Thanksgiving break!

Because Costa Rica is a little far to fly to for Thanksgiving, my amazing roommate invited me to her house for the six day break. We left Wheaton at 8:40 Tuesday morning (yes, we may have skipped our classes) and arrived in Kansas City at 4:30. Megan and I drove with another girl on our hall, Holly, her brother, and two other guys. I'm also really good friends with Holly, so the plan was for me to stay with Megan until Thursday afternoon, and then go to Holly's house for the remainder of break.

However, this morning I woke up with the chills, a tight chest, coughing, sore throat, and a fever. Not the most fun way to spend Thanksgiving Day. However, I am so grateful that I am at a home instead of a dorm while being sick. I'm also extremely grateful for Megan's family. I basically have a small pharmacy on my bedside table, as well as hot tea, and a delicious looking breakfast that I wasn't able to eat.

Yesterday was also a lot of fun. Megan's family has three horses, so we went riding for a few hours yesterday with Maddi, Megan's sister, and two of their guy friends, Zach and Jeremy. That afternoon, I baked my family's traditional corn casserole while Megan learned how to make stuffing. After they came out of the oven looking delicious, Megan and I went to a shopping center and looked around for a bit ( I got some cute gloves and a shirt!), and then went to Blue Chip Cookie, a store that sells ice cream and cookies. It was delicious =) We then went to a party for one of Megan's friends and I got to meet a lot of them. Actually, one fifth of the party attendees were Wheaties that I knew, so it was fun. We finished off the night with a few hours in the hot tub-- it felt so good!

Wheaton A-Quad

I am currently sitting in the Chicago O’Hare airport waiting for my flight home to North Carolina for fall break. It’s hard to believe that I’m already done with a quarter of my freshman year—the weeks go by so fast! I am officially done with A-Quad and my first two classes- Intro to Music and Intro to Spiritual Formation. Next Quad, I will continue with Biology and Chemistry, as well as Bible and Theology (BITH) and Wellness. In the past eight weeks I have:

· Gone to Chicago twice

· Hosted a friend from Costa Rica

· Gone to a friend’s house for the weekend

· Been raided by our brother floor

· Raided our brother and sister floors

I first went to Chicago with my Big Sib group- a group of 7 freshmen led by two sophomores during orientation. We went to Millennium Park, saw the Bean, and went to Pizano's pizza for deep dish pizza--delicious! When we got off the train back in Wheaton, upperclassmen were waiting with water balloons. Luckily, I was able to make it back to my room with minor water damage.

A few weeks later, Megan and I went with Matthew and a few of his friends to the Chicago Jazz Festival in Millennium Park. The music was awesome, and I was able to review it for a music assignment at the same time!

Morgan Sharpe, a friend from Costa Rica who now lives in Nicaragua, is a junior in high school and was checking out Wheaton in September. Megan and I hosted her in our dorm room for the night, showed her around a bit, and basically told her why she needed to come to Wheaton. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture with Morgan, but here is a picture of my room.

Jesse, one of the girls in my Passage group, invited me and another girl in our group to come to her house for the weekend a couple weeks ago. She only lives about an hour away, so we took the train to Chicago, and then another train into Lake Forest, where she lives. It was so nice to get off campus and be in a home again, even though her parents weren’t there. We made cookies ( although we liked the dough better!), watched movies, and Jesse showed us around her little town. It was a lot like Matthews, NC only bigger—so cute!

A raid is an event that each floor is required to do at least once a semester. There are two types of raids: silent and loud. A silent raid is performed by sneaking into your brother/sister floor, and decorating it while everybody is asleep. A loud raid is one in which you develop a theme and go all out in dressing up and decorating. Between 12 and 12:30 in the morning, the whole floor that is raiding runs screaming down the halls and banging on the doors of the brother and/or sister floor(s) that are being raided. Ideally, you have no idea you’re being raided, but sometimes people tell which is no fun. Our brother floor (4 East) loud raided us first three weeks ago. Their theme was church history, which was a lot funnier than it sounds, trust me. Our theme was Veggie Tales! We dressed up as little kids or VeggieTales characters, and decorated the large gathering room with scribbled Veggie Tales coloring pages. Because Big Idea and Veggie Tales were recently sold to another company, our whole theme was based on a made-up organization called S.T.A.R.V.E.—Students Take Action Regarding Vegetable Endangerment. We had everything from VeggieTales trivia to Silly Songs with Larry interpretive dancing. It was a lot of fun, and I think our brother and sister floor really enjoyed it!

