Spring is here!!!

Well, spring actually arrived here several weeks ago. With the arrival of warm weather and daylight hanging around a little longer, we've been spending way more time at the campground. Only 4-1/2 weeks until opening day. Can you say "Scared witless"? I thought you could...

Jack's daughter sent us a new picture of Jenna with their Lab puppy, taken at the end of February.

She's so cute, but I guess my opinion could be considered a wee bit biased.


Mission Trip

Jack and I went on a mission trip to Bogalusa, Louisiana last week. A total of 30 people from our church loaded up on a bus and spent a week working on homes damaged by hurricane Katrina. It seems that if folks didn't already have a pile of money hanging around somewhere, they got overlooked when it came time to help out with repairs.


The work that we did was organized by a group called WEROC, which is a conglomeration of churches and civic organizations that is trying to help out the folks who fell through the cracks of insurance and FEMA. Their website is www.weroc.org.


Because our group was so large, we split up into several smaller crews and tackled 3 large jobsites and a couple of smaller ones. The first jobsite we visited was a house trailer that was probably 30-40 years old. A tree had fallen on it during the storms, knocking about half of it down. The lady who owned it was living in a tiny FEMA trailer. FEMA was getting ready to take the trailer back because she'd had time to get hers fixed - only problem is, she didn't have any money to fix it with, and it was beyond fixing, anyway. There wasn't anything that we could have done for her, either. The trailer was just too far gone.


The next jobsite we went to was her sister's doublewide. The roof had lifted off of it during the storms, letting a lot of water inside and causing damage. Two months after the storms, her husband had left, taking most of the insurance money with him and leaving their two little boys with her. She'd had to have the doublewide moved onto her parent's property after the divorce. It wasn't set up yet, and some of the floors had been damaged during the move. Her church had helped her tear out the damaged walls, ceilings, and floors, and put up new sheetrock.


Our crew that ended up working on it repaired the floors, leveled up the halves with each other, hung up the rest of the sheetrock, and finished & painted all of it. They also laid vinyl tile on the floors, put the molding back on the walls, and moved some of her furniture back in for her. When she saw the trailer on the last day, she started to cry and said it looked like a home for the first time in 2 years. She still needs to get a plumber and an electrician to finish hooking everything up, then she can get her electric and water hooked up. She expects to be able to move in within a month or so.


Her sister, who we couldn't do anything for, was thrilled that we had been able to help. She worked 3rd shift, but would spend her mornings running errands and getting materials to help rebuild her sister's trailer. Wow.


Another jobsite we were asked to go to was a disabled lady's home. It hadn't been damaged in the storms, but she'd become dependant on a walker and wheelchair to get around. The steps into her house were really steep and she couldn't get down them without help from somebody, which meant she had to wait for somebody to come get her since she lived alone. She needed a ramp.


Jack, our pastor, and one other guy went to talk to her and put together a materials list on Monday morning. Jack says she was very unbelieving that she would get any help. Apparently, she'd been asking her kids to build a ramp for her for a couple of years now, and they hadn't done it yet. I can understand why she'd think "Yeah, right! You don't even know me, so I know you're not going to help me...".


I was on the work crew that went to her house on Monday afternoon. Some other ladies went with us and went inside to talk to her. I stayed outside and helped work on making the ramp. While we were there, her medicine was delivered. She came to the door and looked out. Her ramp was well on it's way to reality. She saw it and smiled for the first time that we'd seen, probably for the first time in a long time. The ladies who had spent the afternoon with her said that she was a very bitter lady. She'd had a rough life and was pretty much all alone in life. She'd given up hope.


We finished the ramp on Tuesday, and the change in her was incredible. What had been a lonely, bitter woman was now a smiling, chatty lady. It was amazing. If you've ever wondered about God's timing, consider this - she told us before we left at the end of the week that she'd made up her mind the day before we showed up that when her medicine got there on Monday, she was going to take all of her heart & pain meds and just go to sleep. If we'd waited until Monday afternoon, she would have been gone. God is always right on time. More wow.


The last large jobsite our group worked at was another doublewide. An elderly man who'd had a stroke lived there - his wife was younger, but she stayed home to take care of him. He spent most of his time watching television. He wouldn't talk to anybody, and was likely to cuss you out if he did speak. He'd basically given up all hope, too.


The storms had lifted the roof on their house and blown out some windows. They were fortunate enough to get some money from insurance and a little from FEMA, too. They weren't so fortunate in their choice of contractors to fix the damage. When our crew got there, the roof was fixed and some drywall was hung, but not finished. The hot water heater hadn't worked since the storm, and there was a gaping hole where a window still needed to be replaced. If it got cold at night, they slept in their Blazer to stay warm. To bathe, they would fill up a wading pool outside and let the sun heat up the water.


The crew started working on their trailer on Tuesday. Jack and I joined them on Wednesday. I was inside, working with drywall mud for the first time in my life, when somebody came through the house, telling everybody the pastor wanted us outside pronto. When we got out there, he was holding his Bible and talking to the couple. It turns out that they knew about God, but they didn't know God, and they wanted to. They said they'd seen the love of God in our group, in our behavior towards them and towards each other. All of us that were there knelt to pray with them as they asked for salvation. Another "WOW!" moment. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house, er', yard. When we left at the end of the week, the gentleman had come out of his depression and was smiling and laughing, interacting with people. His wife said it was the happiest she'd seen him in years.


Most of us had been on mission trips before. This was my third one. We've always seen the physical fruits of the work that we do. We hear about the spiritual fruits after we leave. This was the first mission trip that God allowed us to see some of the spiritual results of our work. Wow oh wow oh wow.... what a blessing!