Sunshine in Abundance...

Editor's note: been a little busy around here for the past two days, and so I wasn't able to finish yesterday's blog post...

Quick update from Thursday: for the camp devotions, it was our turn to lead the camp devotions last night. We sang some songs: Jeff Peabody lead the vocals, Isaac Peabody played the guitar, and Rick Watson played percussion / bucket. Afterwards, we had a guest speaker, a resident of D'Iberville: Deputy James Morgan and his wife Tara. His family and his wife's family have been in this area for 300 years. Before D'Iberville was a city, it was known as North Biloxi. What a funny man! (Funny haha.) Jerry Drossel described him by saying, "talk about a funny redneck guy!" While James was speaking, there were some funny jokes that had Jerry laughing his head off. James and Tara have been living in a trailer since Katrina, and can't wait until his home is finished. Volunteers have been working on it, but we're not done yet. Despite his frequent display of humor, he sincerely thanked all of us for giving our time "to help people we don't even know."

Now to Friday:

Sunshine. Bright to illuminate our work sites. Hot to turn our tans to burns. :-( It was a sunny day today. I was wearing safety glasses throughout the day, and when I saw myself in the mirror at night, I noticed tan lines from the glasses. Considering other teammates, I was pretty lucky.

Here's some more of what we did on Friday:

• Returned to Ronnie and Colleen's house. Finished installing exterior foam insulation and started with vinyl siding. I'm sure that they were touched once they saw a couple of pieces of vinyl on their house. We weren't as touched as they were when they graciously treated us to lunch again, but we were definitely happy! There was a homemade shrimp and spaghetti salad, barbecued pork chops, sweet tea, and fudge. Delicious!
• Installed more insulation at Harry's house. This day involved more of the custom cut sizes.
• Since we arrived, we have had a team laying brick at a house.
• Drivers were running errands for each of the teams, and they were busy all day.

At the camp devotions in the evening, a homeowner joined us and read us a heartfelt poem that she wrote shortly after Katrina. We were moved as she read us words about volunteers bringing hope back to the people of D'Iberville.

After camp devotions, our group went to Miss Ruby's house, one of our favorite homeowners that some of us got to know on previous trips. She might be turning 90 in November, but she is still as lively as ever. We all sat in amazement as she told us part of her life story. Later on, she served us some late night snacks and we had a small party. Oh, one more thing: on our behalf, Tommy Ann Delzer invited Miss Ruby back to Washington to join us for our D'Iberville debriefing church services in May. Miss Ruby sounded interested and said she would get back to us after checking her calendar. I sure hope she can make it!

Saturday: where did the sun go? Early in the morning, rain poured down on our tents so loud that it woke some of us up. What a flexible team though; we adjusted our work schedules such that we were out of the rain, and we were still quite productive!

A brief rundown:

• On the way to our job site, we packed an 8-passenger van with 10 people! Another aspect of "flexibility" from our team. ;-)
• Finished laying tiles at a house. Now that all the tiles are down, it will spend 24 hours drying and hopefully we'll finish up with the tile work before we leave here.
• Made great progress laying laminate flooring at the same house. Again, we might get the flooring done before leaving.
• The vinyl siding work continued at Ronnie and Colleen's house. The front of their house has an overhang that covered the team as they worked the front of the house. Later on the rain stopped, and it was ideal working weather for us.

We invited Ronnie and Colleen to dinner with us afterwards. They joined us for a camp dinner and our camp orientation. Normally the orientation occurs when a team arrives at the camp. However, we arrived in the middle of the week, whereas most other cases people arrive on the weekends. So we've already had 5 days in the camp at this point. Irene McIntosh from the D'Iberville Volunteers Foundation described to us what happened before, during, and after Katrina, and she showed us pictures. It was a very moving talk, bringing us to tears.

We have a day off from work tomorrow... but that doesn't mean we won't be out and about. ;-)