Team 7 Friday Report

Oh, today was interesting. I have a new respect for demuckers. To think people come here (Sharon ;-) with the sole interest in cleaning out stinky, moldy, damp, disgusting houses filled with bugs, mud, frogs, cats, and other strange stuff. All the time I’ve spent here, I managed to avoid this task till today.
I can’t say how many times I nearly barfed. Full freezers that have been flooded and had no electricity for 4 months have a special kind of odor when they pop open. If you’ve been here, you have an idea.

We hit the house today with 17 people. The plan had been to split up and half the group would do a house a few blocks away, but that one fell through over legal decisions. That turned out to be part of His plan as it took all of us all day to clear out the house we did.

We removed all furniture and possessions from the house which were quickly grabbed up and dumped by the end loader working the neighborhood today.



This kept us from building another Mt. Kevin (that man flinches at nothing), but there really wasn’t room for all the stuff we pulled out if most of it hadn’t been taken away immediately.




We met Mr. Vincent Culotta who had lived on the street since his birth over 70 years ago. All his family lived on Culotta street which was first settled by his father when the Chalmette sugar cane plantations were broken up and sold. The street ends at the oil refinery on St. Bernard Avenue.
He and his wife Cybel have been collecting plants to decorate the front of their FEMA trailer in front of their house they paid to have gutted and have been treating for mold.

Fortunately for our crew they had cleaned up the bathroom and gotten it functional.





When we broke for lunch 6 of us walked the 5 blocks back to Paris Avenue to get a PoBoy at a trailer set up on the corner. Ray Gramilian came over to out table to see what we were doing and thank us for volunteering to come down to help them out. He says God is blessing his family so much in this tragedy.



This guy who’s lost two houses feels blessed that we came down, that he has a place to live (the condo of his son who just moved away), and that his best friend and neighbor who weathered the storm in their attic survived. They called him on their cell phone to tell him they could only see the point at the top of his roof. He says they told him they couldn’t have chopped their way through the roof to escape because of the coyotes and wild hogs that had perched there for high ground in the flooding.

He had such a positive attitude through the tears of telling that story. We were walking back to the house and one of the guys said, “well guess we don’t need more motivation than that!”

Our Dayton contingent headed for home today so we are all praying for their safe travels.

They drywall guys finished Miss Ella’s house today. Praises! She was so thrilled with their acceptance of Brian, her son, with his disabilities. He’s been helping them the last two days at her house. Kyle said they couldn’t have gotten the job done without him.




After a little plumbing and electrical work plus a coat of paint, they can move back into their house!








I got to talk with Janet Hines here tonight who put this whole program together. You all should know this woman. She is so energetic and so passionate about serving in this mission you can’t help but catch the bug.

As much as I have the bug, and the guys have gotten it working here this week, though we’re all ready to see our families again. We’re gassed, mostly packed, and heading out at 7:00 central tomorrow morning.

I’m amazed at how this works though. Several of this team’s members have talked about this person or that person who they’re going to ask to come down. That’s how this has to work. We have jobs and only so much time to take off to do this ministry, but we can continue to spread this movement to our church members and friends to keep help flowing in here.

Love to all our families! We’ll see you late tomorrow night!

John McGuire
Servants Unite!

Team 7 Thursday Report

There is no shortage of work down here folks. No kidding. This emptying the bathtub a drop at a time business takes a lot of work and a lot of people willing to be servants in this work. This team we have down here this week is incredible. Not just the Ohio people in my group, but everyone else here as well. This sounds trite and disingenuous because it is overused, but I am truly so impressed with these people.

