Day 118 – Youth Week - Serving Three Families in One Week (Saturday)

This week was Youth Week at Orange Grove. Twenty adults and teens from United Church of Canistota , South Dakota and six from Northside Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga worked really hard. They were as productive as any teams I have had., starting and finishing four jobs. One was an open one we have been working on for several weeks, the others were jobs we had not started until the youth volunteer arrivals.

Northside Team

The home of a single young woman with a grade school-aged son sustained a lot of water damage when the roof failed during Katrina and still was not repaired. We replaced flooring and painted the interior earlier. This week our goal was to complete the wall of the large rear laundry room almost the width of the home, install gutters and a new floor.

Last week the crew from First Presbyterian in Cleveland, TN accomplished the major rebuild of the laundry room walls. This week we had to install siding, window trim and a sheet vinyl floor. We sent one crew of six from South Dakota to this job.

The second job was new. A young single woman who has just gained custody of her two pre-grade school sons live in two rooms of a house that has languished since Karina with only little attention from recovery people. The water-soaked carpets had been stripped and drywall on the ceilings but the walls had not been stripped of drywall to remove moldy insulation, treat the wall and install new drywall. Unfortunately these two rooms are the bedrooms for these young boys. They are sleeping in the den, a converted garage. We assigned the second team from South Dakota to this home.

The third home is one we have been trying to get to since late winter (See Day 116). Within this small house live an 84-year old grandfather, an adult son, and Ms. Holiday, the owner of the home, the daughter with her elementary –aged daughter and her significant other. In addition they have opened their home to a fellow who was in a bad car accident a few months ago and has use of only one arm.

They have no kitchen and wash their dishes in a five-gallon paint tub in the shower. The main bathroom has plastic sheeting on the walls for privacy. Mrs. Holiday paid a contractor ten thousand dollars to build partition walls, install drywall and add an addition to the home with gutters (a very important part of the house down here where the ground is flat and the houses are built on slabs.)

The contractor left them with no drywall installed, a poorly poured concrete floor for the new kitchen, out of plumb partition walls, and a gaping hole in the wall where doors were to be installed in the carport. Ms. Holiday is the sole breadwinner for this extended family, save any public assistance they may receive. She has been buying as her funds allow, and receiving donated building materials.

We assigned one team from South Dakota to do the gutters, paint the exterior rear walls and install the door. We assigned the Northside crew to complete the drywall in the dining room, hall and bathroom, and strip the tile from the dining room. The drywall was a tedious, hard job due to out of square walls and frequent missing supporting rafters or studs in corners to hold drywall screws. (Earlier the Northside crew also spent one day stripping the kitchen floor in another client’s home.)

Because the week had afternoon activities scheduled three of the days we only really had about 3 and one-half days of real work time. I am so proud of all these youth. They all pitched in. While there may have been some complaining late in the week, I heard none.

This was a big activity day for the youth. They were scheduled to go to the Gulfport Water Park for the afternoon. The other crews made good progress and completed their work by noon and left for the Water Park on time.

The job went very slowly all week at Ms. Holiday’s due to the complications of the errant contractor. When Friday noon rolled around, finishing this job was looking bleak and I could see the anxious looks thinking about the water park. They all opted to delay or possibly miss the Water Park in order to remain at Ms. Holiday’s until we completed the work. The South Dakota troopers finished about 1PM. Even with me (or in spite of me), the Northside work did not finish until about 4PM. As the last piece of dry wall was screwed in, the youth were already mudding the joints behind us. I helped pack up all our tools sand remained to tidy up an talk to the family while Sandy and Rick drove all back to the village for swim suits. They still got in over two hours at the Water Park.


Ms. Holiday's Team

My hat is off to Sandy and Rick Leavell, and to Pastor John of the United Church. They were all great leaders and the youth great workers. All were positively influenced by the state of these homes, the gratitude of the homeowners and their good work.

This morning I ate breakfast with both teams. The South Dakota group left about 7AM for their two days’ drive home. I waved the Northside group goodbye as they pulled out of the parking lot for Chattanooga a little before 9AM.
These youth and leaders made it possible for one family to have their home fully completed, the mother and young boy stood at their door smiling and waving as hard as they could as the South Dakota group left.

