P.S.

Two things I forgot:
1. Do please check up on the Lagniappe Blog, Sam works really hard keeping it up to date, and it's really cool. Check out the early posts from when Lagniappe Presbyterian Church was Jean Larroux on a laptop in a lawn chair outside his mother's FEMA trailer. It's amazing to see how God has worked to grow this church.
2. New Pictures are up on Picasa. Captions are coming soon.

How Firm A Foundation...

Hey y'all I'm still alive, though this blog is looking pretty dead at the moment. At the moment, I am not going to try and catch you up on the past 10 days, as that would take longer than I have here to post. So in the interest of keeping this blog alive, I;m just talking about the past few days.
This week has been filled with hard work, dirt, and concrete but most importantly: Fun! We are preparing for RYM to bring us 160 kids next week. RYM is Reformed Youth Ministries, which is the High School version of RUF (Reformed University Fellowship), the PCA's (Presbyterian Church in America) college fellowship group. Normally RYM has their big conference in the summer, in Florida, at the beach (like RUF summer con.) but this year they are also sending kids here to the bay. They will work with us during the day and have their own program at night. It should be a really awesome time.
Anyway, to prepare for next week, we have been working feverishly to set the foundations and sub-floors of two new houses so that the RYM kids can help us put up the walls and roofs, and whatever else we can get done in five days. This is very reminiscent of the Blitz Build process we went through with Habitat for Humanity a few weeks ago, and has proven to be one of the most fun and quick ways to frame up a house. By the end of next week, there should be at least the skeleton of a house sitting where Tim and I installed batter boards and string lines on a patch of grass on Monday.
The house I have primarily been working on has come a long way as well. Since Monday, all the post holes have been dug, the posts set and leveled, and today we got all of the concrete poured. This foundation uses big 10"x10" posts, so the holes are 30" square and 3' deep. We had figured that with 21 posts (3 rows of 7) we would need around 20yrds of concrete, but we overcalculated and ended up only using 17yds. Unfortunately concrete can't be re-used once it is in the trucks for a day, so policy is you have to pay for all the concrete you order, even if you don't use it. So that was a bit of a let-down, but this was made up for by the fact that we had a great team helping us pour, and the drivers from Bayou Concrete were phenomenal. On the off chance that Eugene or Sheppard ever run across this blog, thanks a million guys^^ So until the concrete drys and settles, we are leaving that house alone, and concentrating our efforts on the other house for next week, one that is 8' off the ground, which means the posts are something like 5.5' in the ground(Ever tried leveling posts so high that you have to hold them in place with a forklift? No? Neither have I, but I've seen it done and been amazed^^) Well, I am really tired from today, and am going to go take a nap, because we are going to see "The Dark Knight" at midnight in Gulfport. Tomorrow morning will not be pretty unless I get a little shuteye!

Hey, quick update. More to come soon. Didn't post last week due to illness. No worries; I am back in action. New photos are on Picasa. Check them out here.

Blitz

From This: (taken early Monday morning)
To this: (taken Friday afternoon)
(be sure to click on the second photo for a blown-up high-res version.)

We all want to run the race to win. Never giving up or giving in ... Comin at you like a BLITZ!!!!!!!!!!

The title of this post is taken from an old song by the band Audio Adrenaline (with guest stars, the O.C. Supertones^^) it's about a church group ("14 kids in an old church van") on a trip, and its about how crazy life can be when you are on a mission. Thats what this place is going to be like all week. That's right. It's a Blitz Build. We have teamed up with Habitat for Humanity to do this awesome project, and are really excited, though somewhat apprehensive. Starting tomorrow morning at 5:30am, a group of over 200 volunteers is building 7 houses from the subfloor up, in 5 days. We are in for a wild ride. I will be working an extra 3-4 hours every day, getting there before the volunteers and leaving after them. There won't be much time for blogging and talking, but I highly recommend checking out the Lagniappe Church blog (link to the right) as it will be updated throughout with pictures and news about the builds. Please keep me, the other interns and staff, and especially the volunteers in your prayers. The weather looks good, not too much rain, not too hot, but the heat is a big concern, especially when you are working against the clock, and statistically the odds of getting injured on the worksite go up by a sizable amount when doing a blitz build. I'm going to bed, 5am is coming a lot quicker than I think.

Eternal Father Strong to Save...