Most of the Servants Unite group worked in Chalmette today rebuilding the Chalmette Church of Christ and demucking a church member's home. Thanks to the Delaware crew who cleaned out the church the week after Christmas it is actually under reconstruction. Framing is nearly complete in the auditorium for new classrooms. Walls have been put up and we spend the day finishing the framing and wrapping the auditorium portion of their building with tar paper to keep the weather out. Eventually, they plan to brick up the auditorium, tear out the rest of the building and rebuild it new.
It's inspiring to get to build some and not just finish the destruction. This church had been under water for weeks. The bricks were ripped out of the walls from the wave of water that breached the industrial canal levy where the barge landed in the lower 9th ward neighborhood. (see the reference and pics below)
Elder Charles Whitley who lives across the river in a neighborhood that was not flooded has been working diligently with the other elders to get the church rebuilt and get support for relief in their area in St. Bernard Parish. He reports that they have accounted for all of their 85 members, but one family, but that they believed them to be living in California with family.
One senior couple in their congregation was in their house during the storm. Spent several days under a highway overpass, several more in a school, a couple months in a shelter, and are now living on a cruise ship, which is much better.
25 people from the congregation met Sunday in the "Blue Room" in the front of the building where the studs were walled in with tarps.



The muckrakers left the church shortly after we arrived to work on a church member's house that they said was the worst they had seen. That's experience talking. Debris and mud was chest deep in some places. It took a heavily supplemented crew to complete the house by the end of the day. We'll miss that South Dayton Church of Christ crew who are heading home tomorrow.

Ella's house was back under reconstruction again today. Four of the New Life guys, Phil from Huntington, WV and Anthony from the DC area went back and put up almost all the rest of the drywall with one coat of spackling. They'll be going back to finish up tomorrow.

We have a group of kids here tonight from Branson Missouri. They are amazing. For devotional I asked them to do a skit they have put together. It's a mimed bit to a song about sharing the gospel with someone met on an airplane. They are REALLY good. Very inspiring to see kids who don't like the image some have of them and wish to be the next Christian leaders. They're a kewl bunch.

I wanted to tell you about them because they really made a disturbing day more inspiring than discouraging.

Since this is my second time here, I thought I'd seen everything and the shock was over. Unfortunately, I still hadn't seen the worst till today and it brings men to tears. Charles, the elder at the church where we worked today, took us down Perez Drive into the Lower 9th Ward where the levy broke in the Industrial canal inundating that neighborhood instantly and sending a wave down Perez drive that was still so powerful several miles away at the church. The first three blocks from the levy or so were completely wiped away, washed into neighboring streets.

This link leads to the pictures I took there today. The break in the levy isn't any wider than the length of the barge sitting on the school bus, but when it broke it was like when you push down on the side of an inflatable swimming pool; a sudden surge of water that wiped foundations clean and spread debris and whole houses miles away. One house near another levy break was dropped in the middle of a different street...It was a brick house....and the cement slab is still attached to the bottom of the house...in the middle of the wrong street. The power of the forces at work in this disaster is unfathomable.

I felt guilty touring "ground zero" with my camera snapping pictures and asking Charles lots of questions. This place where so many people died and lost everything they had and held dear isn't a tourist attraction. We see crass reporters on the TV all the time and I don't want to be one of those or sensationalize such an incredible tragedy. Those of us who have been here, though, are obligated to show, tell, and share what we know with those of you who read this so that you can get an inkling of the deapth and breadth of this as well as the personal nature of this disaster for each effected person who we speak to and do work for.

Brendan hung devo on me tonight which I kinda passed off to the kids with their skit, but the lesson of today, overall, is like Nehemia's experience restoring Jerusalem. This is a daunting task, but I'm happy to report progress is being made. People are starting to get their lives back and there is a positive tone that was only despair when I was here 3 months ago.

We can do so much for the people hurt by this disaster. We have been able to touch thousands of lives and been Christ to all those people. They tell us how grateful we are to come help and we can't know what it means to them. I suspect they are right. I keep reiterating, I wouldn't do any of this for a living, but this labor of love is a light yoke and working in the Kingdom of Christ is an amazing experience.

He Reigns!

John McGuire
Servants Unite!

Team 7 Wednesday Report

The New Life gang from Columbus got to clean out the family's house who has joined their congregation since relocating. This is the crew in front of the house while they were working on it.

