She is staying in a very contentious situation with an ex-boyfriend and two kids in a two bedroom house with, “a lot of shouting going on.” She is tired and just wants some relief but has no where to go, no family nearby or friends who have not been hurt any less than she.
Many people come to “the tent” to get dinner for themselves but also to take home a couple extra meals for neighbors who do not have any transportation. We fed around 350 meals tonight.
We had a full bible study tonight from Mark 1:1-15 and Mark 1:21-34. For a unique presentation, Amanda did a great reading from The Message and I read from the NIV. Paul K read from the ASB and we had a great way to contrast the three readings.
The wind is starting to rattle and snap the blue tarp over our sleeping quarters now. We have no heat but the temp is about 55 which makes for great sleeping bag weather. And it is dry! Some more folks got showers today so we are staying clean for the most part. We have a “reefer” just outside our building in the parking lot. The refrigerated semi-trailer has an automatic thermostat and is fed by diesel fuel. Every time the temp goes up a little the diesel goes on and runs for about three minutes and then shuts down. This happens day and night, night and day, just 30 feet from our sleeping room! A sound we won’t miss back at home.
Sleeping now at 11:30 p.m.
In His service,
Dave
We worked today and had unexpected opportunities. Shirley is really excited that the Sox won!
After another good breakfast with new friends from Vallejo, CA (Napa valley) and Tennessee. The Tennessee folks left this morning (Thurs) at 7:30 a.m. We will miss their expertise. It is wonderful how quickly friendships form under trying circumstances and how many tears there are after just a few days with new friends.
We packed up yesterday with tools and we went to a home to help strip sheet rock from the walls. The water in that neighborhood stood about four inches in the homes for nine days and then receded leaving mold on the walls and IN the walls. ALL refrigerators are being removed.
Even before we got out of our van a FEMA inspector drove up door to door, rolled down his window and asked Pastor James if we were from Riverside. It seems there is a lady a few doors down who has “special medical needs”, is just getting a “blue roof” permit but has not had any assistance since the storm! Pastor James took a Gina, Cliff and Paul Ramsey down there to work and see what they could do. They stripped carpets, hauled boxes with mold to the curb while Gina raked the yard, borrowed a neighbor’s lawn mower and mowed the grass and then raked again. And this was not even planned or on the list for today. A blue roof permit is to allow folks to stay in their homes but they have blue tarps over the top to keep it from leaking. When we flew in we saw the blue but assumed they were swimming pools until we got lower and saw them on so many homes.
The fellow Amanda, Paul Kohler, Stu and I were helping was cleaning up his mother’s home. He lives west of Houston (10 - 12 hr drive) and spends three to five days a week here working by himself. I expect there was no flood insurance. All the carpets were gone, all the walls in the living room and kitchen were gone and he had stripped some of the sheet rock up about a foot from the floor. All of the appliances were at the curb. There were some minor shingles missing.
We started in a bedroom and we learned how to do demolition work with crow bars, hammers, utility knives and a wheel barrow. We stripped up to the four foot level where the natural joint in the wall board meets the upper wall board. We piled the pieces into the wheelbarrow and out the door to the curb where the city/federal pick up teams will collect the debris. In the former laundry area we stripped some wallboard to discover a nest of roaches who immediately decided to chase Amanda. She did not stay around for a zoology lesson. A little spray took care of the problem and we continued. Once one side of a wall was opened up, the backside of the other side of the wall was available for kicking from the back. This was a favorite of Amanda who is learning a lot about construction/demolition.
After a homeowner provided lunch of Subway sandwiches loaded with onions, pickles, hot peppers and mustard, chips, cokes (the church ran out a week ago) and ginger cookies we finished up a little sweeping. Paul Ramsey helped relocating an electrical socket for the new wall for the kitchen. He is taking the opportunity to enlarge the kitchen by 30 inches.
Back at the church we still had the opportunity for late lunch of fried shrimp, bread pudding (with rum sauce!). Really great snack.
During clean up in the kitchen we noticed that the floor drains were full of water and not going down. Pastor James was called and Ken (FL) and I opened the grease trap and spent the next three hours scooping buckets of grease out of the clogged drain. We couldn’t fix the blockage but we took out about 120 gallons to make room for clean up after dinner and breakfast before the plumber can get here. Ken and I took our mandatory shower before dinner.
The men’s showers are outside, no lights. So as a precaution you have to shine a flashlight inside before stepping in to scare the snakes away if there are any. The floor is basically like standing on a wooden shipping pallet so the water flows through. But the water is warm and what a simple pleasure it is. The men have to wait until after 6 p.m. to use the showers because the preschool kids are still playing in the playground until then.
Others continued to fill individual family bags of food with assorted items to make daily meals easier. Many still don’t have electricity or water so they request foods that are “ready to eat” since they can not prepare anything.
We had a problem with flies until we discovered the onion bags and Stu and Cliff moved them outside. We moved them to the “Victory” food delivery site. Much better now. We are starting to wind down this site and are shifting bulk amounts of food over to Victory. This is the last week for dinners being served here under the tent in the parking lot. Many folks now come and get dinner “to go” as they have managed to clean up the homes to a place where they can at least reside if not “live”.
We ask your prayers for Pastor Jim Caldwell as he was bitten by a caterpillar yesterday and had to go to the Dr. He was bitten near the wrist and his whole arm is aching and near numb. He is better this morning but still recovering.
Because we spend so much time in the kitchen last night cleaning we ran out of time for a full bible study but had prayer time before retiring before 9:00 p.m. to bed.
The weather is still sunny and 70 in the day.
In His work,
Dave
We Arrived!
After lunch we engaged in a number of activities around the church. We assisted with putting food in cars as they drove up, prayed with them in the cars as well. We divided 20 and 40 pound bags of rice and oatmeal into zip-lock baggies. We crushed cardboard and helped prepare dinner for 400. (The food is outstanding)! We moved boxes and cleaned the deep fryer (first in a year we believe).
Then James, the youth pastor, took us on a tour of New Orleans starting with the “tourist” trip down St. Charles St. (famous for the street cars, not running yet) around and back up Magazine street, through the French Quarter and we stopped briefly at Jackson Square where President Bush gave his address. We then drove north towards Lake Pontchartrain through some hard hit areas like Lakeview. Breathtaking for the devastation and lack of people. There were all these homes with large red X’s indicating that they had been searched for bodies, broken windows, downed trees which have just been pushed to the side of the road, and many homes not yet have been revisited by the owners. Very sad indeed.
We saw several churches completely destroyed, steeples toppled, pews strewn around the inside and all caked with about an inch of mud that has now dried and cracked into pieces about two inches in size, like a dry lake bed. Well, it IS a dried lake bed!
We are going out today to start “real work” helping clean up some homes and get some folks resettled.
We had dinner “under the tent” in the parking lot where they feed about 400 a night. There are about 20 volunteers here, some from Tennessee, others we have yet to meet. A group of about 15 from California came in a van from Biloxi where they had been for two days. They will stay here until Friday.
Our team then gathered at 7:30 for a prayer time and Pastor Jim joined us for a bit. He relayed that just tonight there were two completely broken souls who came to dinner there and accepted Jesus “under the tent”. They just had no idea why they came for dinner but left with a new life.
Shirley led us in a good bible study and we retired around 9. Our plan is to meet nightly.
I was honored to be asked to say grace for breakfast this morning over pancake/egg/sausage sandwiches, fruit cocktail, juices and ham.
Well, we are off now for work detail. Back again around 5 tonight.
Surviving with His help,
Dave