The young grandmother with her two grandsons now only have to await finished painting of the walls, and to schedule the installation of the new carpet and the two boys will have bedrooms. I may go out myself next week or the week after with our Case Manager and finish those walls.

Ms. Holiday could not stop praising the Lord and thanking us. The fellow with the bad arm kept bring out watermelons for us and telling us he’d finish the sanding and painting the walls (He will do that, we had a hard time keeping him at bay while we put in the drywall.) The hole in the wall has a door and now thy can expect lower utility bills.

This was a week of serious work -four families in less than one week. I am so grateful for the wonderful adult leadership and the mature, whole-hearted effort of the youth. It was great to have some of my home church’s people here, and I hope there will be many more in the future. You have no idea what you are missing.

Peace and Grace,
Henry

Day 116– Why I Need You to Volunteer

We contacted a prospective client last January. Our Case Manager surveyed the home and needed repairs at that time. The house is in a part of town where the quality and repair of the homes varies quite a bit. The nature of the homeowners varies as much as the houses. It’s likely to say that this is not a neighborhood many of the people who read this blog would find themselves visiting.

I drove over last April to confirm the costs to repair the house. I turned off US49 and drove down a side street that became increasingly unkempt. After a few more turns and literally crossing the railroad tracks, I came into a neighborhood where there were driveways and bare lots, some of them had trash, an upside down sofa or a mattress, but no houses.

By now I can recognize the trash and bulldozed lots. The trash is detritus left after the winds and water of Katrina shredded the neighborhood. I could tell the houses on the empty lots had been razed, probably condemned due to the damage of Katrina.

This carnage went on for several blocks. On one lot I noted that two or three rough looking guys had taken over a trailer. A long electrical cord was strung on the ground, across the road and off into the property half a block away. They eyed me suspiciously as I drove by.

I turned down a final side street where some of the houses have bars on the windows or tall fences. I drove up and stopped by the mailbox carrying Christina’s address. The house was painted in a loud color and it had a new roof. Two cars were parked in the tight driveway and the yard was full of semi-tropical plants. A stack of drywall about a foot high rested in the carport.




Sunrise through Christina’s Palm












I knocked on the door. A youngish woman came to the door and I introduced myself. Christina invited me in. I was struck immediately by the interior. There was no kitchen, only an unfinished room that had been added on, with old cabinets but no sink. A gas stove stood in the dining room.

What bothered me was the interior bathroom adjoining the dining room. Someone had framed in a wall but there was no drywall. The only privacy for the bathroom was a three mil thick plastic sheet nailed to the studs.

She walked me through to the rear door through a hallway where a laundry room was partly framed in and a bathroom. At the opposite end of this hallway was a large plywood sheet. Christina said there is supposed to be a door there and asked if we would be able to install it. I found gutters in the back yard but the soffit and fascia boards still needed repair.

We went back into the house and sat in her living room. I went over her situation. She lived here with her elderly mother and father. The mother was an invalid and needed constant care to help her get in and out of bed and to attend to her personal needs. Her mother and father, both in their eighties and married over sixty years lived with Christina. Christina’s daughter lives there, as does her erstwhile boy friend. Her brother lived in the house, as did a fellow who had been badly injured in an automobile accident who needed a place to stay. Christina is the only person with a job.

She tells me Katrina blew most of her roof away. She had to bring her mother and father to he home because the other is so ill. She decided to add a room for the kitchen so they could make a bathroom large enough to accommodate her mother in a wheel chair. Doing this entailed tearing out the old kitchen and framing in some walls Christina paid a contractor ten thousand dollars to do this job and the guy left it half done.

I knew our case manager had verified the basic qualification of Christina for help and realized immediately we had to get people working on this house as soon as we could get funding and volunteers.

Christina's Father

As I left to go back to my office and start working on an estimate her father came out of the house. He asked me who I was, and what I was doing. I explained my job with PDA and we talked at length about how the church was helping and so important. We had a discussion that ranged widely about faith, the role of the family and his situation. We talked about his wife. He told me she was almost blind and depended on him or everything. If he left the bedroom she would begin to call out, “where is my Robert, where is my Robert?” He said he was pretty much tied down to the house because if he left for vey long mother would get too overwrought with concern.