This is what the flooded house looked like when the crew arrived.









To clean out the house, everything has to be removed down to the studs. Steve Mohr is working on the wall in this picture.








When they're done the studs are all exposed to be treated for the mold growing on them. In this house, the ceiling was crumbling from the moisture even though it hadn't flooded that high and it had to be removed too.

The "McGyver squad" then used their tyvec suits to tarp the roof of the neighbor's house. She has a FEMA trailer, but electric isn't restored to many of the houses in St. Bernard Parish. The guys got a work order in for her house to be tarped with the real thing and cleaned out.

That's a large stack by the way. The GitRDone board is now a pile as thick as 2 reems of paper by Brendan's desk. There is so much more to do than we are getting done and Gary from South Dayton voiced the same thing all of us who've come here have. "I don't want to go home when there's all this work to do. I wish I could stay here and do this full time." Amen brother and bless your servant's heart.

I worked in the new relief center today since the New Life guys who had been there had other obligations. Mike and Matt from Boston have risen as foremen of that job and are great guys to work with.
Along with Brian and Bill Neis, we spent the day cutting holes in the floor to poor deeper cement footings to support the weight of the volunteer quarters. Bill's hitting it with the jackhammer we rented. This place is a playground for guys who like tools!
Talk about kewl tools. This diamond Concrete Saw cuts rocks and throws fireworks off as a byproduct. Nifty gadget this one. Brian's weilding it here.

The South Dayton group lost Kevin who's been on their team all week demucking as he was showing his fellow churchmates the ropes. A new volunteer named Mandy and two others from New York (Westchester) joined them to clean out another house.

Plans for tomorrow is for the drywall guys plus two new Marines who showed up tonight to finish Miss Ella's drywall so Mike and Matt can do their finish carpentry thing on Friday. Most of the rest of the volunteers are working on a church in Calmette. We may also be cleaning the house of one of my fellow Chase employees.

We love you all and miss you. We're having a very good, very productive week here. Please pray for our continued strength and health as well as those here we are working to help out of the darkness. I see and feel it lifting. Becky, the church secretary, told me today that the Newsboys song Shine is the theme song of this recovery effort and as I roll the lyrics around in my head, they do fit really well. "Let them see good works in men! Let them glorify the Lord.... Shine"

Until tomorrow

John McGuire
Servants Unite!

Team 7 Tuesday Report

Every day we are here we are busier. We had teams on 4 projects today. Continuations of the three from Monday and a new one.
The Dayton crew plus Tom and Sue from Spring Road finished demucking the house they started yesterday. This shows the house from the outside and you can see the water line just at the tops of the windows.

This picture shows all the colors of mold growing in the house and the stuff jumbled around.





The crew removed all the stuff from the house and started tearing down the drywall.





When they were done, you can still see a lot of mold growing on the studs, but the soggy material is all out so the house can dry out. They also found a lot of insect damage from the house being damp for so long.

This picture shows Kevin topping off "Kevin's Mountain".





When they finished the first house today they moved on to another one where the homeowner had torn out a lot of the drywall himself and finished it up. They're living in a FEMA trailer in the driveway.
This is the whole crew except for Tom, who must have taken the picture.







Tim, Stevie, Enver, Gary Schubert, and I dropped off the drywall team to work at Joy Fellowship, a church in Slidell that is pushing a renewed effort to provide hot meals, food boxes, and all the rest of the stuff Tammany Oaks was distributing directly after the storm. Tammany Oaks has become a hub of volunteer labor and supplies that feeds into other churches like Joy. The building used to be a catfish restaurant, was very rustic, and quite kewl!
Though Joy closed for the day due to the heavy rain, the McMillen wives and some ladies from California working through a church in Covington (across the highway from Mandeville) packed up more food boxes than there was room to store.
The guys loaded in a fresh semi load and a half of goods while other California based helpers sorted gloves, coats, and other cold weather items to fill 200 orders the church has taken for assistance.
Only 10 have been filled, but after the complete reorganization of their inventory we did today they'll be able to get those out. None too soon, by the time we left today (I in shorts and a T-Shirt) the temperature had dropped into the 40s.
We had to wait on a last truck due at 6:00 so the guys (with talent) jammed on the great instruments and sound system the church had in place.



