Mississippi Trip - Wednesday

Before we went to bed on Tuesday I had a quick conversation with Heather. She said that she planned to wake up at 5:30 to make sure she had time to get a shower. So I figured I'd probably hear her or wake up and if she wasn't there then it was time to wake up. This was especially true since my cell phone was safely locked in the van, and with it being my alarm clock I had to trust in my own senses.

So I went off to sleep after a long day of driving, sure I'd over sleep.

I woke up in the dark after what felt like a full night. I poked my head up and looked around. I didn't see Heather in her bed. In fact I looked around and didn't see Bethany nor Rachel in their beds either (though I did know they are relatively small). So I popped up, grabbed my stuff and went down for a shower. I knew I wasn't too late since the sun wasn't rising, but I figured I must not have much time.

I got a quick shower and was greeted by Kenny as on my way out. What does he tell my but that it's 3:45 a.m. 3 freaking 45 in the morning. So I did what any sensible person would do. I went back up the bed and slept in my clothes until 7.

Thankfully that was really only bad thing that happened that day.

At breakfast we walked on up to the serving table not knowing what to expect. The first tray I came to was filet mignon! Filet mignon (not a fish as one person misunderstood it and we laughed together about) but the best steak you can get (though I prefer prime rib). Of course, it wasn't filet, it was sausage, but I was brightened enough to take one and enjoyed it immensely.

Then came one big turning point for me with Bethany. I asked if she wanted yogurt and she asked if it was strawberry. I told he it was, so long as she liked her strawberries in small, round blue balls. She declined but it still got a laugh from her. Breakfast went on like that with me wanting to do anything I could to keep Bethany and Rachel smiling, talking, joking and laughing. Thankfully the other youth around me made for a perfect environment and I barely had to do anything. Sometimes I just love people.

There were about 170 people at the camp (21 from our group and I think 55 from Lock Haven University). We all gathered together on the bleachers in the morning to assign work sites to different people.

Some of the youth, being the industrious people they are, immediately signed up to help around the camp site. This left most of the adults and a couple youth to cook food (which actually worked out well). Because I was driving a big van I volunteered to drive people to a work site (probably one of the best decisions I ever made).

I stumbled around a little bit without knowing what to do or where to go until we finally cobbled together our own plan. We loaded up a trailer and headed over to a work site. We went to the "third slab from the water" (seriously... addresses mean nothing when there is no house within a few blocks and so much damage everywhere), or as we later found to be Betty's house. We went to move boards and roofing and anything toward the side of the road for pickup. Our main purpose was to collect any valuables we could find and set them on the slab before the bulldozer came to remove the rest of the rubble.

I've mentioned this day a lot in my other entries. But I really can't tell you how hard this was for me initially. On one living room chair (still with upholstery) sat a cracked, water stained picture of a toddler. I seeing that really got me thinking about my family, how Rachel was and that if it were me I could have lost her in the storm. Around this was a huge area of belongings others had already found with three piles of boards and roofs representing the neighboring houses.

Everyone got together and began moving boards from one pile to another. Our pile on the street quickly got huge and the line didn't work. So we all set to moving boards, tree branches, dirt, dust, bricks and whatever on our own, working in groups of two or three to move the big objects.

This is when I started Megaphoning a bit and really just enjoyed the people around me. Honestly it was the only think I could think to do. I felt like I'd been beaten a bit, just thinking of all the families that have been torn apart because of this. I kept thinking to myself, how would I react if this were my home, these were my pictures of Rachel and Erin and youth group, what if I'd lost any one of them?

This is, of course, when I met Amber and Dave. It's also when I really got to know Carl and Tim a little bit better. All that I've talked about earlier, and I won't bore you with again. I will say this though. Having them made the day move much faster and made the work enjoyable instead of depressing. We worked together to move larger, heavier objects. We just looked at one-another with a comforting glance when it was obvious we had some objects in our hands which were invaluable to Betty or the sheer reality of it all hit us again. Truly, I could not have asked for better people to share the day with.

At about 12 Carl put down the chainsaw for a minute to pay us the great pleasure of handing out granola bars. You know, the good ones that are all covered in chocolate and have marshmallows and chocolate chips... Yumm... We all grudgingly broke around 12:30 for lunch (we wanted to finish up but we were just too hungry). We all enjoyed lunch with the groups beginning to mingle a bit more.

We went back to Betty's house where Carl cut up an immense tree which had fallen behind the house, and Dave and Matt moved bigger and bigger portions of roof out of the way. We all kept telling Amber she had only one job that day, to move this immense tree branch which was under a ton of rubble (I still think it was a root off of the tree). She laughed, said we were nuts, tried to move it and gave up. But I'm still hopeful Dave, Amber and I can go down there for the sole purpose of moving that branch (or making sure someone else did).

Michael did the great job of moving items which didn't belong to Betty over to the neighbor's house. This took at least a few hours and he never really faltered. Eventually Abby or Missy or someone helped him move some of the items as well.

A man with a bobcat came by and offered to push our wood pile closer to the street so that it would be picked up. He moved the wood around while we rested a bit and set to moving other items around on the slab. Other people continued to clean the mortar off of bricks and add to a huge pile of bricks already stacked up.

We stopped working when the sun started going down. Headed over to the beach to watch the sunset and really get a look at the devastation all up and down the coast. I got to hang out with one of my favorite people, Christine, and talk for a few minutes. Then Christine and I took a bunch of group pictures for everyone (the photo on the right in the photo gallery). Rob was nice enough to take a photo of Christine and I so that I could Photoshop us in (see Christine and I standing behind Amber and just to the right of Michael (Michael's in the green shirt).

We headed back to the camp site for a shower, dinner and for me to listen to the youth who were upset that we couldn't stay the week at the work camp (people under 18 really weren't allowed for legal reasons, so we stayed at a preschool about an hour away that was kind enough to put us up for the week). There were a bunch of reason people didn't want to leave. My biggest reason was that I'd have to leave these friends I'd just made and miss out on some of the fun.

Melissa's parents cooked us an amazing dinner of beef stew AND made us fried pickles! I'd never had them and was really excited to try them. They were really pretty good. Heck, I even ate some after Bethany spit cracker out of her mouth all over them (man that was hilarious).

We also met Kyle (female), a 10th grader from Melissa's old youth group. She was a but quiet but great to be with. Michael thought she was interesting and we soon laughed and joked about his Kyle "obsession". It was great to hear Michael go on and on about how great Kyle was, even though he'd maybe said 100 words to her all night.

We played Scene It! TV edition which was new for me. But, since a lot of the shows were from the 90's I just rocked! Tell me any jungle or theme song and I could tell you the show. At one point I caught a glimpse of the answer, sprang up and shouted the answer to the whole room. Rachel and I teamed together and I think we won in the end, she was great at filling in any gaps I didn't get. Man we had a blast.

We headed over to the preschool, found places to sleep, talked some about Kyle and what time to get up in the morning and everything. It was a great day and an incredible night. I am so appreciative of Melissa's family for letting us into their home and putting up with our craziness (and even my slight insanity). I got to bed around 11 on my air mattress that lost all it's air by 1 a.m.

Man I miss it already. Who knows what stories I've already forgotten?

Until tomorrow,
Peace,
+Tom/Bob

posted by Tom at 9:57 AM