It's now Monday evening, following our first day of work with the Grassroots Volunteer Network.  As we were working today, I kept thinking about the Baptist church service we attended yesterday morning.  The people there were so beautiful, so passionate in celebrating their community and God's love for all of us.  We had been invited the previous day by their pastor, who told us we were in for a treat coming to a black church in southern Mississippi, the home of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and other masters of the blues.  The music of his church, he said, is heavily influenced by blues and jazz.  He also told us that the Lord's spirit keeps coming to Biloxi through volunteers like us, that we are providing hope to his hurricane-ravaged community.  He said they feel abandoned by the government and mistreated by the insurance companies, so it is only our presence from the outside world that offers hope.

And I witnessed that hope expressed during the Sunday service.  When the choir sang, the congregation was on its feet, clapping and swaying and singing praises of God.  Brother Arcell led us in a prayer that brought me to tears - it was a loud and forceful prayer of gratitude, thanking God for all that he has provided and for sending volunteers to help in rebuilding.  This from people who have lost so much.  Eleven months after "The Storm," many of their houses are yet to be rebuilt, so they're living in FEMA trailers.  One hundred members of the congregation, about one-third, have moved away permanently.  And their church building is still being repaired.

Pastor Davis preached up a storm.  The sermon was long and rhythmic, with lots of shouting and arm waving, and I loved it.  Maybe I was southern Baptist in a former life.  He preached on the story of Gideon, from the Old Testament Book of Judges, totally unfamiliar to me.  The Israelites have lost their way (again), distracted by the self-centered material world (like us), and forgotten about God and caring for each other.  So God tells Gideon to go to the local heathen idol and "Tear It Down!!"  Just like we have to do now with those things in our life that oppress us and keep us from what's really important. 

"You gotta tear it down!" Pastor Davis challenged, "you hear what I'm saying?" 

"Tear it down!" we shouted. 

"Whatcha gonna do?" 

"Tear it down!" 

"Now turn to your neighbor sitting next to you, and tell them what you're gonna do."

Jerry and I turned to each other: "Tear it down!" 

I was giddy with joy.

Then this morning we are taken to a house near the eastern end of the peninsula that Biloxi occupies.  Katrina put this neighborhood under 30 feet of water.  Most of the houses were gone, leaving only weeds and a crumbling driveway.  But the houses built with bricks, like this one, were decimated only on the inside.  Our job was to remove wooden planks of interior wall, pull up old square nails from the sub-floor, tear out a rotten carport ceiling, and clear off piles of pine limbs and straw that had landed (after floating) on the roof.  Volunteers before us had begun the process of gutting out, and others would come after us to complete the job. 

We were Tearing It Down, alright.  We were getting rid of what had to go, the old moldy decaying stuff that prevents restoration and renewal.  A family of Vietnamese immigrants lived in that house before the Storm.  Before that family could return to Biloxi and live in their own house in their own community, we had to help throw out all that debris.  We left a huge pile in the front yard.

Jeff

A house stands in northwest New Orleans, maybe 20 blocks from Lake Pontchartrain, across the street from the gutted Unitarian Church we had just toured, the water line clearly visible about 8 feet up on the wall/roof.  Located amidst of block after block of deserted houses, this house is different.  Unlike Biloxi, where the houses were demolished, destroyed by the hurricane, these houses were just empty, gutted.  But this particular house was not empty-deserted, but not empty.  Nothing had been touched in this house since the floodwaters receded.  The carport and car were covered with an inch of dried, cracked mud.  A snow shovel and two of the four-legged walker type canes were among the things in the carport.  Were these retirees, recently moved from snow country? I could see into the house through an open door from the carport, mud and rotten drywall everywhere.  A rack of ties, askew on the floor of the dining room, stood out incongruously from the general shambles.  A built-in book case filled the wall in the far corner of the room, still shelved with ruined books.  The destroyed kitchen was visible over a high countertop.  I started to walk through the dining room to the hallway and bedrooms to the left, but quickly retreated when I felt myself becoming congested from mold.  On the front of the house we read a posted letter, stating that the house was not eligible for rebuilding because the framing was not structurally sound and the insulation contained asbestos.  There was a line for signature by the owners-it was blank.

