Thursday - On the road again

Having finished our work in Monterrey, we headed for home early Thursday morning leaving the hotel at 4:30 am. We dropped off two of the team at the Monterrey airport and then headed for the border which is about a 2 hour drive. There is always some anxiety about the trip out of Mexico, since we have to pass 'Check point Charlie' just as we did on the way in. This is the interior border and is about 12 miles from the actual border. Here they often check us out and look in the trailer for who knows what. Fortunately, this year we got the green light and drove through. Next stop is the vehicle registration bureau where we turn in our vehicle permit. One more toll bridge and then the entry into the US where we also sometimes get searched. This year they looked in the trailer but did not make us take anything out.

We were back in the good ole USA by about 8:30 am so we celebrated by going to McDonalds for juice and coffee. (Of course we could have gone to McDonalds in Monterrey because they have plenty of them). Our first real stop in Texas is our favorite barbeque restaurant, Cowpokes in Pearsall for an early lunch. Then on to the San Antonio airport where we dropped off two more members of the team. The remaining five of us then headed east to try and get through Houston before rush hour. There seems to be a continuous work project on I-10 in downtown Houston and maybe they will actually finish it one of these years. Anyway, we made pretty good time and arrived in Lake Charles, LA for our favorite seafood restaurant, Steamboat Bill's. Great fried shrimp and boiled crawfish. If it is true that an army travels on its stomach, then so does a mission team! Then back in the van to try to make it to Pearlington, MS.
Before we left home, we had arranged to stop in Pearlington at the Presbyterian
Disaster Assistance (PDA) Katrina work camp and work on Friday and Saturday. We arrived right on time at 10:30 pm after riding in the van for 18 hours. This is one of the newer PDA camps having only been setup in January. Pealington is right on the Mississippi Louisiana border and was 'wiped off the map' according to the news folks. Well, it is still there, but there is plenty of devastation and plenty of work to be done in helping these people get their lives back to some sense of normal. The camp director was up waiting for us and promptly got us settled in our pods (shelters) for some much needed rest.