Month: March 2018

Sunday, March 11, 2018

We had storms this morning. There was a tornado warning for the Baker, LA area, where our job site is located. Have not heard of any damage. The area where we are parked was not included in the warning but we did have a thunderstorm warning and there was some nasty lightening and thunder about the time church started at 10:30. We were watching carefully and all our team understands that we can’t stay in our rigs if it gets really bad. By noon the sun was out and it was a beautiful afternoon, short sleeve weather.

We worshiped with the congregation at Francis Asbury this morning – such a sweet, welcoming congregation. We enjoyed our time with them today. The sermon was from John 2:13-16. If you recall this was where Jesus was angry and threw the money changers out of the temple. Pastor David talked about good anger and bad anger, and that even with good anger there can be a significant cost.

Most of us went out to lunch after church to one of the restaurants recommended by our volunteer coordinator, Glenda. This lady knows good restaurants. We have been to two she suggested and both were very good. Today we went to City Cafe and we all enjoyed our food and the service was good too. We had shrimp and grits and it was very, very good. Everyone’s food look really good and there are so many things on the menu we wanted to try that we just may be making a return visit.

After lunch we made a grocery store run to pick up a few things for our meeting tonight, made some brownies, printed out all the necessary paperwork for tonight and relaxed a little.

Our first official team event was our 6:00 meeting tonight. We had the requisite snacks, introductions, and review of project information and a lot of laughing. The laughing tonight was good for us. Sunday’s are hard for us right now and maybe it’s a good thing we will be having 6:00pm meetings for the next three weeks.

Someone asked me about Aunt Helen. From the reports we have gotten she is doing pretty good. She sees the orthopedic doctor tomorrow so we will know more after that.

Please be in prayer for a NOMADS friend, Cindy, who had a traffic accident today pulling her trailer. We understand her truck and trailer were significantly damaged and Cindy required stitches. We understand that Cindy and her dog are okay but that’s all we really know for now.

Tomorrow we start working. Praying we accomplish what God desires.

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Today was a partly cloudy day with some sunshine at times. We had some dark clouds and threats of rain but only got a few sprinkles. They don’t need any more rain in this area. They had some heavy rains early last week and the ground is still saturated. The Mississippi River is in flood stage already and they haven’t got the northern snow melt water yet. Hopefully we can get down to the river tomorrow afternoon and get some pictures. Rita and Dave were down there this afternoon and said it was impressive.

For breakfast today we had a wonderful omelette.  Our construction coordinator’s wife has chickens and he brought us a dozen very fresh eggs.  Thanks, Charles!  Today was official move in day and we now have all six couples and RVs safely in place. It was great to meet the new arrivals and start getting to know them. Always good to get everyone settled in. We also helped unload food for the college kids today, lots of food, and moved in some additional furniture for them as well. We will attend church together in the morning here at Francis Asbury UMC and then have our opening team meeting at 6:00 tomorrow evening. Tonight we are still waiting for the bus load of 50-60 college kids to arrive. Suspect our quiet little parking lot will change drastically in the next 30 minutes. Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Today was another beautiful day in Baton Rouge. Again a little cool in the morning but short sleeves were needed by noon. The azaleas are in full bloom and beautiful. They are having a beautiful spring here. Rita and Dave arrived today and said it was 28 at their house in Hoover this morning. They really enjoyed the warm temperatures this afternoon.

This morning we worked on team paperwork, and then drove over to Baker, LA, about 30-35 minutes away. We saw many homes still boarded up and others that looked abandoned. Remember this flood occurred on August 11, 2016 when 24-36 inches of rain fell as a result of a no-name tropical storm. There is still evidence of the flood all around. There are entire neighborhoods where almost all the homes were flooded and there are small FEMA trailers in almost every yard. Some parishes (counties) had 75% of the homes damaged. The UMC currently has over 300 homes owners fully vetted and waiting for assistance. We will begin working on one of the homes in Baker Monday morning. After 19 months there is just still so much damage. Our home owner, Richard, age 70, had eight feet of water in his home. It was the home he was born in. His parents built the house. The house was condemned and demolished. Richard bought a modular office building and will be making it his home. We will tell you more about this project as time goes on.

After meeting with Richard, the construction superintendent and his assistant at the job site, reviewing some drawings and making plans for Monday, we returned to FRED, had a light lunch and then welcomed Rita and Dave to Baton Rouge. Later in the afternoon, we helped unload more mattresses for the 54 college students staying here at the church who will spend their spring break volunteering here in Baton Rouge. Pastor Laraine came by to say hello to the early arriving team members and we had a really nice visit with her. She is in charge of all the UMC disaster response for the state of Louisiana. We all decided to go to Rice and Roux for dinner tonight. All seven of us enjoyed our dinners and the company was even better. Looking forward to the arrival of the rest of the team tomorrow.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

This morning was quite cool with jackets the dress of the day. It warmed up quickly but with the wind we wore jackets any time we were not working in the sun.

First order of business this morning was a visit to the locally owned doughnut shop, Mary Lee Donuts. It seemed to also be a gathering place for some elderly (considerably older than us) locals. Seemed the bakers knew everyone who came in the door but us. And the other patrons seemed to all know each other. We know why people gather here because the doughnuts were great. We tried the cinnamon roll, apple fritter and blueberry doughnuts. We would purchase them all again. But, there were so many options we might try something different next time.

After breakfast found a weed eater and worked on neatening up the area around where the RVs will be parked. As we were starting on that project we saw a couple walking toward us and realized it was Jo and Mark. There are on our team for next week and came over from New Orleans to scout out their route. It was so great to see them. We visited for a while and then they decided they really didn’t want to stay in New Orleans any longer and went back and packed up and moved to Baton Rouge this afternoon. Fun times!

 

After Jo and Mark headed back to New Orleans we did the grass cutting/trimming and cleaning the area. We also went through the tool room to become familiar with the tools available to us. Then we ran some errands to pick up some supplies and went to lunch at Rice and Roux. Rice and Roux is another locally owned restaurant. They give mission volunteers a 40% discount on their meals. It’s their way of saying thank you to people in town to help their neighbors. Everyone we have met seems very appreciative for the help. We had gumbo and a piece of fried fish for lunch and it was very good. This project is not starting out as a project to lose weight because the ladies from Francis Asbury UMC fed all the volunteers here this week dinner tonight. We didn’t really need another large meal but the ladies were so sweet we couldn’t say know when they came out to the motor home to invite us to join the volunteers working this week. Jo and Mark also joined us. It was a wonderful meal of jambalaya with all the fixings and even better fellowship.

We have an appointment in the morning with the construction coordinator, Charles, to visit our first house tomorrow. Looking forward to that. He was hoping to have materials delivered to our first job site by tomorrow as well. Once again, these people seem to be on top of everything. The conference has over 300 homes of people who have already met all the qualifications for assistance and with the help of UMCOR donations and volunteers like NOMADS, they hope to accomplish a lot over the next few months. There will be 54 college students staying at the church next week and another 64 at another church, so we know they will be really busy next week. After that the NOMADS will basically have the church to ourselves.