Country Livin’ Blog

Recently I went on a mission trip with my church. There were nine of us on this trip to New Orleans to help with disaster relief. I went last spring too. We were gutting houses last spring. This year we were working on houses that were in the process of restoration.

The first day of work we helped an elderly man and his sister. Before Katrina hit New Orleans this gentleman was a caterer. The hurricane caused severe damage to his home and took away an out building that housed his catering equipment. At his age he is unable to restart his business. As it was, their home was so severely damaged it was important to make repairs first so their living conditions could improve. His sister works, but I don’t know what she does or if I was even told. The ability to repair their home was beyond their means. So the church stepped in. The inside had been gutted, treated for mold, and sheetrocked. It was ready for painting. The first thing we did was primer. We primed the whole house, walls and ceilings, and then waited. New sheetrock soaks up primer and paint very fast. So by the time we finished the first coat of primer the areas where we had started were already dry and ready for the first coats of paint. We started painting on the actual color at about 10:00 a.m. We finished the first coat at lunch time. As a thank you gift to the volunteers working on their home the homeowners prepared lunch for us. It was so good! A tossed salad, a shrimp dish that was typical of New Orleans, rice, fried catfish, and fried chicken were placed on a makeshift table (a board between sawhorses.) After eating lots of food, they brought out two pans of chess pie. True southern hospitality!

After lunch we were back in the house applying the second coat of paint. We finished at about 3:30 that afternoon. Funny how a break and some food can make the afternoon go by so quickly! We couldn’t believe we were finished. I want to mention here that while we worked painting the inside of the house a team of volunteers from another denomination were making repairs to the outside of the house. By the end of the day, the house had a new look both inside and out. It was a very satisfying day of work.

The second day of work took us to the home of a family that fell through the cracks, so to speak. Before the storm they were renters. They didn’t have renters’ insurance so everything they owned before the storm was lost and they couldn’t replace it. What the storm did for this family was make it possible for them to buy a home. The home they purchased was damaged by flood water, but was being sold very cheap. They purchased it, but making repairs to it wasn’t going to be possible for a very long time. So to keep their family together and establish a life for themselves and their nine children they were living in a one car garage behind the house. The mom is a beautician; the dad is a security guard. Their oldest child, a twelve year old, is in charge of her younger siblings while work is in progress on the house. Again the house had been gutted and treated and now it was time for insulation and sheetrock. Here is something I learned about putting up sheetrock. It’s very hard work! I found that I was too short, even standing on a ladder to hold the sheetrock in place so someone else could put screws into the ceiling. I found myself watching an awful lot. I tried to make myself useful handing up drills and other tools to those on the ladders, but even then I didn’t feel like I did much for the effort. The team was working very hard while I watched the progress. By the end of the day about a third of the ceiling had been sheetrocked.

The hardest part about the trip is seeing the situation the families are trying to deal with. As a member of a team from Houston said, “They are suffering, but they have so much gratitude for the little work we are able to do.” The Houston team was so taken with the family with nine children they offered to “adopt” them. Their plan was to go back to Houston and raise money to purchase appliances for their home when it’s completed.

These trips are both physically and emotionally challenging, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for a weekend at the beach. That right there should speak volumes! If there is any way you can take one of these trips, I highly recommend it. You will learn something. You will probably appreciate your own home a lot more when you go back to it.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS