Beecher and Sheet Rock!!

What an incredible week I am having here in New Orleans! So many things have happened this week that I am going to try hard to remember them all so that I can capture the memories. The week started with a few of us - those who have been here before - deciding to go to worship at Beecher church. What an incredibly spiritual feeling their worship service had in spite of the lack of a finished building. Beecher church is STILL not rebuild following the devestation of Hurricane Katrina. The building has been gutted for some time now. I believe that it was fully gutted during my first trip back in February of 2007. They have been worshipping in that space for about that time. The sermon that morning seemed specifically directed to the congregation. It was based off of Deuteronomy 1:6 when the Israelites were tested by God and they bickered so much amounst themselves that they eventually... The pastor (who I believe was a guest speaker) drew the comparison between a baby only drinking milk and a person growing up and wanting and needed meat. That it was a natural progression, one eventually had to stop solely drinking milk so that they could taste the meat. She then brought that to the people of Beecher. That it was time for them to eat the meat! That maybe not everyone would come along for the ride, but that they needed to start moving forward! That you can’t stand still in life, you have to keep moving forward. She basically told Beecher to cut the crap and it is time for them to take charge of their building and their congregation! That they needed to stop standing still and move forward - whatever that may bring. There was a reason that the 6 of us were at the worship service. It really got me upset to think that a sister congregation of ours STILL more than 3 years after Katrina is not put back together. A congregation that appears to WANT to be put back together. Sue (a member of our group) said it best. She said that she is ashamed of the UCC for letting one of our family members down. There is no reason for that! The other good thing that seemed to come out of our service at Beecher is that we were told that we could send money directly to Beecher and that they would be able to get it and use it (hopefully) for their rebuilding efforts. Whenever I start to get too angry about the situation at Beecher I remember their alter prayer. We all went up to the alter and stood in a large circle holding hands and Brenda Square very loudly proclaiming thanks to God for all sorts of things! The spirit was most definitely alive and well in the members of the Beecher Memorial congregation! It just goes to prove that the building really does not make the church that the people make the church. The building just provides a facility to do God’s work.

Wednesday I joined the construction crew. They were busy working on Miss Lillian’s house on Munster Rd in Marearo, LA in St. Bernard parish. We are working the the people of the St. Bernard Project and let by two people working for Americore (Becca and Katie). I learned today that Americore provides a lot of the employees for the St. Bernard Project work sites. A St. Bernard Project guy named Mike came to our work site today and we learned that only 6% of their budget goes towards administration costs! Which means that 94% goes towards the costs of rebuilding people’s homes! Which I think is absolutely fabulous!! Anyway - getting slightly off topic... The task for the week has been sheet rocking the entire house. It consists of 3 bedrooms, a hallway with a closet, a bathroom, a living room/kitchen with a closet, and a family room. I joined the team on Wednesday and Chip, George, and I started on the hallway and then as another group of three volunteers (Dick, his fiance Jane - yes we had lots of fun with Dick and Jane... - and Beth (of no relation to Dick and Jane) we moved on to the living room. We first put up the ceiling and had to cut holes in the sheet rock for the vent and ceiling light fixture. The first piece of ceiling we put up that we had cut broke and landed on my head - Liz got their about 10 seconds too late to help us hold it up! We then measured and measured and measured another piece, cut it, and with a lot more helpers got it up! The amazing part was that both the vent and the light fixture holes were right on! Which was great, since I measured them! We continued working our way on the living room ceiling until we got enough up so that we could start on the walls. We were able to do the left wall until the hallway entrance and the front wall - cutting around the door and big picture window! I left Wednesday achy and tired but so excited that I was able to help someone put there home back together! It was such a good tired and I was pumped to be able to go back for more on Thursday! Thursday we were hoping to finish the living room and kitchen. We had the rest of the ceiling to do and the majority of the walls, including two headers where the kitchen cabinets would be. We started in on the ceilings and had a lot of measuring and cutting that needed to be done. On our last peice of ceiling we measured it, cut it and started to put it up only to realize that it was 10 inches too short! The hole for the light fixture also did not line up. George, Chip, and I decided that it was time for lunch since we had screwed up two measurements! During lunch we saw a truck come with a demo thing on it along with a really large dump truck. We quickly learned that they were going to demo the house diagonally across the street from Miss Lillian’s house. I took a series of pictures that show the house being demolished! It reminded me of an episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition only a house made by Ty and the team was not going to be up in its place this time next week. It was incredible and sad at the same time to see over the span of just 2 hours a house become a slab. I had since learned that that house was not a LLT (Louisiana Land Trust) house and the demo was paid for by FEMA and another house cannot be build on that slab for 100 years! (that was according to the construction guy that Liz talked to this afternoon - gonna have to remember to do some research on that!) Having never done construction in all of the trips that I have taken down here I really wanted to work in someone’s home. I wanted to be able to go back home and tell people that I DID something concrete while I was away. The education peices that I have done in the past were good, but nothing compares to the feeling of looking around that house today and seeing that I was a part of putting that house back together! Now that I have done construction I am not sure that I want to do anything else in future trips! I am so looking forward to tomorrow where I really hope that we can get the living room and kitchen totally sheet rocked and then start in on the ceiling of the family room! It is going to be an early morning (for those of you who know me know I am so NOT a morning person), but I am totally up for the challenge! I have such an incredible team working with me that I am certain that we will be able to reach our goal!!

