Sunday - October 11

We arrived home safe and sound.  Tired, and yet, exhilarated.  Spent, and yet, full.  Our week of helping to Restore Hope in New Orleans was everything we had hoped for and a whole lot more.  Thanks be to God!  And thanks to you for your prayer support!

Until our next Mission Work Week, "Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez" and "God Bless."

Saturday - October 10

Our final Team Bloggers are Christine Negroni and Steve Hart . . .

We raised the roof trusses on our house on Ferry Place early Saturday afternoon, an event evocative of the barn raising scene in the Harrison Ford movie, Witness.  This literally capped our fifth and final day of work with RHINO. While Jeremy, the project manager directed, laborers on the ground did the hard and heavy work of moving these large wooden triangles into position.

We are not the only folks working on the house this week. Alongside us was Norma Hirsch, a recent college graduate who has traveled to New Orleans to spend two months with Habitat for Humanity. Today around 10 young adult members of St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church were on the site. All week we worked with about a half dozen people who will one day live in these homes.

Days ago many of us were strangers. Now we share bedrooms and port-a-potties. We bicker and we joke. We argue and look out for each other. We annoy each other and then pray together.

For the most part we are neophytes though Bill Langley, Bill Fulton and John Harter have been here before.  Langley’s experience and interest in construction work was evident. (Who else would choose to spend a birthday doing this?) Bill Fulton’s insider knowledge of New Orleans and John’s patient hand on the steering wheel kept us safe and on time as we traveled around the city each day.

Claudia Fulton, was also a veteran of previous work trips, but never before had her sewing skills been leveraged on the circular saw. Within minutes of arriving each morning she was covered up to her rhinestone cap in sawdust.  After exhibiting great aptitude and little fear, Debbie Soffayer was climbing extension ladders and swinging hammers and Nicol Rupolo capably took charge of projects while surprising everyone with her own brand of New Orleans iced coffee.

Maureen Peterson confessed she didn’t feel up to the task of driving nails her first day on the site, but by day two she had her gloved hands in even the most challenging tasks. Her friend Chris Harter was also indefatigable.  While the two worked up a sweat they entertained us with a hilarious story of sweating it out in a more glamorous spa destination.

No one expects to get a word in edgewise or get out of a conversation without a good-hearted argument when Michele Kamenetzky, Juanita Williams and Christine Negroni are around. And since the house wrapping, sheath nailing  and so many other projects needed bosses, the three of us were happy to make sure we were there to fill that role.

Doug Abel was the yang to our yin, a calm, easygoing presence and a relentless worker on his first NOLA work trip. He more than kept up with his experienced NOLA roommates, Steve Hart and David Van Dyke who, in addition to house building, were also making sure that each important step along the way was photographed. And of course, at the end of the day, it was David who had to make sure we knew the next day’s schedule where we would find our next meal and kept us focused, through the fatigue, the heat and the frustrations. 

That a cooperative and effective work force has emerged from this ad hoc construction crew seems close to miraculous.  We came to help build a home, a step along the way to building a community. But in the process we have become community. 

Debbie hard at work on the blog the morning after the Quarter.

Thank you for your prayers.

They have kept us strong.

Be sure to stop back tomorrow for the final post from Louisiana Mission Work Week 8.

Friday - October 9

Our Team Blogger is Debbie Soffayer . . .

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning here in Ferry Place.  This is actually Friday’s blog being written after a late night of dining and viewing the sights in the French Quarter last night.  Of course, we were all under the care and guidance of our shepherd, David!

