Mississippi

On October 11th the 4 of us with a group from our church traveled down to Pass Christian, Mississippi to build a Katrina Relief House. Pass Christian is on the gulf coast and after Hurricane Katrina hit, 90% of the homes were destroyed and 100% of the businesses were destroyed. Now 2 years later only 10% of the town has been rebuilt. Our church had partnered with a group called Square Foot Ministry and OM to build this house. The lady that will be living in it, not only lost everything in the hurricane, but has also contracted West Nile Virus from mosquitoes and is now going blind. When we got down there, we checked into our accommodations...tent city. These are the National Guard tents that were put up for the people who were left homeless. There were all girl tents and all boy tents, so Jon got the boys! We got up Friday morning and were on our construction site by 7:30 am. Our church had built all the outside walls this summer on the church parking lot and they were trucked down to Mississippi. So, we got to the site which had a foundation and front porch only to find out our house plans had been changed. None of the outside walls were right anymore. We went ahead and put them up and then the "construction" guys on our crew (the ones who really knew what they were doing!) went through and pulled apart the doors and windows, and rebuilt everything to the new plans. By the end of the first day, the exterior walls were up, windows were in, the house was wrapped and the roof trusses were up. At one point during the day, Andrew (a guy from our church) took Ty and Devon over to the railroad tracks (which were about 50 feet in front of the house!) and showed them how to put coins on the tracks. When they heard the train coming, all three of them ran to watch and wait to see what happened. Ty and Devon were excited to find there flattened coins! The next day, they placed more coins, and then decided a ham sandwich, apple and mayo packet might be just as good. Boys. So, anyway, back to the house! The second work day we put the siding up on three sides (doing this, I learned how to use a nail gun!), finished the interior walls, put plywood on the roof (which Andrew took Ty and Devon up to help with at one point!)and papered it. A ton of work for 2 days time! I was impressed with Ty and Devon. For being the only 2 kids there and on a construction site for 2 days, they did no complaining! They were always looking for jobs to do. they pulled nails our of wood, cleaned up and always made sure everyone had something to drink! they were awesome! After dinner on Saturday night our church band did an outside worship service. There weren't many people there, but I did hear that we had a few people who came over from the bar across the street to see what was going on and decided to stay for the music! Cool. Jon even got to debut a new song of his! It was a great 4 days for our family. We learned more about construction, compassion and caring for people less fortunate then we are. I would encourage anyone to find a team or organization and help rebuild the gulf coast.