So, the last post was a bit truncated by the sudden loss of internet coupled with a sudden realization that my concrete was about to arrive. More about that later; first let me finish up with last week. George and I managed to get a whole load of projects done and for the last two days we were awarded for our work on the Jensen house by hearing the news that the house had passed its final inspection and that the homeowner had been given a certificate of occupancy. It was a good end to a week of lots of tiny little jobs. Saturday rolled around, and it was time for the KABOOM playground build. In little more than 6 hours, 600+ volunteers helped turn the defunct MLK park into a neat playground/basketball court for the youth of Bay Saint Louis. Check out the Lagniappe Church Blog (link in the right column) for more pictures and a link to the Good Morning America segment about the build. After the build we blew off steam at the Mockingbird with a little party thrown by Americorps, complete with free pizza (or "free-za" as James has dubbed it) and drinks, a nice little get together that happened to coincide with "Second Saturday" a monthly event in town where shops stay open late and offer free food and wine to customers. It provides a nice forum in which one can get to know both other residents and local business-owners, as well enjoy some good food and usually good live music. This time it was a country/bluegrass band from Starkville called "Nash Street". They have a really good sound, which you can check out here. I honestly have no idea what I did on Sunday, but I'm sure it wasn't too much.

I have been hesitant to write about this week, just because I haven't quite figured out how I want to describe it yet. It had a very different feel to it in a lot of ways than the previous weeks. It was odd in that I got closer to the group I was with than I had with any other group, but I still had this inexplicable sort of animosity towards them as well. I'm unsure if this had more to do with them or me... The group was from near Atlanta, and was basically a middle/high school youth group. They were nice kids, and we had a lot of fun on the first day digging holes for the foundation. The problem came when we began working with the 8x8 wooden posts that needed to go in the middle of the holes, be perfectly on the lines and be perfectly plumb in all directions. Once this is achieved they have to be braced in this position until they can be concreted. This is not terribly difficult work, merely very precise work that is difficult to do correctly with a group of middle schoolers. Luckily they took a halfday on Wednesday, so the Intern Dream Team came in and slammed out the rest of the work that afternoon. The next day we were told our concrete would be arriving at 11, but the concrete company failed to tell us that we needed to call and confirm our delivery 30mins beforehand. And thats where I started the last entry.

Our concrete guys arrived right on schedule at 3:30 with more than enough in the trucks to do our job. We were almost entirely finished when our first truck carrying around 7 yards ran dry and so we went through and topped everything off with truck number two using only about a yard of its 6. The drivers were great: nice guys, competent drivers, and helped us figure out the easiest way to do things. We ended up working pretty late that day, but it wasn't a big deal, as we had spent most of the day hanging out and playing games.
Friday was pretty lax, my team was assigned to clean the big room in the church, and I went with Thomas to finish up some framing on the big Seymour house. Clyde wasn't there to oversee anything because he had flown up to his parent's 60th wedding anniversary, so it was just the two of us with the team. We got a bunch done, and since it was the team's last day, they took us out to eat at Los Tres Amigos. (A restaurant right down the street from our job site.)

Sleep, Birthday, Beer, Generosity, KABOOM!!!, and other unimportant events...

So, some blanket statements for the start of this blog.
1)I'm sorry I haven't updated this in a while, I have been very busy doing all sorts of work, and every moment that I haven't been working has been spent either sleeping or blowing off steam.
2)Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday greetings and gifts; it was a little overwhelming to see all of the wall posts on Facebook, and the packages in the mail. Thanks especially to Uncle Ken and Aunt Debbie who sent me a birthday cake!! Unfortunately the USPS didn't take great care of it and it was basically mush by the time it made it down here, but we had a blast dipping pieces of cake into the frosting and eating it with a spoon^^ We will still occasionally have a chuckle about the "birthday cake from Delaware"
3. A big thank you to everyone who contributed money to make this summer possible for me; when I first got here, I had not yet reached my goal, but I have now actually exceeded it and am very grateful for all your support.

So it's been a good while since I posted, I know. So I will try to play catch-up a bit. So, birthday first: my birthday was not a terribly exciting day. I was working all last week with a team from First Presbyterian of Jackson, Mississippi. George Holman (our cook Elizabeth's father) and I were working to fix up several houses Lagniappe built and make sure they were ready for final inspection. This involved connecting sewage drainage lines, and well pump supply lines, as well as getting power run and connected to the grinder pumps and well pumps. Cosmetic jobs like removing dripped paint, attaching outlet/switch plates, moving improperly installed mirrors etc. On Tuesday, however, we were working on fixing a plumbing leak that was ruining the ceiling drywall and rewiring the grinder pump and well pump on another house, one of the first homes Lagniappe had built. Jordan told me all the details of what needed to be done and as we were about to pull out yelled after me, "By the way, the mother and one of her children is deaf!" We actually didn't have too much trouble communicating with the homeowner, as her other children were basically able to translate for us, and by the end of the second day we got to see the photo album of the history of the house, what it looked like before and after Katrina, and throughout the various stages of building. Jordan's awesome birthday present to me was not telling me that the "house on stilts" was only 3 feet off of the concrete slab, which was wet from HVAC condensation and covered in some godforsaken mix of algae, water, bugs, spiderwebs, and who knows what else. After a few hours of hornet attacks, fishing, stapling, and splicing wires, I finally emerged from the slimy pit, got cleaned up and ate, and went out with several of the other over-21 interns to a little bar down the road called Clyde's. Thomas tried to be nice and buy me my first legal beer, but the bartender wouldn't stand for it and saved that honor for herself^^ We were all pretty tired and didn't really stay all that long, but I'm sure I would never have heard the end of it from some if I didn't go out on my birthday. In a funny twist, I haven't been carded yet at any store or restaurant. (Last night at dinner, Thomas and I had beer with our BBQ, and the waiter looks at us and says "Are y'all old enough?")Well, the only reason this post happened, was that our concrete truck was delayed by several hours. With nothing for my team to do, we returned to Lagniappe to chill until the concrete came at 3:30, and I set out to blog. I had planned to post this before I left to finish up that job, but of course the internet connection decided to cut out just then and erased half of my post.

