Many Thanks!

Many thanks are due now that this year's mission trip has come to a close.

John, Lee, Maggie, and Marsha: What a great adult team. Parents, your youthies were in great hands with this A team that worked with them not just on the job sites but during the off hours to make sure that the trip was educational, fun, and life changing.

Julia and Maddie: Strong leadership this year, absolutely amazing. They put significant time into the trip in the year leading up to it. One of the Camp Rhino people thought they were church staffers!

Mission Trip Committee: The youth on the committee were instrumental in making sure fund-raising efforts were successful and that things got planned for the trip.

Youth: As ever, the youth were hard workers and now they are bearers of the experiences shared with them by people who have been through extremely difficult times.

Congregation: For financial support, for prayers, for caring, for being interested, for doing mission work through this particular avenue.

Parents: Thanks for trusting us with your youth. Thanks for your work as parents that makes them such a pleasure to be with even when the weather is hot and work is frustrating.

The people of New Orleans and the staff of Camp Rhino and St. Bernard Project: for your mission work to the youth and adults by allowing the group to learn from you and to experience God speaking through you.

The bus drivers: for getting us there and back safely and listening to our music, movies, and general crowd noise.

I look forward to this year's mission trip service (September 22) when the youth will share what they experienced with the congregation. Until then...there's always the blog!

Peace,

Tom

Missing Camera!!!!

A camera, black Canon without a case, was misplaced on the bus ride back to town.

If you know about this, or have it, call or send a text message to Lily at 651-925-7919, and she will see that it gets returned to rightful owner.

Thanks

Nearing Mason City, ETA still 12:30 PM

Donuts in Iowa City

Just stopped for the obligatory bus donuts, and we think we'll get back at or around 12:30.  Will update as we get closer.

Making Our Way

It's just before 6:00 and most of the bus is still asleep as we seem to have figured out how to make that work just in time not to need the skill anymore.

We just passed through Hannibal, MO, which puts us on track to arrive  in Saint Paul at about 12:30, but that will partially depend on how long any stops are, so check back for updates as the morning progresses.

Thank you for letting your youthies participate in this fabulous trip -- every one of them made it a better trip than it would have been without them, and we adults were blessed to spend the week watching them grow and learn and teach each other and us.

Maggie

Prayer partners, communion... and leaving Memphis

We completed a wonderful and moving closing to the mission trip in Overton Park in Memphis. We are back on the road, and still thinking a noon arrival in Saint Paul.

Check back on Sunday morning for an update. And thank you, as always, for your prayers and support.

Lee

It's gonna be FANTASTIC!!

Or so Maggie has convinced us, about the bus ride. Bus just left French Quarter. On our way. With 21 youth.

Best estimate is noon Sunday in St Paul. We will update estimate as we go.

Lee

The Final Frontier

Here goes one last blog post,

Hey all, things are winding down here in the common room. Four people are playing Hearts, Erica's CD is playing in the TV, and the adults all look like they could use 12 hours of sleep. They deserve some hibernation, but I'm not sure that the bus tomorrow will allow it.

It has been a blast! This has been a very satisfying mission trip in that the progress was tangible, there was true need for our work, and everyone here is awesome. I have already begun to feel sadness that next year I won't be going on the mission trip. There has always been THE mission trip that starts off the summer. THE mission trip that lets me spend time and make friends with the other kids at Mac-Plymouth. THE mission trip that gives me the privilege to serve others and make a positive difference in the world. I'm going to miss it in a way that I could describe using every cliche I can think of. But I won't, because as simple as the idea of a mission trip is, it is not cheesy or shallow. A mission trip is a genuine, life-changing experience.

Today I haven't felt so hot. My stomach has felt off and has been cramping. It was fairly debilitating at the work site, much to my frustration, but since then has seemed to get a little better. I am hoping that a good nights sleep will allow my system to work itself out and I will be 100% for the trip home tomorrow. I am optimistic!

Well we are being called to bed, so I will say good night to everyone out there. Thank you for all of your support, encouragement, and love over the last four years. You guys are the best!

