More from the mission trip

I don't want to take too much time but I did want to get to the "work" part of our trip to Louisiana. Our group was split up into three work teams, each going to a different house in Lake Charles. These houses were all working with UMCOR to get their homes fixed because they fell through the cracks elsewhere. Two of the homes had recently had their roofs repaired/replaced so we were working on the inside of the homes. The third house, nicknamed "the bad house" had major work to be done, inside and outside, starting with the roof joists. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of that one yet.

We went out to work at 8 am Monday-Thursday and got done around 4:30 or so, went back to the church and took turns taking showers and changing into comfy, hangin' out clothes. Fortunately, unlike the last time I was in LA for a mission trip, there was more than one shower, which made things much more efficitent. We had this nifty trailer, with NEVER ENDING hot water!! It was awesome.

The house I worked on had been worked by another team the week before we were there (actually probably severl teams over the course of several weeks), so we kind of came into the middle of things. There was a lot of taping and mudding of drywall, and eventually painting, in several rooms of the house (with the resident's belongings in piles in the middle of the floor covered with tarps since she had nowhere else to store it). I spent most of my time in one small bedroom where nothing had been done when we arrived. Monday we pried off the paneling and two layers of sheetrock on the walls (and insulation on the outer wall. Tuesday the ceiling came down, along with A LOT of blown insulation that got everywhere, and we began putting in new insulation in the ceiling and walls. Wednesday we finished the insulation and began hanging the sheetrock (pictured below). Thursday was finishing the dry wall and the beginning of taping and mudding. All in all, the room made a lot of progress and I have to say that I was a little impressed with myself when I managed to cut and hang a panel of drywall all on my own. Now if Trouble and I ever get around to buying our own house, I'm ready to fix it up!!



A few of the bigger insights for me on this trip:

- It's a small world in the UMC (people on our team knew Trouble's parents from when they lived here orwere related to some of our coworkers)

- There is still an overwhelming amount of work to be done - even after more than a year and a half has gone by. UMCOR figures it will be another 3-5 YEARS of work teams coming through to get it all done. Anyone up for a mission trip??

- If I was the position that some of these people are in, I can only hope that I would be so gracious and hospitable. I know that one of my issues is asking for help (I can't even admit I need it, let alone ask for it), but these people had us in their homes everyday. It wouldn't take much for me to be in a similar situation to these people (a small tornado?) and I know that I would have a hard time watching random people from across the country come and fix my house while I had to go to work and couldn't even oversee the work that was being done. God, grant me the patience, graciousness and hospitality I witnessed last week, with all who cross my path.

Mission trip photos

Chairs and cots stacked along the wall of what was once a classroom.
Coffins outside the cemetery, with names or "empty" written on the ends.

Statues of Mary and small figures outside of the rectory and parish life center.

The front of the church - after 18 months.

Friday Five - Easter edition

I have errands to run this morning and afternoon, but I at least wanted to play the Friday Five. I'll try to get on later and get up some pics from the mission trip...

reverendmother writes:
Well, the Clergy Superbowl is almost upon us, and so, I offer up this Friday Five (with apologies for the irreverent title):

1. Will this Sunday be Palms only, Passion only, or hyphenated?
Assuming this Easter will be like previous Easters in my congregation, there will be both. The palsm open the service and then we go through the rest of the passion (since most people don't attend services on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, the next service they'll see is Easter morning).

2. Maundy Thursday Footwashing: Discuss.
I love it - I think anything experiential that can draw us into the story and the meaning of the Easter holiday and the ministry of Jesus is a good thing. I haven't ever experienced a foot washing in the Methodist Church - growing up in my particular Catholic congregation we always had a foot washing service for what we called Holy Thursday (I didn't know the word Maundy until I hung out with Methodists in college). I know there are people who have issues with smelly feet, ugly feet, dirty feet, etc. but that is EXACTLY the point! The way we did it, each person got their feet washed by someone, and then they sat down and became the washer for the next peron - we all got taken care of and served someone else. It was very powerful and an image of what Christians should be able to be for each other.

3. Share a particularly meaningful Good Friday worship experience.
When I was in college and under no illusions that I was not meant to stay in the Roman Catholic church, I was attending carious services with friends. I tried out several different churches - mostly Methodist since I attended a Methodist college - and had the comfort of knowing that anything I didn't understand, my friend could kind of walk me through and explain. Holy Week- Easter is just done very differently, and I was very surprised and moved enormously when I went to my first Good Friday service. The service was fairly "normal" feeling but things were in a different order with scripture readings spread out throughout the whole service. It ended with the story of the death of Jesus and suddenly, without any kind of warning, the lights went out and everyone walked out in silence. The people who went to church there knew it was coming - this was their annual tradition, but it was so powerful to me because it was a new way to experience it. I'm not sure I would ever do it this way in my own church, except for maybe once just to catch people off guard and really get them thinking about what it would have been like to be there. Theologically, I'm not so sure....