This past week I had 2 midterms, and I have one this coming Friday, but hopefully after that my life will be less hectic. This past week was National Depression Awareness Week. To raise awareness, there was a booth down in the Beamer Center (Student Center) that had stress survival kits that you could make. They were also giving out BioDots-- a dot that changes colors like a mood ring to tell you how stressed (black) or relaxed (purple/blue) you are. As you can see, I was not exactly feeling relaxed as I was studying for my music exam.

Hope you all are doing well!

3:30 AM + Fire Alarm = A bad way to start the morning

As most of you probably know even though I haven't updated in a while, I am currently at Wheaton College! I got here last Thursday after spending the previous 18 days at Wheaton Passage- a trip for incoming freshman. That deserves a whole other post, but I wanted to write about the fun (not) experience we had this morning.
I had gone to bed at about 12:30 and was dead asleep when the blaring fire alarm went off at 3:30 am. Our RA had warned us that Fischer (my dorm) fire alarms are very sensitive so we end up having a lot of evacuations due to little things like steam coming from the shower. Anyway, Megan, my roommate, and I threw on jackets and headed downstairs to the main floor. It was pouring rain, but luckily my suitemate, Julie, had told us to grab an umbrella so we stayed pretty dry unlike everybody else who only had jackets on. Fischer has 5 floors of people, so hundreds of us were outside in the rain being herded to the SRC (Sports and Recreation Center). Typically we just stand outside for about 15 minutes and then go back in, but we noticed a fire truck and a few police cars so we were pretty sure it wasn't just another drill. As we waited in the SRC Gym, we had to make sure our roommate and suitemates were in the gym too and hadn't been left behind. We waited for 30 minutes before we were allowed to go back to bed-- by this time it was 4:00 am. As we were walking back we could see smoke still coming out of Fischer on the left side. We weren't told what had happened until this morning when we all got an email. Apparently the steam valve on the water heater in the boiler room blew off, releasing billows of steam. There was so much steam that even the fire department thought it was smoke from a fire.
I'm sure that we'll enjoy stuff like this even more when it's 10 degrees outside and snowing!

Daily Happenings

The last two weeks have been pretty much the same in regards to what I usually do during the week. Just in case you wanted to know, my week typically looks like this:

Monday- Breakfast at 6:30 AM with teams, unload the food shipment for the week, do odd jobs/office work/ work in the warehouse, eat lunch, work in the warehouse, take off at about 4:00 PM to go to the gym, eat dinner with the teams at 6:30 PM, hang out with them after the evening program

Tuesday- Sleep in! Catch up on email and just chill, leave at about 1:00 PM to go to the gym, go to staff meeting at 3:00PM, eat and hang out with teams

Wednesday- Breakfast at 6:30 with teams, work in the warehouse, lunch, work in the warehouse, leave at 4:00ish for the gym, eat dinner with the teams at 6:30 PM and hang out with them after the evening program. I love the program this night because teams share what they've experienced so far since they've come.

Thursday- Breakfast at 6:30 with teams, go out with a team to the city all day, block party (community outreach) from 5:30-7:30 at one of the worksites in the city

Friday- Breakfast at 6:30 with teams, debrief teams, work in the warehouse til lunch, done for the week!

Saturday- Day off! Unless a team comes in...

Sunday- Church, meet and greet incoming teams, finalize details for the week

Last Saturday, for the fourth, I went with the Lewis Fam to one of their friend's houses that was having a birthday party for their daughter/ Fourth of July party. About 6 families came, and we enjoyed swimming, jumping on the trampoline, eating some amazing food, and just being with each other from 4-9. On the drive home we were able to enjoy some fireworks, and then we arrived home to find the Lewis's neighbors were shooting some off as well. We ended up staying up til 10:30 enjoying the show they put on right in front of us!

