NOLA - a new plumbing experience

April 13,2006

I don't know if I can adequately describe today. I got to bust a cast iron tub. Everything else was gross and doesn't bear remembering, except for this... it was utterly humbling. The pictures say it all. But something else happened. I was gluing some drainline and I ended up gluing a PVC bushing backwards into a 3" 90. So now I have a memento of my trip. It's autographed by my teammates and a few others.

NOLA - rats, termites and roaches

April 12, 2006

The project we were working today was gutting a house that not only got hit by Katrina, but was a haven for termites. I got the pleasure of taking down a termite mound that was in the kitchen pantry. That was after we found the two dead rats (also in the kitchen) and a family of roaches in the walls.

Gotta love missions.

April 14, 2006

We went back to work Friday morning. Kevin and Greg started framing the house. All total we found three termite mounds, two dead rats and who knows how many cockroaches.

NOLA - The team

April 11, 2006

I had this thought today. I'm making friends this week and most of them are from Ontario, two from Texas, one from Saskatchewan and one from Medicine Hat It scares me. In this week I will bond with 14 people in a way I haven't bonded with my own church family. And on Saturday I will hug them all good-bye, get their email addresses and wonder if I will ever see them again this side of heaven.

Thank you Lord for Meg, Linda, Pat, Robin, Kevin, Dianne, Wayne, Giancarlo, Wayne, Sammy, Hap, Hank, Mike and Scott.

Bless them all.

We went to church tonight and instead of handshakes, I hugged the women - sisters they are. I'm gonna love heaven. What a colourful array of precious flowers.

NOLA - The Ninth Ward

April 9, 2006

The ninth ward - utter desolation. How can I write what I'm yet to experience in my own heart.

April 10, 2006

Yesterday is something so hard to put into words. There was one house that we went in - about an inch and a half of caked dried mud over the whole floor, furniture in shambles - in a part of the city that had been totally immersed in water. There was a church, once holding the saints of God who came to worship, now laying in ruins. The streets were quiet. No one lived there anymore.

There were houses that had trailers parked in front in some of the lesser damaged areas of town. People trying to make sense of it all and trying to find a home again in all the rubble. But in the ninth ward there were no trailers. No rescue attempts. Tourists driving through to see what two hurricanes had obliterated seven months ago.

Houses swept off their foundation. Houses gone, no traces of a foundation. Cars underneath houses, much like in "The Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy's house had landed on the wicked witch. People dead, missing, misplaced. Mortgages owed on houses they will never live in again.

NOLA - first night in New Orleans

April 8, 2006

Kevin (our captain for the week) took us to the French Quarter. We went for a walk and had a coffee and some beignets (New Orleans pastries) swimming in icing sugar. We saw a little of what damage was done, but tomorrow we will see the real mess.