Henry B.

Hello back home in Saint Paul! Our week here in New Orleans has been not only amazing, but enlightening. This experience has opened my eyes; you really don't know what you have until you lose it.

All week, my construction group and I have been working on flooring and installing base-board for a woman named Gwen. Her home is located in New Orleans East and after the levee broke, her house was flooded about six feet and her family were stranded on their roof for four days, and she and her husband had to swim to safety.

Eight years prior to Katrina, Gwen still does not have a home of her own. On thursday she came to visit us to see the work we had accomplishEd in her home. She told us her story which made me realize how lucky i am with my life back in Minnesota; i have always had a home to go back to, and she has been moving around for eight years. Disasters really put our liVes in perspective, especially if you have survived them. After our week here, we will have all these memories from our experience, but we will eventually forget and they will become less prevalent in our thoughts.

Just to reminisce on a fantastic first mission trip, i want to make a special shout out "team A's" upstairs flooring crew. You really made our work at Gwen's house fun. From the infamous table saw, to our dance parties, learning to cope-physically anD mentally- and of course, finally celebrating the upstairs hallway being flush.

It was a great week and i honestly couldn't have asked for a better mission trip.

Love, erica craddock

Last day of work

Avery here!
Today was our final day of work. Unfortunately, our homeowner, Ms. Cassandra, never showed up so we couldn't meet her and learn her story. I would have liked to meet her so we could know who would be living their everyday lives in the rooms we built. The rooms were all painted this week, and it was incredible how much the bright colors helped change the house from a structure with no meaning to a house that someone would be living in for years to come. We also did a lot of the baseboard and trim around the house. Even this small detail made a big difference in how much better the rooms looked. Me and Maddy worked on the trim around the back door. At first, it was confusing because we had no idea what we were doing. Eventually, we figured it out and were able to piece it all together. It was hard to get the length just right, but when our site director came over to look at it she told us it was perfect and that we had done a great job. This was the biggest moment of satisfaction I felt all trip, since we made something from start to finish without really knowing how to start. I was sad to leave the house, since we will probably never return to see it again. I wish I could see it finished in person, but i know we made a lot of important progress in just the four days we were there. I'm glad that Ms. Cassandra will be able to move back to her real home sometime this sumer, since she has been waiting for so long. It will be nice to get back to Minnesota, but I will definitely miss New Orleans.
Bye for now,
Avery

Hi Parents
Marsha here. Each year on these trips I am touched by the hard work and good spirits of the youth.  Each one brings gifts and talents and together they make a difference.  And this year as in years past our host organizations are amazed by them. I have heard so many great comments about their hard work, generous spirits and engagement with issues.  Last night we had a long discussion about what we have experienced here in New Orleans.  We are coming back with many stories to share.  Se y'all soon. Marsha

Au Revoir New Orleans

Bonjour Minnesota!
    We have just returned from our last worship service with RHINO. Over the week we have listened to a few sermons from Durban Durban (our nickname for our keynote speaker, Andy Durban), and spiritual songs from the guest band. It's been a bit like Next Step last year, but a little less extreme. Tonight Jimmy, Henry, Paul and I sang "Prayer for the Children" to open the service.  I believe Maggie has a video.
  It's bittersweet to be leaving New Orleans; we all miss our families, our homes, our beds. But New Orleans still needs us. Being here has shown me that, even almost eight years later, so much help is still needed.  It has been an amazing experience, and very satisfying to see the work that the adult leaders, Maddy, and I put into this trip turned into an impactful, fulfilling mission trip. We worked hard, we played hard, we slept hard. What else could you ask for? I've had such a wonderful time with these wonderful people, and I can't wait to see you all soon!
Much love,
Julia Schafer
P.S- Simon is here with me, and he wants to say hi to his family. Also, shoutout to Lydia's cats. She misses you! Meow.

The little things

Hi everyone, Claire Donovan here :-)

Everyone knows how much fun we have every year doing mission work on the mission trip every year. Its always a LOT of work and we're exhausted by the end of the day. Although the main point of our trip every year is to do work and help others, we always make time to do typical teen things. We did a lot of those this week. Some of my favorite little things that happened this week were...

