DStilled

Paradise Lost

November 28, 2005 on 11:49 am | In Blog |

I duly apologize for the delay in updates, noting that nearly an entire month has passed since my last. Thanksgiving has come and gone. I hope none of you were trampled in the shopping madness of Black Friday. Pictures ARE FINALLY UP!!

My birthday on November the 5th was good. I woke up late, worked for several hours on school stuff, and a dozen or so friends took me out to eat. We were going to go to Vivace, this amazing Italian place, but since they were full (and didn’t take reservations) we went to Golden Corral. I ate my money’s worth and then some.

The next weekend I got a call from Amy saying she was accompanying a friend from KY to NJ and would be passing a mere 30 minutes from UVa. She asked if she could hang out Friday night through Sunday afternoon since she wasn’t really invited to the wedding, only as a riding buddy for much of the road trip. I said yes and picked her up to make it just in time to the musical play I had tickets for “Call of the Wild.” It was cool and I knew a couple of the people in it. The next day I was in charge of the Agape concessions stand for the football game and I had my ten women helpers. Yep, I was the ONLY guy. Sunday we went to church, I got to show her more of the campus, we exchanged bday presents, and then took her back to meet her friend for back home.

That next week I was in charge of leading a nearly 3 hour seminar discussion on a feminism book called, “For Her Own Good.” It was a historical “documentary” of the last two centuries’ advice to women coming from Western male experts. I didn’t have to lead all on my own but my partner was much quieter of a discussion leader than I. It was definitely a heated class and one girl left in the middle of it all. I can’t assume she left because of something in the class but it couldn’t have made it easier to stay. I love leading and when it’s an intellectual dialogue, it empowers me.

On November the 17th right before midnight, 20 of us gathered all of our travel and work things into five cars and set off toward the Gulf of Mexico. I drove until about 9:15 am and then took my turn trying to sleep. My car is a manual so I had all the young people who were capable of driving a stick. I say young people cuz we had a rental and only the 21 or older people could drive it.

The trip started off as cool as it ended. Todd was in one of the on grounds stored getting poptarts for us and he mentioned something about going down to Mississippi. A first year named Robert was in there at the time and quickly turned around to ask Todd where in Mississippi. Neither of them knowing each other, this was an odd exchange. Todd told him Pass Christian which was uncannyingly close to where Robert was from. He wasn’t going to be able to go home for T-giving this year and was pretty bummed out about it. But he asked Todd if there was room for one more in the car. He got put in my car (albeit a smaller car than a couple of the others) because thanks to my mom’s teaching, I was the only one who could put his stuff in a trunk. We didn’t really know him from Adam but this type of working was undoubtedly God showing up and orchestrating events before the trip even began!

If any of you have seen the devastating pictures or movies then you know how bad it is down on the Gulf. But working/living there day in and day out was completely different. The storm surge on this town, one of the lowest on the coast, was 35 ft! Miles inland we were working on houses that had water three feet into their attics. Of the 6800 people that lived in Pass Christian originally, only about 1000 live there now, and most of them in tents or long-awaited FEMA trailers. There are no businesses anymore for anyone to work at. We slept in a big tent on a church’s parking lot (which wasn’t good when it rained one night). There were many volunteers there the weekend before t-giving, and like us many of them were from college campuses. Asbury College (where Amy goes, right outside of Lex, Ky) sent nearly 80 people for the whole week, as in THROUGH t-giving. There is a place called God’s Katrina Kitchen that we ate at and feeds upward to a 1000 meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner they serve joyously knowing they are making a difference. The meals are free to anyone who wants them and that included us volunteers. Every night they have a worship service for about an hour after dinner.

We gutted houses and removed walls, floors, ceilings, storage, broken asphalt, and trees. The first day I was separated from the UVa people and sent off with a small group of big and knowledgeable Arizona guys who were quite good at the deconstruction jobs. I was sore even after that first day cuz they pushed me harder than I was anticipating. The next day I joined my group after “church” for raking debris and then some asphalt removal (using basically just our hands). On Monday, we went to this nice lady’s house who had 48 trees down on her lot. She had paid to have some them removed and cleaned up but there was still $30k worth of damage after insurance. I spent nearly the entire day removing large portions of fallen trees, and chain sawing as much as I could after that. We came no where near finishing that job but we did put a large dent into it.

The rest of the UVa group left that night and I stayed until Wed afternoon. By going straight to T-Giving in TN and KY with my family, I ended up saving over 1100 miles of driving. Tuesday I joined Amy’s group for gutting of another house. The walls were glued on plywood and the inner studs weren’t connected to the ceiling or floor. We did that all day and Amy’s group spent two more days on it. On Wednesday, I worked at God’s Kitchen for the morning and then ate my lunch.

Lunch was amazing not because of the hot dog, salad, and jello pudding. But because after I prayed, a Hispanic-looking person sat down very near me. And we were the only two people at this long table. We got to talking about what each of us were doing in this destroyed town, family, and backgrounds. His name is Manuel, he is a plumber and electrician for the FEMA trailers, and although he was born in Mexico, he spent most of his life in Houston. He now lives in Atlanta with his wife and three kids, who he was driving through the night to see and the Thursday night to come back. It was mainly small get to know you type talk and I got to tell him a little about my work in Guatemala. As he was getting up to leave I said, “God bless and have a safe trip.” He sat back down and started to talk a little more about the insecurity of his job, how he was worried about his kids losing their heritage, and he kept asking me when I would be coming back. I have spent a good deal of time with Latinos and even though Manuel was restrained, I could tell he was very worried and anxious about his family’s future and his job. So I prayed with him. For a few minutes I talked to God about Manuel and asked Him to look after him, but most of all to change his heart and give him a peace in all things. Manuel looked up at me with eyes that might have teared in a different circumstance and said, “You have no idea how much that means to me.” And I don’t. I don’t know what God is doing in his life and heart. I just know that He allowed me to take a small part in this person’s life. Manuel left, I finished my food, and then went to Tennessee. Our Lord Jesus is great and greatly to be praised!

Thanksgiving was wonderful. I was able to see most of my mom’s side of the family, hang out with friends and family I hadn’t seen since summer, and go to the library for some research I’m doing for a paper on horse farms in Lexington. On the way home last night I listened to the Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and the first part of the Horse and His Boy all on dramatized CD. It was great and I nearly cried thrice during The LW&W. But now I am back to reality at UVa and that includes writing nearly 40 pages in the next week and a half on top of studying for tests. Yea, back to the grand grind.