He talked to me about his daughter. He said she was a good woman but facing a lot of temptations. He constantly encourages her to keep straight, especially when there is the temptation to stray. It is clear that Robert and Christina hold a lot of family together, people on the edge of slipping into that sea of alcohol, drugs and alienation. Amazed at how these two were holding an entire family together, I left very intent on getting back to this house as soon as I could.

Things didn’t work too well. We have been short on volunteers the last month. Only late Monday of last week when we had a work assignment fall through during the first day of youth week was I able to use this home as a fall back.

I called Christina late Monday and set up a time to come by to see what work remained. Then at 7:30AM Tuesday morning, I drove out Tuesday morning to meet Christina. The stack of drywall in the carport was gone. The kitchen was still absent. I walked into the laundry area and looked into the adjoining bathroom. A 5-gallon plastic can holding sudsy water and some dishes stood in a plastic chair in the shower stall. They had finished the hallway with the drywall in the carport but the wall between the master bathroom and dining room still needed drywall. The master bathroom still needed drywall. The fascia and soffits were not repaired.

I asked Christina if we could start today and overjoyed she said of course! That excitement was tempered almost immediately. Christina said how happy she was that the bathroom would get finished and how she wanted her mother to see it done and get to use its privacy. Christina continued to say that that wouldn’t happen now because her mother died on July 4, a week after I last visited her house.

This is why I need you to volunteer every hour you can to this effort.

Day 106 – New Experience

This week we have a good group of youth and adults from First Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Tennessee. We are fortunate there are some who have experienced construction skills.

We are making a push on a couple of homes to get the work well underway, or completed. Our hiatus begins in August and the next teams return in mid-September, unless some reader(s) want to come down and work with me. You are free to come on down, one or two of us can make a big dent in a lot of small jobs at homes we have worked that have small things like window trim, drywall repair, priming, etc.

I plan to go over to Pearlington on some of the dog days of August to finish some drywall at a couple’s house. They really need the help and I can work at my own pace with the village manager, who also want to see that work done, and one or two of you, if you want to brave summer. You’ll enjoy it. I still haven’t gotten back to Boo, the dog out in the northwest part of the county.

Today the work-site manager went with one team to Pascagoula. Their tasks are tearing out a bathroom and installing a drywall ceiling in a back room that was water damaged, after they remove the old acoustic tile.

I went to D’Iberville with the other group. I had an ulterior motive. We need to rebuild an exterior wall on an addition to a home; it is mostly jalousie windows and two doors. The exterior wall looks pretty bad and we are going to have to replace all or part of it. It is a new challenge for me, I’ve read all about replacing a wall but this is my first time. I feel a little like a child in a candy shop.

We pull off the siding and discover we can salvage the wall, only replacing several vertical beams that are pretty rotten at the base. It looks like we can cut out the lower 18 inches and replace it with a “stub” wall that we will tie into the existing wall. Because there is a lot of water exposure from roof runoff we need to replace the gutters and use pressure treated lumber for the wall.

After twenty minutes into this effort, I’m completely soaked by sweat, shirt and jeans, but within a couple hours I have my materials list and am off to Home Depot. After I buy the pressure treated 2x4’s and am rolling the cart out into the loading area what do I see… A truck with Tennessee tags.

I ask them who they are and find out they are a work crew from the Belleview Baptist Church in Memphis. We spend a few minutes talking and I leave amazed at another distant connection.
Peace and Grace

Day 105 – Three Luxuries

This has been a week of particular luxuries. The first luxury came in the form of an e-mail. The remaining luxuries of this last week came out of happenstance. Because one of our work-site staff members was out of town, I led the Pearlington work teams and spent a lot of time talking with them.

We had a group of about fourteen or so from Old Pine Presbyterian Church in the Philadelphia Presbytery. A smaller group came down from First Presbyterian Church in Pulaski, VA. The Old Pine group arrived on July 4th, so there was no holiday off for me. I made the 35-mile drive over from Gulfport to be there for the orientation and returned to Gulfport. I made this commute each day from that Friday until the following Friday. It was well worth the time.

The Old Pine group worked Saturday and Sunday afternoon and did not let up until Thursday night when they took the evening to go to New Orleans ahead of the flight back home. (The First Church group worked just as hard on another home but had their last day cut short by a family emergency.)

I entreat all our Presbyteries to take on the active role of this presbytery. I am so impressed with how the churches across Pennsylvania have mobilized and made repeated trips down to help the people of Mississippi and Louisiana. 