I have loved getting to know all the teams that have come through, but this past week was probably my favorite. The team that came in was from Maryland, and was the only team we had that week whereas we usually have at least 2 teams. Although they had 38 people, I got to know most of them really well because I didn't have to worry about spreading my time between teams. By the end of the week I was totally exhausted because I ended up playing games and hanging out every night until after 10 PM, but it was definitely worth it. Because teams have a half day of work on Friday, they invited us to come to dinner with them in the city. We went to a place called Mulate's, a restaurant that is set up as a long hall and has dancing every night. Katie and I shared red beans and rice and corn and shrimp chowder--it was delicious!

CAC Costa Rica Mission Trip!

I haven't written in forever, so this post and my next few may be a little long!

I left New Orleans on June 18th, and flew to Charlotte to spend the night. The next day I left with 50 other teens and leaders from Church at Charlotte and headed to Costa Rica! I was originally asked to come as a leader, but I ended up being just another one of the youth. We arrived on the 19th and drove 3 hours to Ciudad Quesada in the San Carlos region where we worked for the remainder of the week.

On Saturday morning, we headed to the church we were parterned with and then split into groups going door to door, asking youth around the community to come to the worship time we were having that night. The church we were working with just moved to a different building after being kicked out of their previous building, so the main goal of our week was to raise awareness of the church and what they're about. Unfortunately, there weren't too many youth around, so after about 45 minutes, we headed to a soccer field where we played against some Ticos (Costa Ricans). Most of our girls didn't play, but there were some kids at the field, and we played a mini soccer game with them-- they were still better than us! That afternoon, we went to a different soccer field, but it started to pour (it IS rainy season!) so we ended up just playing group games in a little pavillion and at the church. Saturday night, we had a worhip time with bands from 3 or 4 different churches. That night was one of my favorites because the songs we sang were able to be sung in both Spanish and English. It was so cool to see everybody worshipping the same God in different languages. The only downside to the night was that we didn't eat until 9:00, so we were all a little bit hungry.

We went to church on Sunday which was a lot like the night before in regards to worship. I was able to meet a few of the Ticas who came, including the wife of one of our translators. She was so sweet and invited us to come to her house anytime. She had an adorable daughter named Valerie who distracted quite a lot of us during the service with her cute smile and babbling. We ate around 1:00 and just hung around the church playing games during the afternoon. One of the things our youth group is good at is keeping occupied during periods of waiting by playing group games like "WAH!" and Signs. The outreach activity we had planned for Sunday was a Battle of the Bands, and it was supposed to start at 4 in the afternoon-- that definitely was not set according to Tico time. I left at 4:45 and no one had even showed up at the church yet =). One of the girls on our team, Brittany, got sick, and had to go home to NC. Because she couldn't get a flight until the next day, she and I were driven by George (a translator) 2.5 hours to my house to spend the night since it is much closer to the airport. It was good to see my mom and brother again (Anna was at a friend's house and my dad was already in the States), and Brittany and I had fun talking on the trip back and getting to know each other better.

I wasn't able to get back to San Carlos until about 4:00 PM on Monday because I hitched a ride with one of our Tica friends, Ana, whose husband was helping facilitate our trip. After a quick cafecito (afternoon coffee time!), Tony (Ana's husband) took me to where one of our groups was working-- a small elemantary school. The school director had asked us to sand the rust off some rafters and repaint them-- very dusty work! We were supposed to have a movie night at the church starting at 6, but no one showed up so we simply headed back to the hotel for dinner. Another one of my favorite things about the trip was the debriefing time we had every night after showers. Each group shared about what they had done during the day, showed some pictures, and told about any God sightings they had experienced. One of our teams was working at a special needs school, one was fixing up and repainting a park, and our team was at the elementary school. Each team was also able to visit a nearby orphanage and just love on the kids there.

On Tuesday we finished sanding, and we were able to paint the rafters by lunchtime! After lunch at the church, we went to the orphanage and played with the kids there all afternoon. I expected a run down building filled with kids, but instead we arrived at a small building with a beautiful outdoor playground and a huge toy room with only 12 kids. 2 of the kids were teeny babies, one was a year old, one was 2 years old, and the rest were between 3 and 8 years old. They LOVED our cameras and didn't want to give them back =) When we got back to the hotel, we found out that the outreach at the church (game night) was again canceled because of low attendance. After showers and dinner, however, Cali, one of the Tico leaders of the trip, called and told us that there were 15 people at the church! 20 of us volunteered to go, and we had a ton of fun playing jumprope and double dutch with the few Ticos that were there, as well as some Taps and Wah!