If I come up with a witty title for this entry, it will be a miracle...

So another Lagniappe week is coming to an end. I've done a lot this week, especially as I was working all day yesterday as well. On Thursday I was assigned to work with Clyde and the British group instead of working with Dick and the rest of the interns. I did, however, join that crew for lunch, as we had been invited by a friend of Dick and Maggie's to lunch up in Kiln, MS (for all those who aren't familiar with southern Mississippi, this town is called "The Kill" by everyone around, don't ask me why) We had some of the best roast beef that has ever seen the inside of a po-boy roll, and an invitation to come back anytime. On the way up to "the Kill" Dick asked me if I knew why I had been assigned to work with Clyde, and after I had jokingly guessed that it was because he wanted me as far away from his worksite as possible, he told me it was because Jordan had asked him specifically who would be able to handle the job. I guess I must be doing something right. Throughout the day working with the English, I got to know them pretty well and went out to the Mockingbird (yes, it pretty much IS the hang-out of Bay St. Louis, and with Lazy Magnolia beer (from the Kill) on tap, and live music on Thursday nights, it pretty much IS the nightlife as well^^ check out the website at www.mockingbirdcafe.com) I was back on the Moran house on Friday, and although almost 40 minutes late, Mike showed up with about 50 pounds of crawfish for us for lunch, which we tore through a bit more than half of before throwing in the towel. ("we" at this point was not just the 5 construction interns and Dick, we had about 12 volunteers from Germantown Academy there along with the homeowner (Mike) and several of his friends. We wrapped up what we were doing and looked back to realize what we had accomplished: taken the house from being empty of anything but framing, electric wire and plumbing and insulated and drywalled pretty much the entire house. We realized of course that a professional team would have done the same work in a day or two, whereas we took a week and a half and aren't quite done, but most of us started out the process as complete amateurs and by Friday we were teaching others faster than Dick taught us.
Saturday rolled around, and so did we, in this: A Ford F-350 Flatbed "dualie" truck
James and I were moving things off a construction site that was almost finished and getting them squared away in the tool crib. After lunch we ran out of things to do, so we decided to go around and check on a group building a fence around the property that will eventually house the new Bay St. Louis Little Theater. The property has a very interesting history which is explained quite well on their website. They invited us to come back on the 14th to a fundraising picnic, which promises to not only be a good time with good food, but a neat cultural event as well, as a group of students will be performing the Tennessee Williams one-act play, "This Property is Condemned", the movie version (starring Robert Redford and Natalie Wood, as well as Charles Bronson and Robert Blake) of which was filmed in Bay St. Louis.
As you can see, a few changes have been made to the blog, font, color scheme, etc. This, like everything around me, is a work-in-progress and will continue to change as the summer goes on. New features include: the ability to post comments without a Google, OpenID, or LiveJournal account. If you would like to comment on a post, you just hit the comment link below the post, type your comment in the box and select "Name/URL" as your Identity. You will also need to pass the robot test (i.e. type the word that you see in the box) but any and everyone should be able to comment now. Please do comment to let me know who is reading this, what I can do to make the blog better, and tell me how awesome I am ... well everything except that last part^^ Also, I have hyperlinked interesting article pertaining to things mentioned in the post so that you all know what I am talking about.

"Until I Have No More To Give, I Will Give No Less"

The photo above is home sweet home, the 'tern bunkhouse. The title of the blog is from a song that was being played and sung by a group of students behind me, by the way.