My First Luxury
JoeB e-mailed me a draft of his sermon of last week. I thoroughly appreciated his words because they were apropos to my experience this week. JoeB talked about Jesus’ preparing to send His twelve closest disciples out on their own to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near. JoeB said a careful reading of the Greek may lead one to conclude those words are a commissioning of us all.

My Second Luxury
The second luxury of the week was the complex connections with the volunteers that ended up an echo of earlier experiences. We invite our homeowners to eat dinner with us and participate, if they wish, in our devotional one night each week. This week it was Tuesday.

Towards the end of that evening I related a brief story of how I came to be here in Mississippi. Naturally JoeB and Jodi, our pastors at Northside were mentioned. Afterwards, Jeff Kackley, the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Pulaski, VA approached me to say he didn’t realize who was my home church until I mentioned JoeB and Jodi. He was in seminary with Jodi!

Topping that, one of the people from this church, Michelle, is an intern and a seminary student at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta. She works at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, the church I attended for seven years. We talked about common acquaintances there and new and old staff.

By the way, two weeks earlier another Columbia graduate from Virginia came down with his group. We talked about the homeless situation in Atlanta and the class at Columbia where the professor requires the class to spend a night out on the street with the homeless. (That milieu formed the basis of the interpretation of the musical Godspell we did at Central early one spring.) Michelle tells me that professor has left Columbia. I hope that class experience lives on after him.

Previously I’ve met the parents of a couple who live in my old house in New Kensington, PA. I’ve met many people from the Pittsburgh area who I’ve been able to have great conversations about my time there.

I’m working with a colleague whose home is in Pembroke, Ontario where I stayed last February working for two months.

This coming week we have a group of volunteers from Cleveland, TN. Next week I see many of my dear friends from Northside PC.

The Final Luxury
I‘ve said it before; my experience down here is rewarding, if not also perplexing. Either I am very fortunate to have met the people I have in my life by chance and built a rich set of friends or I'm located in a particularly acute spot to meet so many people whose threads of living have common crossings with mine.

Old Pine Presbyterian Church is an historic church. It was formed in 1766! Debbie McKinley, their pastor is also Moderator of the Presbytery. (The Pulaski Church formed in 1881 is about the age of Northside.)

I spent almost every evening for dinner and devotion in Pearlington. The Old Pine group engaged me many very stimulating conversations and posed challenging questions. Among them were “How do you identify people to help? “ “What is the racial mix of the homeowners that you help?" "How do you decide when to stop?"

I shared my understanding of the process and the challenges of determining who to help, how long to help and to avoid the pratfall of judgment.

I am sure they returned home with a better understanding of the process and difficulties we face. Their questions certainly probed, stimulated and challenged my own ingrained thinking. Each night, I drove back to Gulfport reliving the conversations and thinking more and more about JoeB’s words in his sermon and my role here.

This third luxury, talking for a week with Debbie McKinley and her church family, and with Jeff and his, really made me think in a different way about what I am doing. This week it leaves me elated and uneasy, being aware that I am moving unprepared towards something new. Some times the unease wins out over elation. Then, I realize I’m resisting an invitation.

JoeB’s e-mail came at a good time. Some of the worries of worthiness that Luther and Paul voiced in their own struggles are dogging me, even knowing what "blessed assurance" means. JoeB stated, “Our calling, whether called to roam or called to stay home, is to live and speak the good news of Jesus Christ to those whose paths we cross.“

Amen.

Day 90 – Everyone needs a prayer once in a while

Last weekend I used $20 of the money Northside’s Mission Ministry sent me. A woman and her mother were driving through the parking lot at Lowe's in Gulfport last Sunday looking for gas money to get back to Louisiana. They stopped by me as I was climbing into my truck.

I stepped down and talked to them a while. It seems she and her mother and maybe some other family drove over to a family happening in the Gulfport area but it went wrong. I didn’t explore what went wrong. She said she had a box of CD’s in the trunk and would gladly sell then for some gas money to get home.

Standing there thinking about what to do about her request, I remembered the money I folded up and put in my wallet. Finally I overrode my suspicion and doubt after talking to them and gave them cash enough for gas (5 gal for $20!!!) to get to New Orleans. The woman not only left her phone number and name with me; she was so happy that she got out of the car and gave me a hug.

