After sending Ray, Martha, and Donna to the airport, we packed up and had a send off by Pastor Lynn and his wife not looking forward to the long trip ahead. However, we did take another excursion in New Orleans to the 9^th Ward (the worst of the flooding areas). We rode along snapping pictures and were excited to see rainbow row where a HRBC team ( including Taylora) had worked last summer. It was exciting to see people sitting on their porches with flowers in their yards. All in all, the 9^th ward still had a long long way to go toward rebuilding. Some of our team who had been here last year, could not believe that so much was still undone. As we left the 9^th ward, we headed to Greenville and hit the beds around midnight! The beds were heavenly!

Friday evening was spent in New Orleans for some well deserved fun. With direction by our tour guides, the Carrs, we were able to spend some time driving around sight seeing with stops in the famous French Quarter and Bourbon St.  We walked around the French Market and Jeremy spied some cool shades he purchased for $5 which he has not removed even when he sleeps. The team girls also found Mardi Gras beads (1 inch in diameter) for Michael and forced him to wear them all evening! We had a nice dinner and sampled some of the Louisiana cuisine such as gator bites, crawfish, red fish, etoufee,

Beignets, Café Aulait, more gumbo (which did not compare to Greg’s), crab/crawfish dip.

The last day of work projects was here and everyone was busy with finishing up…in summary:

8 classrooms were painted in two days, the plumbing in kitchen and bathrooms with actual hot and cold running water, and the plumbing for the sewer lines was completed,

trimwork, baseboards, drop ceiling tiles installed in classrooms/bathrooms, utility rooms primed, school area organization of materials with shelving was readied, 6 acres of church property was completed, kitchen cabinets were removed stained and reinstalled with kitchen readied for countertops and appliances, and water heaters installed. Ned drew up plans for shelves in the warehouse and completed a great organization of painting materials and such.

The Missouri team completed another shed and assisted in yardwork, roofing of a garage, community activities, and fitting desks together for the classrooms.

All in all, the teams as well as the pastor felt really good about the amount of work accomplished. This was due to excellent teamwork and compatibility of skills amongst us all and of course, God’s hand in it all. One more item, if it weren’t for the skills of Mr. Greg Carr in feeding us some Louisiana food (bread pudding and jambalya/gumbo) none of us would have had the energy for all this work!

We hated to send off the Sheas on this day for the airport. Julie and Martha took them and then stopped off to gather more supplies at the infamous Home Depot 50 miles away for the pastor.

 To note, Greg also in finishing up his work ran out of the ceiling tile cross bars lacking only two to finish the job. He looked and looked in the warehouse, digging through piles of stuff. At the very bottom were 2 bars just waiting for Greg. It was a miracle!

……. Not to be confused with Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras, we had our own party in PS!! 

HRBC, Southgate (Missouri), and Pastor Lynn and his family all joined forces Thursday afternoon to prepare for our community cookout and carnival.  One of our favorites from the last week, a 10-year old boy named Daveron…..showed up at 4:00…he was so excited about our night.  He helped Martha get some games ready, played some one-on-one with Carter, and then helped Mr. Greg set up our game fields.  For all his extra help, Mrs. “Mar” allowed him to select a prize to have.  He was pretty excited. 

Many games were set up for the kids to play including ring toss, croquet, volleyball, basketball, football, and baseball…and the big hit for the younger crowd….our inflatable moon bounce.   Ray Parker and Randy Camden were our master burger and hot dog grill team, while Terri, Taylora, Martha, Ann Turner, and Donna prepared all the fixin’s including baked beans and ice cold watermelon slices.  Carter, Michael, Becky, Julia, Megan and Ned  manned the game “booths”. Jeremy and Molly helped “ref” the basketball game.  Clint showed off his croquet skills with several double wicket scores, and Julie and David were bumping and spiking in the volleyball match.  Greg ate.  And all the community kids had a great time. 

We had a big crowd, mostly those that had come all week, and a few new faces.  All in all we fed about 100 people.   God is good, as it had threatened rain earlier in the day, but by the time 6:00 rolled around , the skies had cleared…..AND the temperature had dropped into the 80’s.   Like a spring day…God gave us a perfect evening for an outdoor picnic…our coolest evening of the week.  Greg hardly even broke a sweat……and take it from those that were around Greg during the week…..he sweats!!!!  

The sad part of the evening was having to tell our new little friends that this was the last night of “VBS”.  Some were heartbroken.  Some asked if they could come back to Virginia with us.  They all wanted it to keep going. 

