Team 24 picture galleries are available!

Pictures are available at these links for the people who I was able to capture pictures from. Almost 1500 shots! So you'll see a lot of the same stuff, but still some good photogs in this group

Keturah who is back in Chalmette with Emily and her brother again this week!

Dawn

Sam

Stacy

John

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

Team 23 Returns, Team 24 Heads for New Orleans

Most of Team 23 returned from their week in Bayou La Batre at 4:30 this afternoon. One family flew home and a couple took a father son trip to Atlanta on their way home... kinda... no word on whether they got tickets, but we all now know that there will be a serious rematch Monday night! Here's the crew coming back to Marysville Church of Christ:
Also along were a few from Wooster Church of Christ. Welcome to the gang to Mike and company!

I'm taking Team 24 down to Chalmette tomorrow morning. Half are meeting up in Westerville at 7:15 and picking the rest up at Grove City Christian at 8:00. Pray for our safe trip and a productive week. Also pray for opportunities for us to share our faith. With this team, we are over 700 volunteer weeks of labor!

Team 25 will not be next week. We have 3 high school kids, but no adult leaders so our next team scheduled is North Canton Church of Christ, June 8.

Two more groups called last week to plan summer trips putting us over 250 more prospective volunteers for summer! If you'd like to schedule a group we'll find a place for you. If you don't have one and would like to join one, I'll be publishing existing dates as they solidify. Any time between June 15 and July 30, the work camp will be open in Bayou La Batre and all are welcome.

Watch the blog this week for more updates on our work in Chalmette and some pics of this past week's work once I have them.

John McGuire

Winter Storm Relief

Remember a couple months ago I forwarded a request from Andy Vance at Vinyard who was taking a team out to St. Louis for winter storm relief? I asked for and got an update from him on the work they did and wanted to share it with all.

Just 2 of us went from Ohio, but a group of 20 showed up in Missouri.
We stayed at a Baptist church in Miller, Missouri and worked just North of it in Everton.

Many were poor, elderly or ill. All were very grateful. Many commented that they had no idea how they were going to clean up the mess.

It honestly looked like someone took a huge weed-eater to the tops of every tree in the county. The limbs were all broken at the top. Some limbs were still attached and broken, but many became vertical projectiles once encased in ice and plummeted to earth. Tree limbs pierced roofs, cars and the ground. Fences were destroyed, and in cattle-country that's a big problem.

Our small group cleared over 150 homes in 5 days, with the help of 2 Bobcats. It was a blessing to be able to see so many lives impacted. We prayed with each family and presented each with a Bible from Samaritan's Purse.

we also re-located mid-week to Pierce City. So, 2 communities were helped, but the total homes cleared were over 150.

The weather didn't present any issues. The 5 to 15 degree weather (not including wind chill) actually didn't create any major challenges. We ended up losing a few layers of clothes after about 10 minutes of working.

One person was taken to the hospital for a chainsaw injury to the knee. He wasn't wearing the kevlar chaps that were provided. After that, everyone with a chainsaw had them. The roads were slippery and snow covered (it snowed while we were there) but we didn't have to travel far to the worksites and we were mostly in 4x4 vehicles.

Thanks.
Andy

Article on Team Buffalo in their campus paper

http://spectrum.buffalo.edu/article.php?id=31611 is the article that Erin wrote when she returned with contributors from the group.

Also, find the "La Batre Boys" mentioned in the article on YouTube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWywaIpT7J4

See why I'm so impressed by them!

John McGuire

A note from Team 22

Hey John! So we made it home!!!!! I'm sorry again that we weren't able to email you while we were down there. We were in the boonies!!! lol Anyways, the trip was great! W we took off shingles and put on new shingles. It was so much fun and I only almost fell off once!! We also picked up debris from random places. Then one afternoon Jessica and I stayed at the church to hand out food, personal, infant etc. boxes out. By doing this we were able to meet people from the community that were affected the tornado. I'd have to say all together the trip went well.

The living arrangements were nice. Like I said we stayed at a church youth camp and we were blessed to stay in the nurses station which was a house so we lived very comfortably...although mission trips are not about being comfortable we were very blessed.

Melissa Gauder
New Life Church, Canal Winchester

Team 23 Monday Update

Team 23 had a productive day today. I spoke with Nate Holton, the youth leader from Marysville Church of Christ who makes up 3/4 of the team. They painted houses, set cabinets, and other tasks today.

Yesterday was the beach.

Interesting wrinkle in their week. Be watching for the community center in the evening news Thursday. A dignitary will be visiting there requiring tight security. The team will be restricted in their access to the building for parking and meals, but Daphne's got the contingencies covered. It'll be interesting to see who they may meet :-)

Updates from the team are not forthcoming as the dodgy Internet access has them off the information highway. Nate promises to send out updates when he can find access.

More Team 21 pics

Erin from Buffalo posted a few pictures to her facebook that show the trailer demo work we did two weeks ago. I pulled copies of them to share here:

Why it happened...