Later this past week, I realized that I need a prayer or two once in a while. Sometimes in a space of a day or two the job turns on you and really gets emotionally hard, obliterating the earlier joy over doing something to help someone.

In the last few days the weight of the misery of the people remaining who desperately need help to rebuild wears on me greatly. As I go family-to-family I realize how poor this remnant people in Gulfport and environs are who still really need help from Katrina's disaster. Their stories easily draw one into their situation. It spins my emotions almost like a whirlpool drawing me into a black hole of grief.

It is a dangerous thing emotionally and I have to be mindful of it constantly to keep it from getting out of hand. I cannot escape the pathos of it all and I loathe adopting a disinterested view in order to get the job done; however, sometimes I have to do it and I know it shows to the people I'm trying to help.

I’ve written earlier that I am working at the intersection of poverty and disaster. I have seen more of both first hand than most people believe exists in this wonderful society we have. The poverty hides in statistics and in city streets off the main drag away from the casinos. It gets lost in the government rules and regulations and in the naiveté of folks being old enough to remember when a dollar went very much farther, when you kind of knew who you could trust and who you couldn’t, and when there seemed always to be family to help.

I am told Mississippi has one of the highest home ownership rates is the States. I haven't verified that fact, but if it is true, when you go to many homes you see a different story as to what has become of homes that were really fine twenty or thirty years ago. Particularly when the owner is 70 or 80 years old, perhaps a widow or widower who has lived in and owned the house since childhood but now is trying to keep up with utility bills, maintenance, reconstruction, crooked contractors and maybe supporting another family member, all on maybe $400-$500 per month.

The homes I visited in the last few days leave me feeling so blessed (and guilty) to have some money in the bank, to be living in a small trailer, to have good health, a great family and few worries about the future. Here, I meet people who have no reason for hope but good reason to feel pointless futilty. Yet they cling only to the hope, as strongly now as ever. They cling to it so strongly that one can't wrestle it from their grasp.

I hear their stories of the illnesses and effects of the stress. I see a wife whose husband is in the hospital gravely ill. She walks in a kind of tentative, stunned daze as if she has post-traumatic stress syndrome.

I meet the sons who have come home to help. I see inexplicable willingness to trust again after paying their dear recovery grant money usually of a sum of money larger than they would ever be able to amass on their own, to an underhanded contractor to rebuild ther home and finding the contractor left town with the money. They willingly withstand this unabated disaster for almost three years. They carry so much hope after so long and eschew all bitterness. This bodes well for our their future and our own, if only we open our eyes and understand their lesson.

I visited two (African-American) families to assess what we could do to repair their homes this week. In one, the elderly husband invited me into the home. Both he and his wife are in their late 70's or early 80’s. She has had surgery recently. I am captivated by the many professionally done photographs on the living room wall. There are wedding pictures from the 1950’s or 1960’s, graduation pictures of children and granddaughter, a living room that is the very picture of a “middle class” family. I imagine rich life stories in these pictures.

Something has gone very wrong here.

The house is in terrible condition. For example, the 60 ampere electrical service has the old screw-in type fuses. No one thinks twice these days about installing 200 amp service and I'll guess my sons don't know what to do with an old screw-in fuse.

They need to use a gas water heater and range since the fuses blow if they try to run air conditioner and heater or washing machine at the same time. The walls are moldy fiberboard streaked by water from the leaky roof damaged by Katrina (since repaired). The ceiling is acoustic tile, the old twelve inch squares I saw in my Grandmother’s home over 40 years ago. The tile is moldy and mildewed.

Their adult son and his early teen-aged daughter are there. He had come down from the Nashville area after Katrina and both are living with his parents trying to help. I could sense the daughter's subtle but sullen teenaged angst. Does anything change?

Over the years of their life here they have made a number of improvements to the home. They installed a brick veneer and aluminum framed windows and had some re-wiring done. But they cannot keep up with the passage of time and the rising cost of maintenance and repair. I'll guess the mother and father are probably living on about that $400-500/mo. Social Security and maybe some other support brings in.

It is doubtful we will be able to find enough grant money to repair the house. The rules might even say the cost of repair is so high that the home ought to be torn down and rebuilt.

I wonder, with whose money?