The drywall crew working on Miss Ella's house made massive progress, though we still don't have enough drywall.
They are taking tomorrow away from that job to demuck the home of a new church member who relocated to Columbus and will finish the drywall on Thursday.

The warehouse construction crew was hard at it again today building additional supporting columns and cutting holes in the cement for new footers to support the growing volunteer residence. I'm going on that job tomorrow so I'll get some up to date pictures.

Good night for now. We miss you all, but we're basking in the glory of working in God's kingdom for this week. This is an incredible team He's put together I can't get enough of any of the people on this trip and find it amazing how well we work together, how jocular everyone is with each other, and what amazing, loving people these volunteers are. You who have loved ones on this trip should be very proud of them and their commitment to work here. They are amazing.

John McGuire
Servants Unite!

Team 7 Monday Report

Everybody had a good full day today. Some joined the Dayton contingent demucking houses in Chalmette. They report it is still a ghost town. Street after Street of unattended houses that have been flooded up to the roof. They built “Kevin’s Mountain” (pic to follow) on the narrow front yard of the one they were clearing today next to the resident’s FEMA trailer. Named so because Kevin was in charge of carting wheelbarrows of soggy, moldy stuff out onto the pile. He built up high using improvised ramps (doors) to keep from overstepping the property.

We had a crew of 10 working for “Miss Ella” and her son Brian. She stayed with friends in Dallas for the Hurricane and couldn’t come home to Slidell till three weeks after the storm. She walked into her house and went immediately back out again under her carport crying. A marine put his hand on her shoulder and asked what she needed them to do. He gave her an hour or so to go through the house that had flooded 3ft deep to get what she wanted to keep and then his men stripped the place of everything under the 4ft drywall seam.
We got the pleasure of meeting her at Home Depot with a Penske to haul her drywall, insulation, base cabinets, and other supplies home to start rebuilding. Home Depot… you don’t want to have to go there… three trips…
Overall someone was there or en-route all day where it takes 2hrs minimum to get things like drywall and shingles. Hopefully by tomorrow, with help from our new friend Anthony Ongyod from Annapolis Maryland there will be drywall up and a first coat of mud on the walls (the good kind ;-)










I also wanted to share some pictures with you of Ella’s neighborhood. The initial piles of debris that were as tall as the houses have been removed there, though Brendan tells me that isn’t the case closer to the lake. Many people on her street have trailers plumbed into their house systems to live in while they rebuild and PODs sitting in the driveway for storage.

Tim from New Life, who’s always up early was at the back in the “kitchen” frying sausage for our breakfast for Karen, the full time cook. Since she just returned yesterday after a few weeks sick, she had a lot of reorganizing to do and Tim stayed with her the whole day helping to take care of that need. Tim’s the man!

The rest of the volunteers worked at the new warehouse today building the new volunteer accommodations into the end of the warehouse. They are enhancing the supporting structure of the dorm section and hoping to put up some drywall there this week. Two of the guys in the picture are Mike and Matt from Boston (really true accent these two!)

This effort really needs a couple of skilled guys to spend a week or two down here. There are three electrical panels to be built out and certified. Three zones of HVAC that need installed, and a lot of plumbing work to do in the kitchen and bath areas of the new relief center. Spread the word around to anyone you know and anyone they know that meeting this need is becoming a critical factor in the effectiveness that this great group of people here can put forth.

So I started this at lights out and was out to get a power cord 15 minutes later and I found evidence we have resolved that intolerance issue that created the snoring and non-snoring sections ;-) The entire crew must be asleep and happily sawing logs from the sound of it.

God bless you all for our support and Lord please bless those we are serving in your name. Amen.

John McGuire
Servants Unite!