On Wendesday morning, we headed back to the school and very quickly sanded and repainted a whole different set of rafters. It was a little different because the teachers were having teacher enrichment day, so there weren't many kids at the school, only ones who knew we were working and who wanted to see us. As were packing up to leave for lunch, the director asked us to come into the dining hall. She thanked us multiple times for coming, and offered us traditional pico de gallo, a tortilla filled with a potato mixture, sweet plaintains, and some horchata to drink. Horchata, as someone described it, is like the milk leftover after you eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch. We asked her if there was anything else we could do at the school since we had the whole afternoon open, and she said that we could paint the dining hall and kitchen. So, after lunch and armed with rollers and paintbrushes, we tackled the rooms and were able to finish them by 4:00ish. As we were painting, some kids were having band class (the only class that was held that day), and the band director invited us to come to his band practice that afternoon at the local high school. We told him we'd love to, and started washing out the paintbrushes and rollers we had used. The director again told us she would like to meet with us, so right before we left we went to her office. She came out and thanked us with tears in her eyes, saying she had never seen anybody voluntarily come from so far away to help their small, poor school. She then proceded to give us beautiful bookmarks, asking us to remember her and the school everytime we used them. She was so nice, and continued to thank us until we left. When we arrived at the high school, there were only 8 people from the band present, but they played for us until we had to leave. They were amazing and so nice! After dinner and debriefing, our whole team headed to an indoor soccer stadium that we were told was a popular hang out place on Wednesday night. Teams of 6 were formed, and we had a tournament with the Ticos who were there. My team lost our first game and was eliminated, but it was a lot of fun! My friend Hannah and I noticed a young Tica girl sitting by herself, so we went over and started to talk to her. Her friend came over as well and we learned that their names were Gretchel and Francis. They were so much fun to talk to, and they just babbled on about where they lived and where we lived, where they went to school and how many siblings they had. Then, out of the blue, they asked us to sing! Hannah and I sang "Lean on Me" and they loved it! They sang us a song in Spanish and then asked us to sing "Lean on Me" twice more. We asked them to teach us a song, and somehow we figured out that we all knew "Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" in our own languages. They taught us how to sing it in Spanish, and we taught them to sing it in English. We took a ton of pictures with them and were so sad when we had to leave.

Thursday was our "Fun Day" and we traveled to town called La Fortuna, about an hour away, where we ziplined, rode horses, and visted an indigenous tribe's village. We were also able to pick up a few souvenirs when we finally ate lunch at 4:30 PM. We headed back to the hotel at 5:30 PM, had dinner and debriefing, and said goodbye to all the Ticos from the church that had come to say goodbye.

We left to back to NC on Friday at 8 AM and made good time to the airport, arriving at about 11:00 AM. I got to see my mom, brother, and sister there as well because they had all of our passports for safekeeping. We finally got back to Charlotte at 9:15 PM, and my dad was there to meet me along with half of Church at Charlotte.

All in all it was a great trip. I feel like we made a tangible impact in the San Carlos community, and it was so much fun to go on a trip with some of my best friends. Most of all, God worked through us and showed people that we were different because we were living for Him. Doors have been opened that future teams can now walk through and carry on the work that we have started!

New Friends and Goodbyes

On Thursday, Allison and I were able to go out with a team to their work site to work alongside them for the day. We ended up working at Miss Ruby Greene's house with part of the team from Columbus, Ohio. The house is a duplex, so Miss Ruby is going to live on one side while her brother is going to live on the other. I worked with Allison and two guys from the team, Kyle and Josh, to put up the last little bit of drywall. We ended up having to take down 2 of the 3 pieces we put up so that we could fix them, but it looked great by the time we were finally done!
One of the things teams are encouraged to do is to talk to people walking by and not just focus on physical labor. There is an elementary school just up the street from Miss Ruby's house that the team had discovered and visited the previous day, so we went there for about 2 hours to play with the kids during their recess.
Every Thursday, we have a block party near teams' worksites. We give out free hot dogs and drinks and invite people to come throughout the week.The party went from 5:30 to 7:30 and was held on a median not too far from our work site. A lot of people came, and we gave a ton of piggy back rides to kids before the party was over. We got back to Trinity Church at about 8:00, but there was a memorial service going on so we headed to Walmart and hung out at the McDonalds there until a little after 9.