The other case today was so much worse. I was trying to reach an elderly woman but she will not answer the telephone. I have to call her son on his cell phone. I arranged to drive out to meet him. He seems about 40 years old. He lives in a very small "shotgun" house next to his mother's who has almost the same floor plan. Somehow she has title to both houses, but all that will do is probably make it harder to get her help. By the way, she has early stage Alzheimer’s. She doesn't talk much. When she does I feel a sense of her sulleness standing at the other end of her life, not the angst of the teenage girl at the threshold of hers.

Both roofs had been repaired after Katrina, thank Goodness. But her home has an older addition that has shifted on the foundation from poor workmanship, or Katrina damaged it and the first volunteers did not detect it. Whatever the cause, the house has a broken back. The ridge board of the roof of the addition has pulled loose or broken so the whole roof slumps like an old horse swaybacked from too many years carrying a saddle.

The house itself is quite neat inside, as orderly and presentable as it can be given all that has happened. There is no insulation in the walls or ceiling. Light shines through the walls in places at the baseboards.

The son's place next door is a three room house. I guess I’ll call it that. Looking more closely I can see through the cracks in the floor to the dirt under the house. Of its former kitchen, living room, bedroom and bath, now it has only one livable room, the old kitchen/living room. A bed stands in the center of the room. Fabric, maybe a sheet, drapes over its windows for privacy. The windows elsewhere in this house are covered with plywood to keep out the rain and people. Building materials are stacked in the hallway and back room, a large closet.

He has run an extension cord from his mom's house to his for electricity. He is a bright, intelligent man, you can see it in his eyes and in his talk and in his compassion for his mother. He tells me that he came back to Gulfport right after Katrina to help her. He says he'd just gotten out of the service.

He has been collecting construction materials a piece at a time; lumber, plywood, electrical wire, whatever he can find in the throw-away piles of other rebuilding projects. He is trying to put these two houses back together. He tried to rewire the house but got scared and stopped. Many of us would have just given it all up, or suggested that he do so.

I lived in a bedroom like he is living in while remodeling my house, but not only did I just do it for a little over a year, I knew it would be completed. I cannot imagine how he has been able to live this way for a period of time only two months short of three years.

What strikes me is that each of these families is doing a pretty good job of holding a distressed home and family more or less intact. They are extremely polite and gracious. It is very clear that they expect the future to be better. They bring me into their homes as if I were a longtime friend. They offer me water to drink, beg me to come in and sit down to talk while they tell me all their stories.

They do have serious expectations. They always ask me when I think they will hear about getting help or when I'll be able to send someone over to start working. It is the only time I sense that quiet desparation, the only hint that they acknowledge their awareness of the crack in their world that uncontrollably bleeds in misery. All I can do is look sheepish, or down at the ground and explain the process, telling them that answer is in the hands of someone else in this process of recovery and relief.

It think it is true, these are the people Jesus raised up to us in his Sermon on the Mount. This is part of His message. These are people who cling to patience, hope, grace and faith when the World offers them nothing to justify it. These are people who somehow manage to find it easy to be meek even though they are in a very bad way. It is a difficult message to hear, and to see, and to share.

We hear all about the problems, the gangs and crime. The gangs are around comprised mostly I imagine of folks who have given up hope, or never knew it. You see them everywhere if you will just look closely enough. We see it here in Gulfport, you see it in Chattanooga. Whether it is here in Gulfport, or in the West Side over off Martin Luther King Boulevard in Chattanooga, in this mess of a city that we have created over the last 50 years lives a microcosm of Family comprised of people who are as faithful, loving and strong as we'll find anywhere and anytime.

They aren't like us. They are fighting a world gone wrong and refusing to conform to it. You leave their presence knowing that their eye is on a different prize all the while surrounded by a land of surfeit.

Then something out of the ordinary happens to uplift me. Later that same day I had to go over to Pearlington to work out a plan for someone we are helping there. On the drive back I am unavoidably reliving the thoughts I have just written about these two families in Gulfport while listening to the local NPR station that usually plays requested classical music in the afternoon. Someone had called in a request for Handel's Hallelujah Chorus while I was still about three or four minutes from my trailer. I sang along, between tears, all the way home into the driveway.

