On the Road Again

This morning, I am off to take Becca to camp.  This will be her third year at the small, beautiful camp in the mountains.  She is so excited and she said she can't wait to get into God's word. I love, love, love that kid.While in Joplin, she jumped down from the bed of a truck and landed on a rake.  Her ankle has been hurting her ever since.  I took her to Urgi Care yesterday.  They did an xray and, thank goodness, it is just a bad sprain.  The bad news is, she will do camp with crutches and a brace on her foot. It will be a long, long drive.  Another day of 6-8 hours on the road, but it's worth it.

I wanted to touch on Monday of last week, in Joplin.  We got up early and headed over to our job site.  Simply getting up and out is no simple task when you are a group of 35.  Everyone was fresh and excited. That became a little different as the week progressed, but on Monday we were all ready to "get er done". 

Once at the site, our leader discovered that the person who was arranging our work,  thought we were coming this week and not last week.  This presented a problem.  There was a scramble to find work. The house where we met had some simple jobs to do.  What was thought to take three or four hours only took us about and hour. We cleaned out the garage and picked up trash around the house.  We then took a tour of Joplin.  We saw how the high school was completely demolished.  We got our first taste of the devastation of this tornado.  We drove around the neighborhoods where there was a common spray painted message on the homes.  After the storm, the home owners spray painted the number of people inside and if they were alive. This was done so that emergency responders would know who to help first. We saw a grocery store that was completely leveled and we learned about the man inside who had stepped outside and had to be pulled back inside as the storm hit. 

We had lunch in a park and then went back to the site.  By this time, work had been arranged.  A group of girls, myself and the other female leader were assigned to stay at the house where we sanded dry wall and painted the inside of a garage.  The rest of our group went to another house where they did landscaping and began work on a retaining wall.  I can only speak for the group I was in, but I know the group that worked on the landscaping and wall were changed that day. 

As they worked a 14 year old girl, with a huge scar on her leg, passed out water and Popsicles. The heat was our biggest enemy.  It was never below 100 degrees while we worked and we never had rain.
The girl with the water shared her story. She and her family were in their car when the tornado came. They were sucked up in the beast. They were picked up and put down a half a mile away.  The windows of their car were blown out, but when they were set down, everyone was alive and unharmed except the girl. A piece of metal had lodged itself into her leg and it cut her leg to the bone. She is so very lucky her leg was not amputated.  All communication was down, so her parents could not call 911. They drove to the hospital only to discover that the hospital had been damaged and was not available.  They drove to another hospital to discover that it was full and not able to take any more patients.  They drove to a third hospital where she was seen, sent to ICU and spent the next month recovering. She is not bitter or hung up on this tragedy. Instead, she gave water and shared her story to our students.  She changed their lives through hers. She later told us that she had something to give us. When she heard about the fire in our city, she began collecting items for the fire fighters.  We left with several banana boxes filled with items for those who are fighting our fires. Yes, the work was very hard on this site, but God was alive and well in the lives of our students on this day.

As to my site, Sheila and I were able to motivate young women to work.  Really work. I learned how to sand sheet rock and I learned so much about painting. I connected with these girls and I think they connected with me. We were so tired from a job well done.

Our luxurious bathroom.

There used to be a house here.

Worn out kids. This was a lunch break.

My magnificent painting team.

A house we worked on.

Our team getting ready for work on the first day.

First day, first job.

We went back to the church where we prepared dinner. A group was taken about ten miles away to the local YMCA, for showers. When we gathered together for dinner, our students ate like they had never eaten before.  They had worked up an appetite like crazy.  We ate and then reflected on our day. We went to bed and prepared for yet another day of working and being blessed like crazy.