Faith, hope, and love . . . it’s all around this city, this work sight, and all the wonderful people we’ve met down here.   Besides learning how to use a hammer and climb a really high ladder,  I’ve experienced the answer to a question we’ve talked about in Bible study so many times . . . Where is God when tragedy strikes?  Well, He’s in the generosity of people like Jim and his wife, Bonnie, who have cooked wonderful meals for us and countless other groups who’ve come to help rebuild New Orleans.  God is in the hearts of others, who are on an individual personal journey to simply serve and help out. . . Norma from Brooklyn 

and Ricky (our “ladder angel”),

 and Ben, from California . . . they’ve come to this worksite without knowing a single person beforehand!    Every time we turn around, someone asks “are you ok?” or “do you need help?”    AND, down here, EVERYONE says “Good morning” or “Good afternoon” without looking at each other suspiciously (like we crusty Yankees!)    God is everywhere.    Our RHINO leaders, Jeremy

 and Kate, 

are faces of patience, endurance, and more patience!   Then there’s Lucy Ann, who delivered our mid afternoon iced coffee treat the other day

 . . . she called it “jet fuel” . . . she not only helps with mission work here, but she also helps out in Cuba.  I could go on and on, but will end with one of our Morning Watch themes . . . “All Beings Are Interconnected”.   While we each came here for our own reasons, our connection to each other was already there.   To serve and help with faith, hope and love.

Peace.  

(P.S. – Joe, I won’t bring home all the homeless cats we saw in the square last night . . . but Steve did take a picture for me.)

Thursday - October 8

Today’s Team Bloggers are John Harter, Claudia and Bill Fulton . . .

It was 80 degrees before the sun rose with a forecast for 91 actual – with a heat index feeling like 105 – we were all grateful for God’s beautiful shielding cumulus clouds and the gentle breeze which mitigated this challenging environment.  Could this really be the middle of October?  And while it would clearly be too hot to work around our own house, we gladly sweated together to continue our mission together here.  We are a remarkable community working together – asking one another for help as we go about our various tasks – freely helping each other – caring for one another as heat appears to be getting the better of one or other – and bandaging the small injuries of fingers banged with hammers.  We truly have seemed to have found our work rhythm accomplishing a good deal.

Claudia was today’s specialist cutter at Claudia’s Chop Shop.  Everybody on site measured their individual cutting needs, wrote the specs on a scrap piece of wood and took the order to Claudia who delivered accurate service with tools she didn’t even know she was skilled with yesterday.

Mid morning we were blessed by an Angelic member of St Charles Ave Presbyterian Women, Laura St Clair, bearing gallons of iced coffee to the parched.   

Presbyterian jewelry was also available for sale from the trunk of the car, with all proceeds benefiting RHINO’s work here on Ferry Place. 

Jeremy – our Habitat for Humanity site manager – 

should be known as St. Jeremy as he directs this Stamford crew of well-meaning but relatively unskilled construction workers.  He patiently teaches us new skills we need and encourages ALL to try new tasks.  In fact, today he shuffled the assignments so that we didn’t get to use the skills we learned yesterday.  He is remarkably skilled as a general contractor, but even more blessed as a caring leader with more patience than we can comprehend.  Thank you, God, for our Jeremy.

We continued to wrap our entire house with custom cut pieces of 4 x 8 foot pressed boards with just about everybody up on ladders for long periods pounding nails.  The second floor walls were all completed yesterday and everything was top-tied together today.  Construction standards are particularly rigorous as this little house needs to be able to withstand the next hurricane with potential 150 mph winds.

Upon returning to the hotel after a full days work, there was an incident involving one of our male congregants getting ice at the ice machine and one of our female congregants changing into her bathing suit with the room door open across from the ice machine.  There was considerable shrieking – but our male member was without his glasses and had to be told what he missed later that evening.

Tonight, the church’s hospitality continued with a very nice dinner at the home of one of their fine young couples, Mike and Mary Dawn Pugh.  We were joined by the Associate Minister, Kelly Hofstetter and her husband Matt.  

As is not unusual here, we traveled East to get to a part of New Orleans called the “West Bank” of the Mississippi River.  Doug Abel had complained that he had never seen the Mississippi after several trips to New Orleans.  So, tonight we went across one of the bridges to give him a view of the “Big Muddy” at last.  Now that the day has ended, we are looking forward to another hot time of productive work on “our” house tomorrow.  We ask that you keep your prayers and comments coming.

Yes, it was hot in New Orleans today.