I do not know if I ever will be able to go back to living the well-off way I have in the past. I think I know two or three people in Chattanooga who are doing a really good job of using their money wisely to help people like these. They are people who don't hesitate to spend a lot of their money quietly and privately for good things that help us to a better way. They know who they are. I admire and respect their strength of character. They are doing something I do not know if I have the strength of character to do - to overcome the temptation to succomb to greed.

I cannot look at my good fortune (I have much more than I merit) in the same way anymore having experienced all this poverty, despair and unexpected hope. For me anyway, there seems to be only one way through that narrow gate.

Peace and Grace,
Henry

Day 82 – Faith and Work

Recently I have been reading through the words of God in First Isaiah, Christ’s teachings in Matthew and Luke, and the writings of James. These words lead me unavoidably to believe that the work of the Church in Mississippi and Louisiana to assist the relief of people devastated by Katrina and Rita really lies at the heart of what Christianity is about.

Often I struggle with my frustration and at times with the Church while ministering in this place but I know that here and now believers are living the Word in practice, signifying by their works their true commitment to Faith.

Here follows a few cities and states where volunteers have come to one village. The list doesn’t reflect multiple trips by a church team, nor does it attempt to list every church and organization that has come here to help. There are many, many more. It does reflect some particular cities whose churches have made a conscious choice to bring their ministry here.

We have five villages in Mississippi and Louisiana and we have had as many as six. Other denominations, for example, Mennonites, Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans send many of their members and have a viable ministry here. We have other non-governmental organizations where many of our friends have stayed while working here. My list is incomplete, there are so many more cities and countries who have sent people or money, Japan, Korea for example.

In a cold, dark world seemingly preoccupied with largess, and self-satisfaction, there still is a remanant who come to show Faith in action. I offer my grateful thanks to the people of all these churches. I remind you, however, you do not have to come to the Gulf to help, not being able to travle isn't an excuse. You may go into any city and find persons who are homeless, poor and out of work, who need help repairing a room, who are struggling to hang onto hope in a hostile world, or are imprisoned. They need your ministry as well.

I pray that God blesses you all.


Cities

Bella Vista, AK
Benton, AK
Ferncliff, AK
Little Rock, AK
Brandon, CA
Longmont, CO
Tampa, FL
Marietta, GA
Greensburg, IA
Alton, IL
Monmouth, IL
Olney, IL
Washington, IL
Indianapolis, IN
Annapolis, MD
Elkton, MD
Gaithersburg, MD
Perry, MD
Dearborn, MI
Austin, MN
Saline, MN
St. Clair Shores, MN
Charlotte, NC
Greenville, NC
Wake Forest, NC
Winston-Salem, NC
Plainfield, NH
Barton, NJ
Bound Brook, NJ
Colawrenceville, NJ
Albuquerque, NM
Buffalo, NY
Cincinnati, OH
Farmersville, OH
Marietta, OH
Waterloo, ONT
London, ONT
Petewawa, ONT
Stratford, ONT
Windsor, ONT
Beaver, PA
Bloomsburg, PA
Chippewa, PA
Grove City, PA
Landsdale, PA
Uniontown, PA
Uniontown, PA
Toronto, Quebec
Chapin, SC
Chattanooga, TN
Knoxville, TN
Charlottesville, VA
Chesapeake, VA
Fairfax, VA
Kilmarnock, VA
Newport News, VA
Norfolk, VA
Penn Land, VA
Richmond, VA
Williamsburg, VA
Winchester, VA
Bothell, WA
Enumclaw, WA
Spokane, WA
Ashland, WI
Charleston, WV
Marines in Mission (CA, FL, IA, IL, KS, OH)

States by number of teams
Virginia (10)
Pennsylvania (8)
Ontario (6)
Arkansas (4)
Illinois (4)
Maryland (4)
North Carolina (4)
Ohio (4)
Minnesota (3)
New Jersey (3)
Washington (3)
California (2)
Tennessee (2)
Florida (2)
Iowa (2)
Kansas (2)
Colorado (1)
Georgia (1)
Indiana (1)
Michigan (1)
Nevada (1)
New Hampshire (1)
New Mexico (1)
New York (1)
Quebec (1)
South Carolina (1)
Wisconsin (1)
West Virginia (1)

Day 78 - The Big Easy

I spent the weekend over in New Orleans down in the French Quarter a couple of weeks ago. A friend is working for a subcontractor for the state demolishing houses abandoned or too badly damaged by Katrina to be repaired. His work covers St. Bernard and Orleans parishes, and I think the Lower Ninth Ward.