Yesterday, I had breakfast at church so that I could sit in on the team debriefings held at 7:00AM. Afterwards, we said goodbye to all the teams, and I cleaned the warehouse for the rest of the morning. I didn't do too much in the afternoon, but I made myself a stuffed bell pepper for dinner which was DELICIOUS and went on a run. I plan on joining a gym when I get back from Costa Rica because it is so hot here!

Today we went to Fountainbleu State Park which is about 15 minutes away. The park costs a dollar for entry, but it is gorgeous and they made a beach off Lake Ponchatrain. The water was really warm, and shallow because of multiple sandbars. I am sunburned on my shoulders and back, but we had a lot of fun and it felt great in today's 95 degree weather!

♫ Here comes the sun ♫

I'm sorry to say that Kara did not win her game last night, but they did very well and all got second place trophies. Kara got an amazing triple at one point, and it was definitely a fun game to watch. The girls on the other team were like giants compared to our girls, even though they are all supposed to be 7 or 8... oh well!
Today I arrived at the church at about 8:45 and got there in time to see Mr. Lewis and Mr. John (Horst) get a trailer up on a trailer bed so that they could move it to the other side of the warehouse. After that, some guys from the team and I started digging a trench for the gutter pipes to drain into. About 5 minutes into digging, I snapped a shovel head right off. It was a pretty old shovel (obviously), but I traded jobs with another guy who was moving bricks from one place to another. The men wanted to move another trailer too, so a guy named Matt and I moved random stuff like a toilet, a basketball hoop backboard, scrap metal, and wood away so that a bulldozer could come and pull the trailer away. It was really hot today, so we were all sweting like crazy. Luckily, Allison and I helped in Trinity Cares (the free store) again which is inside and airconditioned. We see what needs to be restocked, go get it from one of two sheds, and stock it in the store. As we were working, Mr. Lewis came and told me that I was on pool duty this afternoon--a tough job =) I made the kids lunch and we headed to the pool for about 3 hours. Right now they're playing happily with legos, and I'm waiting for Mr. Lewis to call and tell me the plan for tonight. Hopefully we'll go to the church for dinner and I'll stay for the program tonight since teams are going to be sharing about what they've done so far.
Tomorrow, Allison and I are going out to work with one of the teams and then going to the block party that all the teams put on together for outreach. It should be fun!

Crazy week!

I know I haven't posted in forever and I'm really sorry! This past week has been pretty busy with work and activities with the Lewis Family. I'll just give you a brief, or not so brief, overview of what I've done this past week:



Wednesday- I met with Katie, my boss, and Allison at a cute little restaurant called The Cheesesteak Bistro. Katie gave us an explanation of our jobs this summer, and afterwards we went back to the church so that she could tell us some other information. One of my jobs is to meet and greet the teams when they come in and give them a tour of the church while explaining the rules and sleeping arrangements. Katie walked us around the church and showed us what our tours should look like. Allison and I did a little bit of office work, and then I headed home at about five o'clock. Almost as soon as I got home, we headed out again to go crabbing! First, we went to Fairview National Park-very prettty!- to the day use area where there is a little stream that connects to a bigger lake. Mrs. Lewis had bought turkey necks as well as a crab net, but we decided that the crab net would probably get caught on sticks in the water. To my surprise, Mrs. Lewis just tied a neck to a string for each of the kids, and they threw them in the water while holding the other end of the string. I had never heard of this method, called "hand crabbing", and I was very doubtful that it would work. We sat there for about 15 minutes without even a nibble, and were about to give up when Caleb called "I got one!". I went over and sure enough there was a crab! Unfortunately we didn't catch that one, but Kara caught one, and then another, and then another. Eventually we ended up with five crabs and were getting the hang of it. That was also when Kara screamed that there was an alligator in the water not too far away from us. When he disappeared underwater, we decided it was time to leave. We headed to Madisonville, to the boat dock place we had previously visited, and caught 2 more big crabs and a lot of smaller ones that we released. As we were about to leave, Kara spotted a snake under the dock. It was latched onto a turkey neck tied to someone's string and wouldn't let go! A boy pulled up the string and whammed it on the head with a net, and it swam away pretty fast. My mom had told us there were free root beer floats at Sonic, so we went there before heading home to cook the crabs. They were actually pretty good!

