Tuesday, March 14th

On Tuesday Rachel and I tagged along with Seth's group to finish up a house in the New Orleans area. The house was in a neighborhood that I can only describe as crowded. The streets were tiny, the houses were very close together. Lots of one-way streets. Driving I saw for the first time some X's on the houses (I would see many more of these later on in the week). Around the X would be the date that someone searched the house, the initials of the organization or people who did the searching, and the number of bodies they found on arrival. Most of them, thankfully, had big old zeros for the last number, but I did see a couple 1's and 2's here and there.

The houses were destroyed, the neighborhood was in dire condition, and near the portable potties there were signs. For example, "free lawyers on Saturdays" or "We'll gut your house for $1.75 per square foot of property" (thank God for all the volunteers going down gutting them out for free - I doubt many people in New Orleans are able to fork over that kind of dough. Did I mention that there were 250 volunteers sleeping at the First Baptist Church alone??).

Once we got to the house, Will helped me put my mask on. It was one of the intense ones that you strap on and it's made of rubber and stuff. Will knows how to put the mask on pretty well, so he was like tightening it and then closing up the filters to see if I could still breathe, and if I could it wasn't on tight enough. Man oh man was that thing TIGHT! I kept pulling at the cord all day. I'm pretty sure when he wasn't looking I loosened it...

We had to knock some of the ceiling out, and some of the walls, and then the tiling in the bathrooms and kitchens (it was a duplex). I took a hammer and started with the walls in the bathroom. Rachel climbed into the attic and started knocking down the ceiling. We worked hard. That pile of trash outside just kept getting bigger and bigger until we were walking halfway down the street just to dump more garbage.

Lunch was fun and messy. Ham juice spilled all over the porch area. This was also when I got my first taste of the Hoo-ah bar. Mock chocolate with crispies in it - supposed to give you energy (all I remember is Sarah eating a TON of them because she gave up real chocolate for lent).

Rachel and I found we were getting very very dirty.

Then as the day went on we just swept and dumped and picked stuff up and broke stuff and then swept and swept. I don't know if you guys know this, but William Hines is like the best sweeper I've ever met in my life - he could do it for a living! He could just sweep stuff for his whole life and do so well!! He was just in those corners making this house as dustless as possible! Good job, Will! And Rachel with Mr. Dustpan, way to go GIRL! She just dustpans it all up! She also gets in catcher position, no kneeling for her with that dustpan!

Also, at some point, someone told me, Seth maybe?, that I sounded like Kenny from South Park with my mask on. No one could hear what I was saying unless they were really close. All Rachel heard for awhile while Will and I were sweeping was high mumbly noises coming from me and then Will responding to me in his normal voice.

High squeely --> Low regular --> High squeely --> Low regular.

After they took the tub out, Lee told me to be careful sweeping where it had been because the floorboards were weak. I said "a-ok, buddy." Then I went in there and swept, and my foot went right through the floor, plummeting toward the earth!!! It was straight from the Three Stooges. My foot caught on a water pipe and I pulled myself up. I looked around at the house and saw that no one had noticed this happen. How could this be?!

So anyway, we just kept going until the house was finished and then we drove back to the church. Rachel was very very dirty. On our way out we were stopped by a train that was done moving. We were kept waiting for a long time, so Rachel started licking her Hoo-ah bar and rubbing chocolate all around her lips. She told me to spell something on her face, so I spelled "Jesus" in Mock chocolate across her face.



Hoo-boy! Then we went home, and it was crazy but both Rach and I were less tired than we were the day before working in the kitchen! The work was way harder for sure at the house, but the energy level was still high and we didn't feel like crashing at all. We were both pretty glad that we weren't going to have to stay back at the church anymore for the rest of the week!

That night after we showered we just hung out. Jim went to Starbucks and brought us back some refreshing drinks. We sang some songs as a group and then we prayed. I prayed with Krista and Ben and Sarah. Afterwards Krista and I had a good talk about running after our passions in ministry. She told me about her awesome idea for a small group last year, and I got really excited too about some stuff!

Then Ben, Sarah, Alyssa and I had a good talk about some other good stuff, and then I got to read a chapter from the Randy Alcorn book that I'm reading and loving.

I forgot to mention yesterday that on Monday Maren showed me this women's bathroom that had both stalls and a mirror. You see before this all we'd found was a women's bathroom that had no mirror and then a woman's bathroom with three toilets and a mirror but without stalls. This bathroom in the cafeteria had both mirrors AND stalls! It was like Christmas!

I think while I was reading my book I took a break to use that bathroom.

Then, we went to sleep!