1. Swimming with everyone in the pool. We had a few awesome games of boys against girls pool basketball at the rec center by our dorms. Its the best way to cool off after a long day of work.

2. Yesterday, we met the cutest little dog I've ever seen, literally. He was grey and fluffy had his ears stuck out, his tongue was lolling and his little white teeth were smiling. He looked just like a happy koala and he sat in our laps and let us pet him as he licked up. He chased Jimmy in a circle hoping to get a bite of his sandwich.

3. Over the week I've aquired quite a collection of mardi gras beads. Right now my count is at 12, all colors of the rainbow. They're so shiny and I really don't want to let them out of my sight so they're next to me right now. 

5. I've liked hearing Xaver and Clem's accents this week. Its been cool having German and French teens on the trip with us.

6. Today Tom fell asleep on the couch during our free time. The couch in the middle of the lounge, surrounded by teens. You can probably guess what happened. Tom's unconcious body was transformed into the cereal king. This included putting a cereal bowl on his head, silverwear in his hands, cheerios on his lap, cards and ripped up paper thrown on him. He was pretty surprised when he woke up to all of us laughing.

7. I've played soooo many games of bananagrams (and we've made up so many words)

8. (Once again) the food has been AmAzInG, everything we've had is so good (looking forward to possibly bbq in Memphis tomorrrow night? EVen though its 9:30 and we had chicken fajitas a few hours ago, I could really go for another poboy right about now).

9. I've had a lot of time to catch up on my reading this week. I've been reading Stephen King's It and I've enjoyed discussing it and other books with the others on the trip. 

10. I've really enjoyed just spending time with everyone and getting to know everyone better. I've gotten to spend time with everyone, which has been great. We always get so close on the trip. 

Anyway, all in all its been a really fantastic trip. I'll see you all (y'all? I've been here long enough, I think I'm allowed to say that) later!!

Lots of love, 

Claire :-)

List of Strange Things

This week, Abram and I made a list of all the strange and random things we saw in New Orleans. They're the kinds of things you look at and are just confused.

1. We were driving through one of the richer neighborhoods of the city. There were a lot of mansions, and one of them had this enormous tree with a branch that stretched across the whole yard, so the homeowners had put a pillar under the branch to hold it up. It was strange, and also beautiful.

2. There are a lot of beads hanging from the trees and power lines.

3. We were driving in the bus, and we saw a power line with logs strung through it. It was really random- there's the power line, and it contains logs. I have no idea how they got there. Maybe they serve some purpose I'm not aware of.

4. Our bus is very large, and it had some trouble navigating the narrower streets. At one point, the top of our bus hit a tree branch. Only, when Abram looked back, he saw that we had not hit a tree branch. There was a sign hanging from the branch that said, "look out for tree branch." We hit the sign. Oh, the irony.

5. There were clouds shaped like a perfect heart one day. It was beautiful. After about five minutes it was gone.

6. So, Tom and I are vegetarians. We went to Mother's, a restaurant, one day, and ordered bean omelets. Because that has no meat in it, right? Wrong.

7. There was a cockroach in the bathroom, so I trapped it with a cup and a piece of paper and dropped it off our little third story balcony. It survived and happily scuttled away. What a survivor.

8. I kept track of how many I saw:

Cats: Sixteen

Lizards: Nine

Horses: Fifteen

I do love how many cats there are running around this city. 

It's been an awesome week!

-Lian

The work continues, 7 1/4 inches at a time.

I remember coming here in the summer of 2007. It was about 22 months after the Storm, and it was still a raw disaster area. Refuse was piled on the streets, no street signs made getting to work sites very challenging, and we were still doing demolition work. The work was disorganized and the neighborhoods had very little life in them except for some FEMA trailers.

Six years have gone by. Thousands of families have come back home. There have been millions of hours of volunteer time and billions of dollars invested since Mac-Plymouth first came here.

With still so much to be done.