4. Easter Sunrise Services--choose one:
a) "Resurrection tradition par excellence!"
b) "Eh. As long as it's sunrise with coffee, I can live with it."
c) "[Yawn] Can't Jesus stay in the tomb just five more minutes, Mom?!?"

b) I used to love going to my sunrise service when I was working at 9-1-1 just because I usually worked until 7 am and couldn't make myself stay up long enough after work to go to church (our only service was at 10:30 and I was sawing logs by then). The sunrise service worked out perfectly on my way home from work and it seemed appropriate that the one service I could attend out of the year was Easter morning (some of the Catholic in me??). Now though, being in seminary I think makes me almost jaded on the whole thing - I know how much work goes into the planning and I study all of this stuff to the tiniest detail, so it's lost much of it's magic and emotional power. Church in general feels like more of an obligation now than it ever did. Isn't that horrible!??!? Still I like a sunrise service just because it's something different - I just don't know how my sleep schedule will work with all of the papers and projects due for seminary this time of year...

5. Complete this sentence: It just isn't Easter without...
EASTER EGGS! Those crazy colorful, pagan items just make it for me somehow. I don't know what the significance of it is - we didn't do egg hunts every year or anything like that - perhaps it just that I have a great excuse to be creative and have lots of hard boiled eggs to eat for the week following. This year, instead of buying a dye kit, I'm going to try doing it all natural, using fruit, veggies, and herbs to color my eggs. If you're interested in trying it, go to Wild Oats homepage for directions. They seem to bring out more subtle colors, it's something different, and I think it's cool to see what colors we can find in things direct from God's creation rather than processed chemicals.

Bonus: Any Easter Vigil aficionados out there? Please share.
My mom used to take us to Easter Vigil when I was growing up but I think I was too young (or apathetic) to understand the whole point. In seminary I've looked several times (for different classes) at the tradition of the Easter Vigil, particularly the way it's used as a time for baptism into the church and I think it's very powerful and could be really moving for everyone in a congregation. I just don't know any churches that really do it that way anymore.

Have an Easter story you want to share? A unique family tradition, or a suggestion for things to use to color my easter eggs this year? Leave a comment and let me know!

18 months and counting....

I've been back for a week now and think I've processed my mission trip to Louisiana enough to come up with something coherent - but I'll let you be the judge of that.

Trouble and I left for the Pelican State early Saturday morning ; a 16 drive in a church van is an experience all on its own. :) We basically got to the church (Sweet Lake UMC, see previous post for the link) just in time to set up our living area and crash. Sunday morning we attended our hosts' worship service and then set out for some supplies and a general orientation to the area.

We toured the town of Cameron, which is right on the gulf coast in the southwest section of the state - they got hit by BOTH Katrina and Rita. It's been 18 months since Rita blasted through that area and I could not believe how much destruction is still such a visible, tangible reality. There was still a refrigerator stuck in a tree, shells of homes floating in the marshes by the side of the roads, roof shingles and debris lining the ditches. Cameron is pretty much built on two industries - fishing/shrimping and oil. Helicopters were constantly flying over us as we were driving and walking around the area; there were air fields along the highway set up like helicopter taxi services to take oil rig workers out to the countless rigs we could see on the horizon, out in Gulf waters. From where we stood on the beach, it looked kind of like an "antennae farm" that we have in the urban/suburban areas. The ice house, where fisherman and shrimpers bring their catches and keep them fresh for selling, was still a big shell of a building - no ice to be seen. There was a much smaller, temporary facility in place a little bit down the road, but nothing that will allow for the industry to return to its pre-hurrican size. There were sites with wiped clean foundations sitting next to a trailer - the temporary homes of business and residences alike while everyone saves money and waits for the man power and supplies to rebuild.

One of the most powerful things for me was to go into a Catholic church in the area that had beena large parish with a school and "life center" next door. The building looks as though it's barely been touched in the last 18 months - there are wires, insulation and plastic sheeting hanging everywhere, blowing in the breeze. The chairs and cots for the small children's area are still stacked up along one of the "walls" of what was once their classroom. The sanctuary had dust everywhere, pews misaligned and shoved up towards the front, rust on the lights hanging from the peaked roof (about 15 feet above the ground) and yet I could still smell incense when I approached the altar area. The church looked so much like the church where I made my first communion, and the scent of incense was something so unexpected, I felt like I'd been punched in the gut - I could scarcely breathe and couldn't help but start crying. I took so many pictures, and would love to share some of them, but I'm currently at school and don't have the camera with me, so that will have to wait until the next post. I'll get more into the actual work that we did the rest of the week too. Thanks for "listening"...