For More Photos check out my Photo Album online here:

Lagniappe Redux

Good things come to those who wait^^

Hey y'all,
sorry for the wait, things have been busy the past few days, and I have been recovering from a rather nasty sunburn that has left me unwilling to sit with my back against a chair for very long.
It's hard for me to believe that I've already been here for 8 days now. I'll try to make blog postings more regular, otherwise i just wont get to it. Wednesday and Sunday nights are probably the best. Except for the weekend where we did pretty much nothing except lay on the beach in 87 degree weather and hear people talk about how cool it was and contemplate why we came here this summer, we have been working on insulating and drywalling a house out near Bayou Lacroix. We have had an excellent teacher, Dick Wynz, who not only taught us what we were doing, but has shared with us a wealth of information and interesting stories from his past, not just in construction, but in world travel, in his work as a teacher in a correctional facility in Wisconsin. Most importantly though, he has gotten us ready to lead our own teams in the drywalling process. We are also very lucky and have had a friendly relationship with the home-owner, who graciously allowed us to use the restroom in his trailer, surprised us with a case of cold soda the other day, and is having us over for a crawfish boil on saturday before Dick heads home.
(Insert noise of a very long passing train here)
Trains go through Bay St. Louis 4-5 times a day, blaring their horns at every intersection, as per Mississippi law. While this may seem annoying and inconvenient, the train is actually a great symbol of restoration for Bay St. Louis, as the railroad bridge and the Highway 90 bridge over the Bay of St. Louis were both destroyed in Katrina. The fact that train is going through reminds people that the town is coming back together, that it has come a long was since that fateful day.
Yesterday I started chauffeuring a group from England over to their work site (as they had no vehicle, duh^^) That's been fun, although it took a while for them to warm up to me. It was one of those situations where I would ask a question, get a one-word response and then they would instantly go back to talking to each other. Well, some of the other interns have found my hiding spot here on the porch of the Mockingbird Cafe, so I am going to go be social. Look forward to another post by Sunday at the latest, (and if I don't post send me angry e-mails so I feel bad about it^^)

Time flies...

Wow, So I've already been here for two whole days, and my how the time has flown. It might sound cliche, but I am 100% convinced that we will look back on this time, of still being in what Jean calls "chamber of commerce mode", just taking it in, only really focused on the positive, and we will miss it. When everything isn't fresh and new and exciting, it will be more of a challenge. Anyway, as far as the last two days are concerned, both of our mornings mainly consisted of going to meetings and getting an idea of the way things run here for staff, from the way we check-in teams, to how we go about participating in the restoration, not only of the Gulf Coast, but of ourselves, each other and the teams and homeowners with whom we interact. We've had some free time to go to WalMart and get those forgotten supplies, or to head down to the beach for a quick swim, or deplete the value of our Mockingbird Cafe gift cards. The interns have really bonded already as a group, which is good because we are going to soon be split up into out various departments and will be starting with job-specific training, and we will be thankful for the time we got to spend and the friendships we forged with those with whom we won't be working all day.
Enough about all this talk of the future, we did some real work today! In the midst of re-arranging the Lagniappe apparel stockpiles, we cleaned out all of the stuff stored away on top of the offices and the lounge. After uncovering Jean's half rat-eaten library of books, a few mounted deer heads and stuffed turkey, we were sweaty and covered in dust and rat poo, and we took some time off for beach, naps, or fixing bicycles... wondering which one I chose, eh? Well, I actually did end up at the beach for a little while with one of the volunteers, Wolfgang, who is actually from Bavaria, and we had a nice chat about all manner of things,in German, of course^^ It was nice to speak some German again in a non-academic environment. He shared with me that he had come to faith through the writings of Francis Schaeffer, which is compelling me to read some of his stuff, though I don't know when I will get to it. It made me think a lot about the power of words, and the way the expression of truth and conviction in writing can affect people in the deepest ways. That's not something I am hoping for this blog, just something to ponder.

25 hours of pure bliss....

So, I'm here, finally, in Bay St. Louis. It took a grand total of 28hours from the time I left my house, to the time I pulled into Lagniappe. Good ol' Greyhound actually stayed pretty much on schedule, though there were moments that were less than enjoyable, (e.g. trying to fall asleep with a wannabe gangsta rapper taking up 75% of the seat we were sharing, while listening to this other guy regale his crew with tales of nefarious deeds done by his gang (for anyone who cares who, they fly a blue flag)) All in all a good trip, met some interesting folk, got a few hours of fitful sleep, etc. When I got into Lagniappe, I grabbed some chow, and actually put together my bike as the first order of business. I am now the proud owner of functioning, fixed-gear street machine, which needs only a few slight tweaks to be a really great ride. i'll post a picture later both here and on fixedgeargallery.com. Well I have to be ready to go at 7:30 tomorrow, so I'm going to sign off.

Here goes nothin'

Well, it's been a long long time since I have added my thoughts to the "blagosphere"; something like 73 weeks since the last time I updated my LiveJournal... anyway, this should be a new start for me, as any people have asked to be kept in the know about this summer, with keeping some account of my life available for perusal. So I'm heading to Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi on Saturday, using a veritable old US institution: Geryhound, 80$ and 25 hours later, I should be...well 20 miles from my destination. It should be an interesting trip, but before I embark on this journey, I should probably get prepared so it's back to the grind of unpacking, cleaning, and repacking for me.