A tour and a prayer...

Today was quite an eventful day.  I woke up early - for those of you who know me well know that I am so not a morning person!  So waking up early is quite rare!  I got up a full hour before my alarm...  Ah the joys of sleeping in a bunk house.

We started the day with Carolyn's explanation of the different reasons that different parts of New Orleans flooded.  Several of us - upon Carolyn's suggestion last night - decided to go worship at Beecher Memorial church.  So around 10AM Sue, George, Liz, Marilyn, Joan, and I piled into the car and headed over to Beecher.  The service there was so unlike anything I had been to.  Even though it was a UCC Congregational church they way that they approached the worship service was quite different from what I was used to in Bedford and any other church I had been to.  Even though there sanctuary is still not finished - they still don't have sheet rock up - except for a very small area in the front corner - the spirit that is with the people of that congregation is incredible.  They proclaim their faith in such an open way that was a little uncomfortable for me because it is not something that I feel I could do so openly, but it was also very powerful to me.  

The pastor that preached the sermon did an incredible job.  It was based on Deuteronomy 1:6 and she talked about the parallels between the Israelites listening to God and moving forwards with their lives and how Beecher needs to move forward in their journey.  It seemed like it was a kick in the pants type of sermon.  She basically said that they all need to band together and work to move forward and put the church back together - whatever that means.  That you can't be a baby and drink milk all of the time.  You need to eventually grow up and eat meat.  It was like it was a sign for us to be there this morning.  It sounds like Beecher is slowing getting ready to really want to put their building back together.

After church we came back to Good Shepherd and had lunch and did some prep for tomorrow's education program.  Carolyn took us on our tour.  We started at the 17th street canal and wound our way to Musician's village and then to the Brad Pitt houses in the lower 9th.  We then drove down to the bayou and saw her son Ronnie's house.  We got the bayou shortly before sunset.  Standing on Ronnie's porch we could see the sun setting in one direction and the full moon rising in the sky in the other direction.  I so love the bayou.  The peacefulness of the water just brings me great joy!  If it wasn't for the pesky gnats I could have sat out on that porch all night!

Reluctantly left and came back to church for a wonderful dinner and conversations.  Gonna try really hard to get to sleep at a reasonable hour since we have an early early morning tomorrow.  Have to be at the school by 7:30!  Gonna go to the Amistad Research Center with about 20 8th grade students from the Carver elementary school for a program.  Should be an interesting day!