Christmas in July night:  The staff and kids were all excited preparing a fun evening celebrating Jesus’ birth. We thought this would be fun since the date was indeed July 25^th! It’s hard to find Christmas trees in Louisiana so we did have to be creative with the tree idea.  Martha P. and the youth were busy making crowns and princess hats for the kids to have a true Happy Birthday Jesus party as she shared this awesome story. The kids in the community loved the fun. They had never had a Christmas in July experience and of course thought we were crazy!  During the week, one of the kids actually admitted that he really did not know what Jesus was like besides being God’s son and this proved to be a great door for sharing to all.

The construction crew had a very productive day painting, kitchen work, and plumbing. Anticipation of only one more day to complete projects was on everyone’s mind.

If you’ve been reading our blogs or looking at the photos, you may realize there are some on our team that are unfamiliar to you.  Here are some things we’ve learned about our new teammates this week.

Clint and Jeremy Cole — Clint and Jeremy are father and son.  Clint works with Jack Morrow.  Clint learned about this mission through their interaction at work.  They had not had the opportunity to be on mission together and asked if they could work with us.  They have both been wonderful additions to our team. 
Jeremy is 17 and fits in with our youth perfectly.  In fact, some on the Missouri team thought he had been with our youth group for years!  Jeremy has been in the middle of every b-ball game played this week.  He’s made some good moves, but has also been “schooled” by a few of the local boys!  He’s also been a leader on the Stain Squad as they have now completely finished staining and poly-ing the kitchen cabinetry.
We’re all still trying to grasp the concept that Clint is the 18th out of 19 children in his family!  He’s shared stories about his family that have kept is intrigued and in stitches.  His willing spirit and unending talents have served well in PS.  I bet Clint never imagined he would be a b-ball referee while on mission!  Many years ago his family lived in Louisiana.  When this was learned the “Louisiana Night” chefs were sweating a little.  Fortunately for them, he gave their gumbo and jumbalaya high marks!  (The bread pudding was such a hit that it has been fixed a 2nd time this week!)

Julia Nixon — Julia is a senior adult leader at River Road Church.  She participates in the sewing guild that meets monthly in the HRBC multi-purpose room.  While walking through the Wallis bldg, she noticed the GO Information Center.  She browsed through the literature and saw the info about our Port Sulphur partnership.  She asked about participating on mission with us.  Now she is thinking about leading a team from her church back to Port Sulphur in the late fall! 
Julia has been a huge asset in many of our projects.  She has experience in drywall work, painting and staining.  We’ve also learned that she’s willing to learn anything. 

As you know, there are several “seasoned” members on our team.  However, we have quite a few first-timers!!  Randy & Becky Camden, Donna Hadley and Michael Watkins are all new to Ends of Earth mission experiences.  The cool things is that you would never know it.  None of them have been standing around waiting for instruction.  You also must know that Donna wasn’t even thinking about coming to PS with us until the night of team meeting.  She came to the meeting as Carter’s mom, since he was coming with us.  By the end of the meeting, she said she felt called to serve with this team!  And what a wonderful asset she’s been.  She felt the call and acted on it.  We’re sure she’s been blessed for it.

Be sure to watch for upcoming testimonies and reports from these, and other, team members.  Thanks again for reading our blogs.  We love sharing our adventure with you!

We are having all kinds of fun! 

On Tuesday, the roofing team (including Terri, Taylora, Randy and Clint) made a ton of progress on their project.  When it finally got too hot to be on a tin roof — around 11:00 — they were 90% finished!  Wednesday morning they returned to the job, added the last strips of tin, loaded the scaffolding and came back to church.  On Wednesday, Lenny came to PSBC to continue working on the final electrical installation.  We discovered it was his birthday.  So party planners, Taylora and AT, went to the store and got a cake.  Both the Missouri and HRBC teams joined together and sang Happy Birthday to him.  He was quite surprised, and we were surprised at how good our singing sounded!!!

The plumbing team, led by David and Greg, have been pipe running fools!  They got off to a slow, frustrated start when they realized some of the supplies that had been previously purchased were wrong!!  After getting all the right stuff, they were sailing.  They stole Michael and Carter from another team when it was time to climb up in the rafters.  They have become so good at installing plumbing lines that Greg told the boys they really didn’t need to go to college.  They already have a skill!!!

Our Stain Gang and Poly-Posse have been making huge progress on the kitchen cabinetry.   They’re witing for the last coat of polyurethane to dry and then everything gets put back together.  We hope they labeled everything correctly as it was being taken down!!!

Martha, Donna and Ann Turner completed the organization of all the PSBC school supplies.  When they started there was a huge pile of boxes that held all the supplies.  They sorted, sorted and sorted some more!!  The director of the school joined in the fun and they are ready for school to start in 3 short weeks!!  In fact, parents have been bringing their kids this week for registration.

On Wednesday, Donna joined Becky on the trim team.  They have been installing the shoe molding in all the hallways.  Martha joined Molly and they did a lot of touch-up staining that previous teams didn’t finish.  They checked every doorway and made things look great!  Someone overheard Martha saying, “This is my first ever real job!”  In fact, we think she may have perspired a little bit!