"The Rev" Arsell McGee is a joy-filled older black gentleman, a deacon in the Baptist church, whom we assisted on our first day in Mississippi.  Through the course of the morning we spread about six yards of dirt over the site where his house used to be, where he now wants to plant grass.  The house had disappeared in the hurricane and flood.  Next door was another residence he owned, miraculously still there, and nearing the point where it could be lived in again.  In the meantime, the Rev was living in one of the infamous FEMA trailers parked in his now vacant lot.  While we worked the Rev was off helping a neighbor re-roof.  During our initial conversation just after we arrived, one of us asked the Rev about the large boat on a trailer in his vacant lot.  "That boat," smiled the Rev, "that's a blessing."  And he proceeded to tell us the story.  The boat had finished the storm wedged between two neighbors' houses.  Not knowing what to do, the neighbors told Rev that if he could get it out of there, it was his.  The Rev rented a crane and hoisted the boat onto the much too small trailer that normally carried his 16' fishing boat-the same boat that had miraculously floated around his yard during the storm and flood, bumping up against the closed fence gate where it came to rest when the waters receded.  He bought himself an appropriately sized used trailer for $300, hauled his new boat down to the harbor and made the trailer switch.  Now it sat there with a new owner, The Salty Dog, needing some engine and electrical work, but otherwise seaworthy.  A Blessing.

Bryan

I have taken it upon myself to document our trip with lots of photographs.  If you click on the my photos selection under photos you can view a few of the photographs that I have taken each day.  I have made several albums, one for each day. If you click on an individual photo it will enlarge and will have a caption underneath it.  I have gotten a little behind but I have photgraphs from the first three days posted and will try to post photographs from yesterday sometime tonight.

-Jacq 

Tomorrow is our last day of work, and it's going to be followed up by a shrimp fest, thanks to Bryan. It's been an amazing, educational week, and all you have to do is read people's blog entries to catch up with the details of our days--from attending a Baptist church service, to visiting the two UU churches in New Orleans, to digging and gutting and painting and sweating....

 What I'm seeing, as we search for a full day's work tomorrow, is the complexity of all that a hurricane's aftermath brings. What's valuable work for a volunteer? What's satisfying? What's it mean if we don't get a full day's work? What's it mean to work one day in the hundred year old home of one family in East Biloxi, ripping out walls and wondering if the house will even be able to be saved, then going out to the Biloxian "suburbs," where there are different colors and trims for every room, and we spend our time touching up last patches of paint, feeling a little Martha Stewart-esque? 

 The truth of this hurricane is that it creates such chaos that it's hard to get one's mind around the systems that need to be in place, for systems to be in place, for systems to be in place. There are economic systems, organizational systems, racial relation systems, insurance systems, volunteer systems, on and on and on, that all tie into each other, sometimes creating threads of compassion and progress, sometimes knotting up and creating yet further obstacles to progress. 

So there are days that are frustrating, when we're not ripping apart walls or leveling lawns, or when we're not all able to work together on one site. But I believe with every day, we are learning as a group just how incredibly complex this situation is, that we are only one very small part of a picture that is far too large for any one of us to see in its entirety. I'm extraordinarily grateful for the members of this group who have been willing to share honestly and openly all they have experienced in this journey together. I very much hope members of the UU Church of Davis, and the community of Davis will feel free to ask us questions when we return, that we will be able to share our journey, in words, photographs, and in even in the memories our bodies carry of hammering, prying, painting, shoveling, and hauling. 

 I hope too people will realize there are years and years ahead of this community needing the generous help of strangers. It is indeed a vast, complex situation. And one way to understand that is to come down here and witness. I'm so glad we have this week.

Peace,

Eliza 

Due to limited time and an unreliable internet connection I am still behind on the pictures.  However, I am going to edit and post the remaining days' photographs on Saturday.  So check back Saturday night or Sunday if you would like to see the rest of the photographs.

-Jacq 

These words ring in my ears. Though we heard them only a few times during our visit to the Baptist church, I will not soon forget them. Somehow they fit from the first glimpse through the airplane's window to the tour of New Orleans. Everthing seems so different from my first trip when we came here to swim as children and decades later, a vacation trip with my wife.

The topography was different, but that was due to the whims of nature and somehow it didn't bring a personal hurt with it. What struck me inside was the the difference in the the people.  There were so few...there was so little traffic in the neighborhoods or around the stores or street corners and the broken buildings that no one seemed to be trying to repair. What happened to the city services, staff and equipment that has always been so much a part of community life ?

As the week has progressed, these feelings and questions have faded. Hard work and enough humidity to fog your glasses the moment you walk outside start to melt into an uneven rhythm. Starting a job, finding you don't have all the right tools, and the job is not really defined acturately have become the norm. Complaints don't get voiced because there is no need nor resolution. They disappear when you show up to a house to work and the owner greets you with genuine joy...and gratitude that you are there to help. Even though everyone knows there is so much that needs to be done and so little can be done with hand tools and unskilled labor,everyone smiles and eagerly attackes like oodles and goobs ants at a picnic.. 

 And yeah...at that point ...we are in the "Right House. 

 See you soon, Mike B.