I got over to the city mid-afternoon on Saturday and caught up with him at his rental studio apartment just off the Quarter. We talked a while catching up on all that has happened since we parted back in Chattanooga and then left on a walk past the casino into the French Quarter. The last time I was here was early April when I gave a talk at the Convention Center.

This time, we made it an easy stroll taking time to look at the shops, bars and music venues. We walked over to the levee on the Mississippi and back into the Quarter.

I spent some time looking at these establishments on the first floor and the apartments on the upper floors, imagining the stories of lives lived in them. I knew the interior of the blocks had some living space but I’d never taken the time to stop and peer through the gates, alleys and open garage doors to see the intimate and often delicately ornate gardens hidden behind these storefronts.

My fascination over these sanctuaries from the hubbub on the street grew as we walked. It was hard not to imagine how much fun it must be living in these flats watching the crowds pass every night, or walking down the stairs to join the revelry.

"The lucky ones have garages that provided the precious luxury of off-street parking. Look at that one on the corner that’s for rent. The whole thing is for sale, but I think you can rent the upstairs flat.”

I looked up at the tall narrow windows. There still was enough evening sunlight to see into the bare interior. A small chandelier hung in the living room. I think the flat holds a bedroom, living room and kitchen, plus the bath. Pretty limited space, but it has a nice balcony with wrought iron railings.

“I wonder what it rents for?”

“It rent for about $2500 a month, cheaper that what I’m paying now.”

“That’s not bad for this whole building.”

“No. That’s $2500 for the apartment.”

“Really?”

“My studio is for sale for $400,000. That’s one of the reasons I know about this place, if the studio sells I‘ve got to locate another place to live.”

The subcontract my friend is working on provides him a housing allowance that accommodates the reality of the high rent in this area. We walked on but now I was preoccupied thinking about how interesting it would be to live here, and what job I would have to snag to carry the rent.

We stopped in front of the Catholic Church on the square and watched a statuesque mime with a silvered face sit motionless on his bike. Had I not seen him a few minutes earlier I would have assumed he was just a piece of street art.

My friend realized something was going on in the church. He asked the policeman who was watching the entrance and discovered a wedding ceremony was in progress.

The policeman said it was OK to go in and listen.

“Just sit over towards the side and don’t disturb the rite.”

We went in during the priest’s sermon. The groom and bride knelt before the altar and the priest stood between them and the congregants. Periodically the priest would make a comment about the future role of the husband, or wife. This caused that person-to-be to turn a little uneasily on their knees to gain a backward glimpse at the priest. I felt badly for them. There was really no way to see the priest except to stand up and turn, and it was obvious they were not going to do that.

We left before the ceremony ended. As we went out I heard a young girl scream. She had touched the statute on the bicycle and the mime came to life giving her quite a fright.

As we walked on, I kept thinking about the apartments and courtyard gardens and what kind of job it would take to keep one. It would be so intriguing to live there.

The next day we went to the service at the Methodist Church over on St. Charles Avenue. It so happens that this Sunday was the first day of the 2008 hurricane season. The OT lectionary dealt with Noah and The Flood. The pastor remarked the congregation had no recourse. She could have used the New Testament reading in Matthew but that one gave no quarter as it was Jesus’ story of the wise man who built his house on rock and the foolish one who built on sand before the rain came down.

Afterwards with the thoughts of a nice balcony on a back street in the French Quarter still lingering in my head, we drove around the neighborhoods where he was working on the demolitions. There are so many houses that show no sign of reconstruction. The high watermarks are visible on a lot of them. Interspersed we see other homes fully rebuilt. It goes on street after street.

“They built the French Quarter where it is because it is high ground. It was the only safe place to live around here. Unfortunately New Orleans decided to grow.”

As we circled back and as we neared the Quarter again, my friend’s comments coming on the end of the tour was a sudden slap that me broke my thoughts on how I could make the money to get one of those flats. I realized it was time to get back to the camp to get ready for next week.

I thought about the narrow gate. I drove back towards Gulfport increasingly mortified over how easily the idea of easy living displaced my focus on the purpose of my being here in the Gulf.