Ray & Randy saw a potentially dangerous situation and solved it this morning.  A trench was dug last week for water lines.  It stretched from the church to the road.  They were worried that, during recreation, some of the young children would trip or even fall in the trench.  So they spent the morning shoveling dirt.

Everywhere you turn there is something that needs to be done.  A very frustrating thing is the storage of the supplies in the warehouse/shed.  You know you need a certain size nail, but you can’t find it.  However, you see a zillion nail boxes.  So Ned is building some shelving units from extra 2×4’s and plywood. Tommorow we’ll start a sorting/organizing project and discover just what’s in that warehouse!!

Tuesday night our children’s/youth theme was HERO!  We start the evening with a large group time, very similar to VBS worship at HRBC.  Julie is leading this high-energy time with the kids.  The focus doesn’t last long and things have to move quickly!!  Our 2 songs for the week are “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” and “With Jesus in My Boat”.  We are also learning Phil. 4:13 as our theme verse.  One goal is to set the level of anticipation for the kids as they transition into the 4 stations each evening. We then continue the evening with Bible stories, crafts, music and recreation for all kids.  We’ve been seeing some behavior improvements as we continue to love on these kids.  Here’s an example —– There are some 4-5 grade boys who are so competitive!  They are always picking at each other and trying to degrade the other person.  Well, croquet was the rec game Tuesday night.  There was a younger boy having trouble playing the game.  Several of these bigger boys started helping and encouraging the younger one.  The older ones stopped playing until the younger one had succeeded!  That was definitely a behavior that hadn’t been seen earlier in the week.

Tuesday night we had a combined group time with the Missouri Team.  We played Jenga and used our observances about foundation, stability, teamwork ……. to compare our work to Solomon getting his building instructions for the temple from I Chron. 28.  Like Solomon, we get our instructions, act, and rely on God for our strength to finish.

So far we’ve also been very blessed with great weather.  July in southern Louisiana is usually oppressive and hot.  It’s been hot!!  But we’ve had a breeze and relatively cool evenings!  Everyone has been sweating thru their shirts (well, not Martha!), but it’s not as bad as it could be.

We did have some unplanned fireworks Tuesday afternoon.  There were 4-5 folks who returned to our rooms for a quick afternoon shower and clean-up.  Suddenly, every room heard a lot pop and several saw a flash of light.  everyone still had power, so we couldn’t figure out what happened.  Julie knew that oneof the 2 hot water heaters had been flipping a breaker for a couple of weeks.  So she and Terri went into the utility room to see if something looked suspicious.  They did find the breaker flipped, so Julie turned it completely off, then turned it back on.  They were both scared to death when they learned the origin of the loud pop and the flash of light — right there in that small room!!!  Something was definitly going on in the circuit box.  They left the room and called for back up!!!  Later on the pastor came over and check it out.  He did the same thing with the circuit and Julie saw sparks fly out of the water heater!!!  The end of the story is that 3 of our 6 rooms are on cool water only!  Fortunately, there is a shower trailer so hot water is abundant and everyone can get clean.

Thanks again to our Phantom Chef, Patty Arrington.  We had some fabulous marinated and grilled chicken as our main entree last night.  THANKS again, Patty!!!

Hey Journey Class, your cards have been awesome.  It is so cool when the pastor’s wife brings in the mail, and we get some!!!  Thanks for the encouragement!

This blog has gotten way too long!  More next time ………………..

We had a great night of psuedo-VBS!!!  We combined efforts with the Missouri team and had a lot of one-on-one interaction with the neighborhood kids. 

We need to give a huge thanks to Patty Arrington for our delicious dinner tonight.  She made tons of spaghetti sauce, froze it and sent it in a cooler with the team.  We thawed it out and had a fabulous meal.  Taylora lived up to her promise by making a gourmet salad and some “sinful” chocolate dessert that has the whole team wanting more!  Thankfully she made two pans!

Here’s a message for Carol Ashworth —- Carol, if you feel you have to go to the hospital every time there is a team in Port Sulphur, we’re going to have to rethink our partnership with them!!  We’re praying for you as you continue mending. 

Since we ran out of work supplies shortly after lunch, we had a calm afternoon.  We got more supplies late this afternoon, so tomorrow will be busy from the very start.  We’ve added a roofing project for a neighbor.  His name is Lenny, and he’s been doing all the electrical work at the church for free.  A group of combined HRBC and Missouri folks will be putting a tin roof on a large carport that completely covers his FEMA trailer.  Needless to say, they’ll be starting at 6:00 a.m.!!

Now it’s time to get some rest and put some Mao-playing teenagers to bed!  Just where do they get all that energy?