An engineering study was released yesterday on the root of the Corp of Engineer's misconceptions that the levy system should withstand a Katrina like hurricane.

CNN has a good article here

Decades of mistakes -- some as basic as not knowing the elevation of New Orleans -- led the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to believe its levees and floodwalls would protect the city

Full documentation is on this site

A US Census report mentioned in the article speaks to the population return and the need for rehabbed housing, the work we are currently doing:

The latest Census Bureau estimates, to be released Thursday, say that 10 months after the hurricane, Orleans Parish in Louisiana had slightly less than half the people it did before the storm. Nearby St. Bernard Parish had less than a fourth of its pre-storm population.

Email Update with Correction

I inadvertently typed that many teams are scheduling for Spring Break when I meant to say Summer, one may be as large as 100. Thanks to my editor ;-)

Here's the rest of that update:

Team 21 pictures are below on the last update to the blog.

Team 22 is Melissa Gauder and Jessica Pugh, small but mighty and working in Enterprise Alabama roofing houses damaged by the massive tornado a couple weeks ago. Lack of Internet is preventing them from getting updates to us, but they are working hard and being productive.

Team 23 leaves Saturday! 33 people from Marysville Church of Christ youth group and Westerville Christian will spend the week back in Bayou La Batre to finish some of the work we started but needed parts for and pick up some more.

I’ll be taking Team 24 to Chalmette for reconstruction work, leaving April fools day. That’ll be 25 people from Westerville Christian and Grove City Christian School.

We have many teams scheduling for Summer. One made up of Westerville High School students may be as large as 100! The estimated volunteer load this summer may be 10 times last year. There will be plenty of opportunity to go if you missed spring break. Hilltop (www.hilltoprescue.org) is setting up to supplement the work in Bayou La Batre with a 6 week work camp from June 15-July 27.

All these trips are going to require funding. We’re hitting the bottom of the account after Spring Break and will be asking for donations. If you have fundraiser plans you’d like to implement for Servants Unite, please let me know.

As always, summer teams are on call for initial disaster relief should a new storm strike. In that case you’ll see the following happen:

• Our partners will set up base camps to host volunteers
• We will organize collection, packaging and shipping of food, water, and other supplies into the new disaster zone
• Our scheduled teams will redirect to that area for critical relief support
• We will collect our first responders and medical volunteers to send in right behind the storm

To do that, we need:

• Relationships and contingency plans with those partners – This I am continuing to build
• Churches to host dropoff locations – Need 4 in each large Ohio city and one or two in smaller locales
• Volunteers to collect and package food – 3 leads and 20 volunteers per location
• Packaging materials and logistic plans – I am developing these with partners
• Transportation for first response – similar to our current work + personal work vehicles and won’t need much adjustment
• First responders and medical types – If you have told me you would do this previously please re-up for this year and we need many more.

God continues to bless this organization and it continues to grow. I’m putting a full time effort into that task, but even with that, I can’t do it alone. Planning for and executing another first response effort that we are capable of takes a lot of people to help. These roles are the ones I need filled immediately. Please send me a note with your availability and ideas.

Thanks for your continued support!

Servants Unite!

Team 21 pictures

I have galleries loaded up for the pictures I collected from our team last week. You can right click the large image and save to your machine to get a print up to 4x6 made. If you want a larger print you will want to get a full resolution file form the photographer.

There may be some more added when I get some CDs back from the film camera's but for now here they are:

Rich

Chrissy

Paul

Jamie

John

Pui Yi

On This Week's Team...

This is an open letter to those who have raised the "kids" who participated in our trip to Bayou La Batre this week. I was convicted to write a little about them... at 1:00am... after a bit of sleep... waiting on my own high school freshman to return from a youth retreat. I hope and pray he and his brothers have parents, grandparents, extended family, youth leaders, and friends like these have. You have raised them well and should glory in the Lord that he has used you in this task.

Every high school youth group produces a few like these, but I had the honor of working shoulder to shoulder with an entire team of really amazing people. People who others crave to be with. People who are smart, talented, athletic, dedicated, and fun. They come from different countries, churches, and social backgrounds, many not knowing eachother before the trip, but they all gelled into fast friends and instant comrads at arms (Ephesians 6:10-18).

I heard about their problems and setbacks. I talked with them about their questions seeking faith. I witnessed their selfless giving, listening, praying, and serving. I was amazed at their, all of them, leadership ability AND ability to work together; traits that can cause conflict if not Spirit led. Their "adult" leaders, Lisa, Brian, and Marilyn are excellent new leaders in the body and all the participants on this trip, even some who are only now seeking faith in Christ, are going to be amazing leaders of the church. They are indescribable really, filled with the power of the Spirit, and inspiring.

Again, congratulations on a job well done and thank you! We all pray the Lord continues to bless and build up this generation and uses them in a mighty way. Amen

I look forward to working with them again and hearing of their walk.

John McGuire
Servants Unite!