This week we were told that the city of New Orleans still has 35,000 abandoned properties. Where the B-plusses are working in Lower Nine there are three vacant lots to the south, another next door the other way and another across the street. Just three little concrete remain. Some lots are overgrown with weeds, with no one claiming title to the property.

Where we working in the back bedroom of Miss Carlmelita's house in Lower Nine,  the laminate flooring pieces are 47 inches long and 7 1/4 inches wide. We are not very skilled and the work does not go quickly, but when Simon installed a small strip it was the second room our little team had done, and Julia and Lian had already done maybe 30 percent of the living room.

Could not help thinking that the work goes forward 7 1/4 inches at a time. Piece by piece, in our houses and the ones other volunteers are building or renovating this week, the progress continues. Can't believe that the rebuilding has taken this long with miles further to go, but we need to be thankful for the many hands that have put the pieces together, 7 1/4 inches at a time.

Thanks for your support.

Lee

Talk About Perspective

This morning at our job site, two of our little groups continued to work on laying flooring.  We had hoped to finish up both the upstairs and downstairs halls so that we could begin the living room, but both groups ran into frustration after frustration and made almost no progress.  While I won't say that tempers were flaring, there certainly was a loss of energy and enthusiasm, and the collective mood was mighty low.

At about 11:45, the owner, Miss Gwen, came by to thank us for our work and tell us her Katrina story.  Four days sitting on her roof with her husband and son, as well as some neighbors that they had rescued from another house, some of those days the sun so hot that she said that it almost felt like her skin was cooking.  After no one came to rescue them, they swam to where they could walk, and walked to the airport where they were sent to San Antonio, Texas, leaving everyone they knew and the only life that they had ever known, everything about her life changing forever.  Her family eventually settled in Galvaston, where she lost everything again when Hurricane Ike hit that city.

There were five or six or seven more tragedies like that, including contractor fraud, multiple thefts of  construction  equipment, and a leg amputation.  With that background, what she really wanted to talk about was how God put the right people in her life to help her and how grateful she was that we were building God's house for her to live in.

Last night, our program leader suggested that the most important thing we could do this week would be to listen to people's stories.  What a privilege to do just that.

Simon's Second Expedition

I back everyone to blog for a second time! These past three days, my team has been working at the home of Ms. Carmelita. Ryan, Devin, Hannah, Lee and I spent our time flooring the master bedroom with wooden laminate, which is much harder the it might seem. Every floor piece is a different piece to a very large, intricate puzzle. It has to be exactly the right size and cannot be damaged at all. If it has one scrape or knick, it has to be removed and started over again. Today we finally finished the master bedroom due to my mastery of the chop, table, and jig-saw. A first I was nervous when using it, but eventually my skill developed into one of such a high degree that I have declared myself a grandmaster. Right near the end of our workday the owner of the home (whom we hadn't seen) came and brought us some delicious fried chicken, beans & rice, and cornbread. I forgot to mention that before the storm she owned and operated a soul food diner, which she hopes to rebuild in the years to come. She told us her very moving story of where she was during the storm that made us think. Tonight we are attending dinner at the home of one of the members of the St. Charles Ave Presbyterian Church, the church that is hosting us, and Camp Rhino. Because of that we have to put on nice clothes, which although feels nice, is very hot. I guess I  am going to sign off now, I am glad to have the chance to blog for you all, or as Danny, Jimmy, Paul and I would say, "I do declare this has been a mighty fine time" in a deep southern accent. See you all in Minnesota soon!