Thursday- Emily and I drove up to the church and we worked in the warehouse with Vaughn and Allison all day. We hung a ton of drywall and did a lot of it by ourselves! Kara and Caleb had games at the same time and they both won.

Friday- Mrs. Lewis left to go to a wedding in PA and then to a church planting school in Minnesota, so the kids came with me and Mr. Lewis to the church. We didn't do too much because it had rained and was really muddy, but Emily and I ran to Lowes to get some string line, and went home to get a pump so that we could get rid of some standing water outside of the warehouse. After lunch, we went to a house owned by a woman named Ms. Rose. She works in the free store, and needs help fixing up her new house before she can move in. We peeled wallpaper for almost 2 hours using sponges and vinegar water to saturate the paper before peeling it. It was suprisingly fun and we hope to go back to work on it again this week. After dinner, we bought two half gallons of ice cream, stuck it in a cooler, and went down to the lakefront. We scooped it onto cones and sat on the wall overlooking Lake Ponchatrain. There was a man playing violin, and we listened as we watched the gorgeous sunset. After we had finished, we played a little bit of frisbee and catch before heading home.

Saturday- The Lewis's neighborhood had a neighborhood yard sale, and the kids wanted to sell juice and brownies. Unfortunately, there weren't any yard sales close to their house, so the goodies didn't sell very well. They still had fun though, and Emily found a bike at one yard sale. Kara had an end-of-season tournament game, and they won 19-18! That meant she would play on Monday night as well. Caleb's team also won their game 25-24. At about 3:30, the Mr. Lewis took the kids to a party they had been invited to, and I stayed home to get caught up on email. I ended up talking to my grandma, Merrimom, for 2 hours which was fun. After that I read emails, went on a run, and hopped in the shower before they even got home. There was a team arriving at 10:30 PM, and Allison and I were supposed to meet them and briefly skim over the rules so that they could go to bed. Another team had arrived at 4 in the afternoon, so they were already asleep by the time that the team arrived at 11PM. We ended up having to stay to answer a bunch of questions, so I didn't get home until 12:10 AM.

Sunday- I was definitely tired when I woke up, but we went to church at 9 AM. During the 11 o'clock service, I helped in the nursery and got to hold a 5 month old who went to sleep in my arms. A team was supposed to arrive at 2 in the afternoon, so I went to Allison's house for lunch since she lives only 5 minutes away. After a delicious lunch of blueberry pancakes, we headed back to the church to find that the team had already come in. It was just a group of 3 older men who had been here before, so it was okay. Our last team finally came in at 3:20, and then we dealt with waiver complications. Each team is supposed to have a waiver for each member of the team. If they don't, and the member is underage, we have to call their parents and send them the form so that they can sign it and send it back in. We dealt with that for most of the afternoon, but the teams were great sports about it. Allison and I grabbed pizza at youth group before joining the teams for orientation. I didn't get home until almost 10 o'clock, and went to bed shortly after I got back.

Monday- Katie had told Allison and me that it was good to come for breakfast with the teams on the first day because they have no clue what they are going to be doing, and still have a lot of questions. After they left for the day, we did a little bit of office work and also helped in the free store (Trinity Cares) for an hour. After lunch, we worked in the warehouse and hung more drywall. We are almost done with the celings, and have started on the walls. Three people from a team were there, so it was fun to talk to them and get to know them a little bit. Kara's semi-final game was at 7:00, so Allison and I rushed over there after dinner with the teams and arrived about halfway through. The Horsts had come to cheer on Kara as well. It was a great game! I never played softball, but it's so much fun to watch these girls play! It was a very close game and the teams were evenly matched. At the bottom of the 5th, Kara's team was in the outfield. Kara was on 1st base and caught a pop fly to get a second out, and on the next hit, she got a girl out at first and won the game 12-10! It was amazing, and definitely intense. The Horsts came back to the house with us for an ice cream celebration, and then the kids went to bed so that Kara could rest up for the championship game today!

