team 24 pics

 

 

 

Team 24 Heads Home

Update: We made it to Hendersonville, TN at 10:30 Central time. Breakfast will be at 7:00am and we should be home around 4:00pm Eastern.


We left Chalmette at 2:00 central after visiting the Katrina victims memorial at shell beach on the MRGO and poboys at Tony's.
We should roll into Nashville for our overnight about 10:00 central tonight.

Team 24 Last Day in the Field

We hung and cut drywall. My favorite part was putting up the ceiling because I liked operating the jack. I helped hold up drywall while they put the screws in.
I like coming down here because it’s like a break from life. You concentrate on helping complete strangers and help them get their life back again. Then when you’re not helping you're hanging out with you new friends.

David McGuire


A bullet list of the week:
LONG drive
Women's Shelter
Jeff the general contractor
Concrete Saw 2 doors in cement block and brick!!! :-)
Removing rusty ceiling hangers
Hanging drywall
Magnetic sweeping
Floor Scraping (taking up tile)
Chiseling mortar
Installing windows
Engine hoist
Broken finger

Painting

Painting

Painting

House mucking
Oil
Drywall
Carpet
Roaches
Mice


Miss Gladys'
Hanging drywall
Drywall jack
Screw guns
Third time's the charm...

Scoping out more work for the next crew
Past St. Bernard is a whole lot of swamp...

82 year old Vietnamese budist monk and friends
rode in on the train
great food!!

Trip to the French Quarter
Cafe Du Monde
Cafe Au Lait
Beignets
Powdered Suger
Powdered Sugar
etc.
Sleeping hippies in store doorways
Hippy Puppets
Jackson Square
Margaritaville
Mississippi River

FEMA trailers
Neighborhoods by the levy still a jumble of destroyed homes and posessions
19 months
Christmas - 1 coffee shop, Easter - 8

Tony's Poboys
Gators...again

2 hours dozing in the clinic for a check of the broken finger and resulting hole...
When's Walmart going to open?
Only 1 Doctor now.
Finger should be fine in 3-4 weeks with a splint.

Devo with Joel on the guitar
Where I Saw Jesus
"You mean tomorrow's our last working day?"

Airsoft as middle school discipline/motivator ;-)

Fish fry thank you!!!

Trip to Home Depot strictly for the restroom $0
Drywall and tools - $334
Buying a Big Mack in Chalmette - Priceless

Mucking out the Red Cross office...
Irony...
19 months
Likely volunteer housing soon
More irony

Warehouse duty
Handing out... well nothing, but Chris was on duty

'Nother trip to the French Quarter
Alternatives - Watching Bat Man Begins, blogging, shower, hiding from Brendan in fear of his Airsoft gun at the sound of any diesel truck engine.
Nobody's been shot, it has yet to materialize, but sometimes the threat will keep a 13 year old in line :-)

Tomorrow
Pack
Clean
Lunch
Off to Nashville
Then home...
...to the snow....
...for Easter

Good Night!

Team24 day 3

We had another great day today! Hung drywall, mucked a house, made new friends from California who made us a great home cooked Vietnamese dinner! The painting crew finished their house too.

Our new friends are of Vietnamese origin. The Buddhist master with them is 82 and a very sweet man. He spent 13 years in a communist concentration camp and now runs youth programs in California.
We hung drywall in Miss Gladys' House.

Katura got a rare pic of Brendan, I think he's even smiling...
The trailer park we are staying in was once a city park
Joel plays guitar... in the street... got a lot of looks...
The painting power rangers!
...went to see the levy break after they finished work.

Team24 - day 2 conclusion

Christopher Cole:
Under the midday sun, I realize that the little aches and pains of working pale in comparison to what these people have gone through.
There are those who have questions to which I have no answer, like: “If God is good, why does he allow suffering?” It would be great to have a way to make sense of the things that happen to good people around us. Maybe we should keep the question without an answer, instead of messing it up with our desire to “make sense” of what happens. Maybe we should ask a second question after the first and maybe that could be our answer: “what can we do to ease the suffering of others?”

Keturah Schroeder

Dear Mom and Dad
We arrived safely after the fifteen hour drive. Surprisingly, it went quickly. Upon arrival, we moved into our FEMA trailers for the week. Monday morning dawned early and after breakfast we drove to our site. The group split up and half the team went on a painting job, the other half worked at rebuilding a women’s shelter. It’s overwhelming – all the destruction and all the work.

Some pictures of our work and touristing from today:

Team 24 Day 2

So My task today is to blog, spec a new job, and a few other admin tasks. I'll add to this entry during the day to keep everyone up to date with some current pics as it happens.

Kind of unsettling being here and reading this news story.