Simon

Hey y'all!  Its Lily Schafer.
Today was/is a wonderful day.  We got to the site around 7, and immediately set to work finishing flooring the hallway in Miss Gwen's house.  We only had a very thin stripe along the all left...but we didn't finish yet.  There was one piece that was tricky to cut around a doorway that just wouldn't flush (come together all of the way) for a majority of the time.  Harrison (a worker at RHINO) and I finally got it after something like 3 hours.  After that, we put a few more boards in before one that refused to flush again, and Erica and I gave up when Miss Gwen showed up.
Miss Gwen literally was the sweetest, funniest and most awesome lady i've ever met!  She gave us all hugs (while commenting about Maggie "lord you are short) before telling us an hour long story about her experience during and after Katrina.  She was trapped on her roof for four days with her husband, Charles, her son Ranell (who was eventually picked up by a helicopter.  "They kept shouting for me to come, but I told them to take my son.  He was finna have a nervous breakdown"), and some neighbors who they rescued from their roof.  They too were rescued on day two.  Charles and Gwen then jumped off of their roof, and swam/walked to an airport, where they waited another day before flying to San Antonio, Texas.  She stayed in Texas until loosing everything again during Hurricane Ike in 2008.  She took it as a sign to return home, where she struggled to try and rebuild her home.  Gwen, an amputee after being shot in the leg in a drive by in 1996, still remained optimistic until she got the call that people were coming to fix her house.  "I nearly fell outta my mamas chair I was so happy," she said.  Religion was also very important to her too.  She told me as we walked up the stairs that she was so happy that we were there fixing God's and her house.  "It was his house, and then it was mine," she said during her story.  Her story was inspirational, powerful, hilarious and wonderful.  It didn't feel like an hour, it felt like a few minutes.  We were all so entranced by her story.  It was a highlight of the trip.  Her hope was amazing.  She said when she saw the floor "lord, this is the most lovely floor I've ever seen."  She was beautiful, and I will never, EVER, forget her.

Luck

Sometimes I wonder if there isn't a die thrown every time a child is born, and that dice roll determines their fortune in life.
Something I've realized: I am lucky. I get good grades and my family is wonderful; no hurricane will strike my Minnesota home. My friends love me and every time I crave chocolate I have the money to go to Walgreens and buy some.
There's a song by Regina Spektor that frequently gets stuck in my head called Laughing With. It's  about perspective- "No one laughs at God in a hospital. No one laughs at God in a war. No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor... But God can be funny at a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke..." The lyrics can be interpreted in countless ways, but ultimately they make the point that it's easy to treat life lightly when everything is going well, but then a disaster strikes and nothing is funny anymore.
I struggle to find my place in the world because it doesn't seem fair to others that my life is so good. Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it seems to me that I'm pretty lucky compared to someone who lost their home to nature. So I volunteer and I go on mission trips in hopes that that will even the balance, steady the scale. Is that enough?
At 6:00 this morning we left for our worksites, and as we drove I saw an elderly woman sleeping under a thick green blanket beneath one of the large New Orleans bridges, and I thought immediately of my comfy bed at home underneath all the posters and pictures on my walls. Or my dorm room at Tulaine this week- my most serious complaint is that the AC is on a little bit too high. I complain about these things because the discomforts annoy me- how I was cold while I slept, or how getting up at 5:30 seemed utterly ridiculous when I first found out. And I think complaining is okay as long as you don't do it too much, but it's also true that many, many people have immensely more troubling things to complain about.
I'm not drawing any grand point here, this is just how I think. I believe that it's good to question my place in life, and do get this sense of injustice when I see people "less fortunate than me," a phrase I've heard many times.
This trip has made me think, and I love thinking. I've been quite happy this week; I have time to read, there are a lot of cats in this city (I've seen sixteen so far), and we've been helping people, which feels great.
Life is good.
-Lian Simmer

:-)

Hello everyone! Claire Donovan here. I don't like to blog much but I thought I would put up a quick post because we have a few minutes before dinner... The week has gone very well so far. We're learning a lot of things, from safety, Hurricane Katrina stories, to skills including carptentry and painting (all things we can carry on with us later in life. Everyone we've met has been very friendly and welcoming, which is nice. One of my favorite things about the trip so far is the FOOD.
:-)
I'm just gonna talk about it for a little bit. The first full day here, we went to Mother's. I had a shrimp poboy and iced tea with lots of hot sauce. It was AMAZING. We've also had red beans and rice, pasta with meatballs and redsauce, and all kinds of awesome desserts. (My favorite has been the banana pudding)
Anyway, hope you all are doing well.
Lots of love,
Claire Donovan <3 :-)