Today- I stayed at home with the kids and Mr. Lewis headed out for meetings all day. We haven't done too much, but we got caught up on the laundry, played with legos, and have started a new puzzle. Kara's championship game is tonight at 5:45!

Rainy Day

Yesterday, Emily and I were put straight to work in the warehouse by Mr. Lewis. Our goal for the day was to empty a 40-ft. trailer so that it could be towed away the following day. Before we could empty the trailer, we had to organize the warehouse. Vaughn and Allison arrived about 10 minutes after we did, and soon the warehouse was organized as much as it could be. The trailer held a variety of things like paint leftover from homes that have been worked on, insulation, batteries, solid wood doors. We started with the 1-gallon paint cans, and finished those off pretty quickly, but then we discovered the 5-gallon paint cans. There were TONS of them, and most of them were full to the brim. We eventually worked out a system of loading them into a wagon. wheeling the wagon to the warehouse, lifting the buckets on the pallet jack, and finally unloading them again where we wanted to put them. After lunch, we continued moving the various objects in the trailer until there were only the heavier things left. Mr. Lewis and Mr. Horst helped us with those, and eventually we emptied it out! Emily took some before and after pictures, so I'll try to get those from her later. The first picture to the right is the "burn pile" that we formed from trash in and around the trailer. As you can see from the smoke, everything that we burned was perfectly fine for the environment. The second and third pictures are of me and Allison in the clean skid loader. Unfortunately, It poured yesterday afternoon, and all that red dirt you see is now on the skid loader again. Oh well!

Certified Caulker

My day began at 6:45 this morning when I woke up so that I could be ready to go at 7:30. Mr. Lewis wanted me to come to his CR meetings with him so that I could get to know what EFCA Crisis Response really is about. We met with the rest of the CR staff and discussed how things are progressing where CR has responded to natural disasters. These places include Iowa, North Dakota, Texas, China, and many others. We then talked about church planting and how we might improve our approach. This was very interesting to me because I didn't realize that CR goes into communities affected by disaster and not only evangelizes them, but also encourages and nurtures their spiritual growth long after the disaster is forgotten.
While at the meeting, I met Mrs. Dorinda's son, Vaughn. He is the same age as me and is going to be on the CR staff as the tool manager. About mid morning, we took a break and Mr. Lewis told Vaughn and me that we could be excused to go do work out near the warehouse. I ended up scrubbing and cleaning a skid loader-- a bulldozer-type machine. It was caked with mud and grease, and I probably worked on it for about 2 hours. It looked beautiful when I was done with it though! Mr. Lewis is going to show me how to drive it tomorrow, as well as how to use the pallet jack.
After lunch, I helped Mrs. Dorinda with copying work before heading back out to the warehouse to hang drywall. We hung two big pieces in the ceiling, and I also learned how to caulk! I am starting to feel like part of the team, and I am excited to see what God has me learn this summer!

I really haven't been home all day until now (9:20 PM), so I am exhausted! The team who left yesterday used all of our cars to get to the airport, so we had to drive to the airport with enough drivers to drive all the cars back. We recruited the pastor and his wife to help us, so after church and a quick lunch at Subway, we were off! To get from Mandeville to New Orleans, you have to drive across a very long bridge called the Causeway. The Causeway is the longest bridge in the US (your trivia fact for the day!) and is approximately 30 miles long. It's so long that you can't see the opposite shore at all for a couple miles. We were told that there were 4 cars that we needed to drive back to the church, so Mrs. Lewis drove us to the airport in her minivan and dropped us off at the parking garage. We had to wander the garage to locate all the cars, but we were given faulty info, and there turned out to be only 3 cars. Luckily, I had waited for Mr. Lewis so that I could follow him home, so he hitched a ride with me. All of the CR cars aren't in the best of shape, but Eeyore, the car I was driving, is probably one of the worst. We just discovered that the driver's window doesn't go up, which is not fun when you're on the Causeway. Because of the window, I now have a sunburn on only my left arm. In addition to that, the center rearview mirror was attached to the window with duct tape and had fallen down, and the back windshield wiper hangs down like a tail-- hence the name Eeyore.
Kara had all-star softball tryouts today at 5:30, so we went to those, ate a quick dinner, and went out to a boat landing type place where people go crabbing and fishing. We arrived just as the sun was setting, and it was gorgeous against the marshlands. Emily took some pictures, and Caleb fished for a bit while the rest of us just relaxed.
Tomorrow I am going to the office with Mr. Lewis for some meetings, and then I am going to hang some sheetrock in the new Crisis Response building! CR is building the warehouse so that they will have their own space for offices, storage, and hosting teams instead of having to share with the church. I will try to take some pictures if I can remember to take my camera!