One task we are completing this morning is scraping decades old tile that was glued down well! The power stripper is a KEWL tool!

Team 24 Day 1

Short blog entry today. Broke finger... Search and peck is frustratingly slow typing. Prayers please ;-)

Team 24 is Underway!!

7:26 pm eastern (1 hour earlier here) We just left our dinner stop in Tuscaloosa Alabama and are fast approaching the Mississippi line. Making excellent progress. Looks to be another amazing group of people. That kind of work...

8:45 am eastern
The team left Grove City Christian school at Grove City Nazarene Church at 8:30 which is on time for practical purposes. In my rush to get out the door I didn't snap a pic, but will get one at our first rest stop and post. cellular Internet rocks!!

We have people here from that school, Alum Creek Church of Christ, Westerville Christian, and New Life-Gahanna. A good mix of churches, kids, and adults.

Please pray for a safe trip and check back for updates as we roll down the road.

John McGuire

Sunday Sermon?

I got this back from Don Yelton at Whites Ferry Road Church of Christ who has been involved in disaster relief for decades. It was part of his reply to some questions I had about the core of our mission and I thought well worth some focused contemplation for those of us who have served, are serving, and will serve.

6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness [a] will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
"If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

STOP HERE and make your own conclusions before you continue. Spend at least 5 minutes...


...OK, I I'm guilty of reading 7 chapters of the purpose driven life in one setting myself, but really take a couple of minutes before you go to the official answer....



... the official answer being from the Tyndall Life Application Study Bible. Chapter 58 is on True and False Worship. To quote the Tyndall, (I hope properly without copywrite infringement here)

True worship was more than religious ritual, going to the temple every day, fasting, and listening to Scripture readings. These people missed the point of a living, vital relationship with God. He doesn't want us to act pious when we have unforgiven sin in our heart and continue our sinful life-style. More important, even than correct worship and doctrine is genuine compassion for the oppressed, the poor, and the helpless.

Specifically for this passage

We cannot be saved without faith in Christ, but our faith lacks sincerity if it doesn't reach out to others. Fasting can be beneficial spiritually and physically, but at its best fasting helps only the person doing it. God says he wants our fasting to go beyond our own personal growth to acts of kindness, charity, justice, and generosity. This truly is pleasing to God.

The lyrics of Audio Adrenaline's song "Dirty" off the WorldWide CD has become our theme song and echoes this:

Tired of being clean, sick of being proper
I wanna live among the beggars and dig out in the dirt
Step outside the walls we built to protect us
Don’t be afraid to get some mud on your face.

Come on, come on everybody.
Come on, come on and serve someone

Let's get dirty, let's get used
No matter where you come from
If you're beaten up or bruised
Let's get foolish, let's get free
Free to be the one thing
We were meant to be – let’s get dirty

Have we not all found amazing freedom in doing this work!? Angie G has. If you know her, please get me in touch 'cuz I can't track down where this quote came from. It was an email soon after the storm during our initial work in Mandeville, Louisiana. She supplied the quote I use on the blog, web site, tabletop display, and business cards.

"I don't want to go back to church and dress up and everything be nice and pretty. What we've been doing here is real church, it's getting dirty and helping people."

Servants Unite exists for 2 reasons. To serve victims of natural disasters and a fallen world. And to serve those without faith, or who are not experiencing the fullness of their faith.

In many of our churches, only 20% serve and don't realize what they are missing. People have joined our teams and served for a week who have never been on a mission trip before. My family included actually. In fact, I believe the majority of our volunteers were first time missionaries when they went to the Gulf their first time and many of those have since made return trips.

You all have a part in reaching more people, storm victims, those without faith, but with big hearts, and your brothers and sisters who's faith may be warming a pew most Sundays. All of us together are making a huge difference and the more people you bless with your stories and exhortations to come along, the bigger this kingdom effort becomes.

Thank you Lord for all these volunteers who have given a week or more for Your work to answer Your call. Thank you for the opportunity you've given us to fight in your ranks, to serve as your ambassadors, to minister to the afflicted, to break the yoke of oppression, depression, and hopelessness. Thanks for allowing us with our limited skills, but the benefit of Your Spirit guiding us to feed the hungry and rebuild shelter for those made poor by this tragedy. Thanks for allowing us to reflect your noonday light.

Thank you for helping us to find this "real" faith, this "true" and compassionate faith you mean for us. Thank you for blessing us with your peace, the ability to do work in your name that we don't posess the skills for ourselves, and the cooperative effort this has been between people from all parts of Your body without the malicious talk we engage in when we are idle. Thank you Lord for this mission and may you continue to bless it, our work, and those who serve in Your name. Amen

John McGuire