The Muck

The day started well. A beautiful fall morning and a good pancake and scrambled egg breakfast and everybody eager to get to work.



After the morning devotion, we loaded up the van and headed for the work site. Well, we almost headed for the work site. First you need to understand that we are camping in a grassy field on the church property. Last night we parked the van and trailer at the top of the hill near our tents. (Hey, we are lazy and didn't want to walk all the way to the parking area - a distance of about 200 feet). So, with Brian driving, we headed down the hill and Brian decided to take the short cut. Big mistake. Soon the rear wheels of the van were in mud up to the hubs and we were stuck.



Fortunately, there were plenty of people still in camp and the California kids quickly came over to help us. With a little digging and a lot of pushing we got the van out of the mud and were on our way. By the way, the kids from California are high school students. They range in age from 15 to 18 and are full of energy!

For the past two days we have been joined by two great people from Connecticut. Susan Pfeil is the interim pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Ossining, New York. Lon England is a member of First Presbyterian Church, New Canaan, Connecticut. They are tireless workers and a lot of fun to be around. They even laugh at our jokes!

For the morning, we worked on finishing the cleanup of Gloria Kemp's house. Here is Susan hard at work.



It took a little longer than we anticipated, but we still finished by about 12:30 pm. We removed all the sheetrock and associated nails on the walls and moved it to the street.



From our perspective, the house looks good and should be repaired without much trouble. It does have some isolated termite damage that shouln't be too hard to fix.

Lunch again at Compassion Center. Hot ham and cheese or turkey and cheese sandwiches, fruit, chips, water and cookies.



After lunch we traveled to the Long Beach area to work on the home of the pastor of Longbeach Presbyterian Church. George and his wife were planning on staying in their home during the storm, but finally changed their mind about six hours before the storm hit. It is a good thing they changed their mind. The highest water level was two feet above the floor in the UPSTAIRS level of their home.

Nothing had been removed from the home before we started.



Imagine a home that has been flooded and then remained closed for about six weeks. Mild/mold everywhere. The smell was much worse than anything we had experienced yet. As we were shoveling the debris out the windows to the wheelbarrows so it could be hauled to the street, we tried to imagine if it was our home and our stuff that was being removed. George had a grand piano that he had spent four years restoring. It was ruined. He had items that his mom had given him just before she died. He saved them, but they were damaged. He had a beautiful grandfather clock that came apart we tried to pick it up. It was hard walking because of the mixture of mud and sheetrock residue that covered the floor. We made the mistake of opening their freezer door. Think about a freezer that has not been opened in six weeks. The smell was beyond description. If you are ever in that situation, resist the temptation to open the freezer door!

After we got back to camp, we helped put up an additional tent to be used for meetings when the camp population grows. The youth from Davidson and UNC Charlotte left for home early this morning. A new group from New Jersey came in about 10:30 am and spent the day working on projects around camp.

Tomorrow we start a new phase. Our camp has been assigned a specific grid area in Biloxi. We will be responsible for going door to door and doing assessments of the damage and what work needs to be done. As we understand it we will even have the authority to recommend whether a house is condemned or not. That is a lot of responibility for a volunteer to shoulder. It also means that we must be very sensitive in working with the homeowners. We are being trained in the morning and we are sure there will be a lot of questions and a lot of on the job training. After we get a good backlog of work to do, we will start work on these houses.

We have been blessed by God with this opportunity to minister to the people of Biloxi through service. Many of them have told us how grateful they are that we are here and that we are helping.

Thanks for reading this and thanks for praying for the people of Biloxi and for us.