Ash Wednesday

Top: Susan Harris and Kristie Kerr move supplies at their work site. Middle: One of our "cleaning angels," Lori Woodburn, mops the women's dormitory. Bottom: Maria Raleigh blesses the team with morning devotionals.

Donna S. writes:

Thunder and downpour in the night. A bright, beautiful day in the morning.

Lots more progress made at all the job sites. Back at the ranch, a wonderful thing happened. Some angelic volunteers cleaned our dormitory within an inch of its life.

In the evening, we attended Ash Wednesday service at Clanton Chapel, and we were almost the entire congregation. Pastor Kirby Verret, a native Houma, conducted the service, drafting Mark Herron and Kevin Stevenson to play music on their guitars (and asking us to pray God to deliver them a piano player for regular services.)

We sat in a sanctuary that had its roof peeled back by Hurricane Katrina and that had taken on a couple of feet of water during Hurricane Rita. The water stayed for three days before it subsided, and Pastor Kirby said the forecast for the storm to go farther west caught them off guard and left them little time to get to Houma, which was just barely higher ground. They didn’t even have time to lift the chairs in the sanctuary up out of the water.

After that, the recovery process was slow to start, he said. “It wasn’t the government who came in to help,” he said. “If it had not been for the church to come in, things would have been so much worse. Prayers went out and people responded. They set aside what they were doing and responded.”

Pastor Kirby had a prayer for Ash Wednesday.

“There’s so much to be done. The days don’t seem long enough,” he said. “You take distance, you shorten it and you bring people together.”

More personal experiences from the team about how they’re connecting with the community (which, incidentally, is an extremely friendly community):

From Lori Woodburn: On Mardi Gras afternoon, the couple they’re working with spent part of the time in their kitchen slow-dancing to Cajun music. “It was so sweet,” she said. Their work team stood in the living room and applauded.

From Tim and Vickie Wright: When the ice cream truck came through their neighborhood, they bought treats for the little boy at the home they were working at, which brought a smile to his face. They also discovered that the little girls down the street collected aluminum cans for recycling. The next trip back to the work site, they took a bag of cans to them.

From Mark Herron: On Day 1 when the site bosses went out scouting the work, Mark had an impromptu basketball game on a dirt court at the house his crew ended up working at. “I was just trying to relate to him, to break the ice.” Mark shot once and missed. He fed the ball to the little boy, who proceeded to make eight shots in a row.

From Mary Lee: The homeowner at her house is very concerned about how she’s going to find the money to get her home elevated, which is what has happened to many of the houses in this area as the wetlands shrink and the land vanishes. (Pastor Kirby said the original Clanton Chapel church building was located five miles farther south. That area is now water.) Other homes adjacent to the homeowner have not been raised, but this homeowner has been told that she just. “I’m not sure how that gets all sorted out,” Mary said.

From Daryl Siedelmann: The thing that amazes me is how people live in so much water. They’re wonderful people, trusting, even grateful. Not all people are grateful. At the same time, he said, there seems to be a lack of regard for the surroundings. “These folks are really sub-poverty,” he said, adding that there seems to be a lack of coordinated effort to help them, the local recovery center excluded. “The Center here is very coordinated,” he said. They support the volunteers.”

Stay tuned…