EFCA Crisis Response

I've told a lot of people that I'm doing hurricane relief this summer to simplify what I'll be doing, but I am actually hosting the teams that come here to do demolition and construction. EFCA Crisis Response offers free labor to homeowners whose homes have been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The homeowners are responsible for buying the materials for their new home, or paying back Crisis Response (CR) after we buy the materials. Teams come from all over America to provide this free labor. The team we had this past week only had 40 people, but there can be over a hundred people in a team. From what I understand, I will be responsible for welcoming the teams, telling them what they'll be doing, giving them instructions, cooking their meals, and setting up/tearing down their living quarters. I will be working under a woman named Katie Hooks, and with another girl my age named Allison Horst. I am meeting with Katie and Allison next Wednesday to define our jobs and responsibilities.
Today I arrived at the church at 10:00 AM to help the team who was leaving. The church sanctuary is used as the men's sleeping area as well as the dining room. We had to vacuum the entire sanctuary and set up all the chairs so that they would be ready for church tomorrow. Afterwards, we tidied up the youth room, where the women sleep, and picked up scattered trash and abandoned clothing. We were done a little after 12:00PM, so I drove back home and just chilled with the kids all afternoon! Actually, Kara and Caleb worked hard to make us dinner-- pizza quesadillas, fruit salad, and coffee ice cream blended with thin mint cookies. It was delicious!

I have arrived!

I am finally here in New Orleans, Louisiana to work with EFCA Katrina Relief! Those beautiful signs above were made by the Lewis kids. The Lewis family is my host family this summer and has 3 kids: Emily who is 12, Kara who is 8, and Caleb who is 7. I am actually in Mandeville, Louisiana, a town not too far from New Orleans. I got here yesterday at 4:45 PM, and was promptly picked up by Denise Lewis, my "mom" for the summer. I flew from Charlotte to Chicago to New Orleans, not exactly a direct route, but the flights were fine and my layover wasn't too long. After I was picked up, we went to Kara's softball game and Caleb's baseball game. After the games I pretty much just fell into bed after unpacking.

This morning I got to sleep in until 8, and then slowly woke up with coffee and banana bread. My official duties for Crisis Response don't really start for another week, but Mrs. Lewis called the office to see if there was anything I could do today to just help out and get the feel for things. I ended up driving to Trinity Church with a beautifully drawn map by Mrs. Lewis, where the Katrina Relief offices are, and helping a woman named Dorinda Bogran with copy and filing work. She gave me a tour of the church and the offices and rooms that Crisis Response uses throughout the week when teams are present.

At about 2:30 I drove back to the Lewis' house and met them at their neighborhood pool for a refreshing swim. It was about 90 degrees here today, so the water felt wonderful! The team who is currently staying at Trinity wanted to thank the Lewises and another family for cooking for them throughout the week, so they made us a wonderful gourmet meal of steak, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, strawberry-peach pie, and a delicious rice crispie-chocolate-peanut butter-log dessert. The Lewises went on to a homeschool graduation and reception, but I decided to head home since I didn't know anybody graduating. Crisis Response has multiple vehicles for taking out teams, but the little white pick-up had a flat tire, so I ended up driving a huge red suburban home. I've just been relaxing and catching up on email since then.

That's pretty much all that's happened so far... I will try to update as much as I can!