05.09.09
Friday and Saturday….
Our last day started out with the team divided again. Don, Chris and Jim headed up to start framing walls for the new house off Hermitage Road, while Laura and Bob went to our third house to poly the hardwood floors. Part of the other team from Richmond (they are from Lyndale Baptist Church) was there working on the kichen cabinets. We were able to have a good visit with these folks while we worked together. Part of their team was loading up some wood for the new house, so when all was done there, we all headed up the road to unload wood and help with the framing. Our friend, Russell Drewery drove down from NOLA today to work along side us and we were so grateful for the extra set of hands!
Rick had to leave early to go to NOLA to pick up his truck that has been in the shop all week. We were left with the task of putting the plywood sheeting on the two outside walls. Unfortunately, we were not able to raise those walls yet……some other team will get to do that! That will be an interesting job, considering the house is being built about 10 feet off the ground. We felt like we were building a tree house today, we were so far up in the trees!
Friday dinner just doesn’t get much better than what we experienced! Bruce LePointe, Volunteer Coordinator for CPR, served up a southern LA shrimp boil with shrimp, potatoes, corn, and sausage all cooked together. He also grilled red fish and speckled trout on the grill. Needless to say, we all ate and ate and then ate some more!!
Saturday morning ended up being part of a work day for Laura and Rick. Since the electrician was in the third house where we worked on the hard wood floors on Thursday, we weren’t able to put poly on the floor until Friday morning. Since the poly needs to dry for 24 hours, the second coat was going to be left undone. We didn’t want that to happen, so at 7:00am this morning, Rick and Laura headed over to the house to put that second coat of poly on the floors. We were pulling back into the church parking lot at 7:45am!
By 8:45 we were pulling out of Port Sulphur Baptist Church, headed to the airport. We stopped at the little gas station diner up the road for a full breakfast and then on to NOLA! We are now awaiting our flight in the NOLA airport and are anxious to arrive home to family and friends and to share stories that didn’t make it on the blog. It has been a wonderful week of work, fellowship and learning and all are ready to do it all over again! Thank you for your prayers and support for this continued partnership with our good friends of Plaquemines Parish and Port Sulphur Baptist Church.
Mid-Week
Where does the time go……Thursday is already here and it feels like we just got here! Much has been accomplished by our little team in that time, though. Today, Bob and Laura returned to put the final coat of poly on two of the three houses we have been working in this week. We also painted the railings on the porches of one of those houses.
Rick took Don, Jim and Chris and most of the other team that is here from Richmond, north of Port Sulphur to frame the floor for a new house that is just getting started. It’s in a little marsh community called Lake Hermitage and is right on a little canal that looks like something right out of the movies…..Spanish moss hanging from the trees, canopy of trees over the canal…..all that’s missing are the alligators swimming by! We’ll keep watching for those! Rick took these guys there and expected to be there most of the day in order to finish what he wanted done. They were done before lunchtime! The whole team will return there tomorrow to start framing walls for the house.
Tonight is our night off and we’ll be traveling north to New Orleans for the evening. We’ll walk through the French Quarter, have dinner at The Gumbo Shop and then finish the evening out at Café DuMonde with coffee and beignets!! Our friend, Russell Drewery is joining us for the evening. Russell is a former member of HRBC and made the first trip to Port Sulphur with us back in April of 2007. Since then, he moved to New Orleans where he works as a cameraman for one of the local news channels there. We’re always glad to see Russell again and catch up with all that is going on with him.
Sorry….the internet was down at the church!
Just to catch you up since we last blogged……. Tuesday night, we were just getting ready to fill our plates with the spaghetti dinner we had prepared, and there was a knock on the kitchen door. There were some kind folks from the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Belle Chasse that had brought dinner for our team and the other team. We quickly decided that our spaghetti would keep until the next night……Crawfish Etouffee would not!! You would have thought they were feeding an army there was so much food. Let see…..there was salad, red beans and rice, shrimp fettuccini, grilled chicken, bread, cookies and of course, the Crawfish Etouffee! Delicious! This is a ministry that this church started sometime last year, because this is not the first time we have benefitted from their culinary specialties!! What a blessing they were to us. They stayed and visited with everyone while we ate and were all ready to share their stories about life before, during and after Katrina and answer any questions we might have.
Wednesday, we were fortunate to return to the church from working just a little early. We ran into our old friends, Paul and Carolyn Sylve and their daughter, JeanMarie. We ended up going with them out on the bayou to see their new house that has been built for them by the Mennonites out of Pennsylvania. All that remains to be done is for the power to be turned on and then the HVAC needs to hooked up. SO close and yet so far!! Carolyn was so proud to show us her beautiful bathroom. Home Depot made a mistake and sent a jetted tub instead of just a regular garden tub….by the time they discovered the wrong tub had been sent, they said “Never mind…just keep it!” Carol can’t wait to soak in that wonderful, big tub!
On our way back to the church from the bayou, we took a little detour down Diamond Road, so that we could see Miss Leona Bartholemew’s completed house. This is the house that our youth team framed last summer. It’s taken this long to get her in the house! Her house was just dedicated last week and she was able to move in. When we pulled in the drive, she was standing out on her front porch (the little trailer she was living in is gone!). Don and Laura got out of the car and told her who they were and she immediately invited us in to see her house! What a joy and she is soooo proud of her house. She remembered our youth and adults and just kept saying again how the Lord was going to bless us for all we did for her. He most certainly already has!!
