mudding and sanding at one of our houses

a few of the gang at a meal

Just some random photos from the past few days:

Robbie K. & Denny, Electricians. (Call 911)

Bill says Hi Tami! He really misses you... (some of the people he's with down here are really weird...)

We've arrived at Vancleave UMC and I'll have to be brief. It's after lights out time and I'm on Reverend Tom's work team. I don't want to get in trouble tomorrow! Yesterday was a day of rest. ( they don't allow volunteers to work on Sunday at this church. ) So half of us went to New Orleans (to survey the damage and to save souls on Bourbon Street, of course.) The other half toured the Mississippi Gulf Coast from Biloxi to Bay St. Louis. (Bay St. Louis was under 28 feet of water during the storm!) Today was our first work day and from all accounts it went well. The 5 teams are all busy at different houses. One is helping to construct a log cabin! Several are doing drywall and insulation. No one injured today... lots of sore and tired people... I'll just add some more pictures and let them speak for themselves: Click on them to enlarge...

Well, we're going back... (I suspect we'll keep going back until we're asked not to return.) This is year 3 and things are a little different this time around. Trinity Methodist Church in Gulfport is no longer housing, feeding and co-ordinating volunteers so we've found a church in Van Cleave, Mississippi to house and feed us. We'll be about 30 miles from where we were last year. Believe it or not, there are still houses in the area that have not been touched and need complete gutting! This is over 2 1/2 years after Katrina... So we may be doing some gutting. Certainly we'll be doing drywall and painting, maybe insulation. We've gotten pretty good at these trades.

We fly this Saturday 1/26. This church doesn't allow the volunteers to work on the Sabbath, so Sunday many of us will probably go to New Orleans to see the sights and of course to save some souls on Bourbon Street!

More to follow from Mississippi on Saturday night...

I'm going to try a video upload/link. Never did this on a blog. This is the short video I made after last year's trip to show in church the Sunday after we returned. i hope you enjoy it...

For those of you on last year's trip, you'll never believe what I'm listening to right now... A certain Ms. Angel Snow's 1st and so far only CD! I was looking for some music for this Sunday's presentations and I remembered Ron sending us her Myspace address. The Myspace thing refers you to www.DigStation.com where you can search Angel Snow and download the album for only $9.99! Anyone present at her after dinner performance last year knows that she deserves to sell a boatload of CD's... 3 of the 4 songs she played for us that night are on the album, with the exception being her renditon of John Prine's, "Angel From Montgomery." (A song I absolutely love that was passionately covered by Bonnie Raitt... I think Mr. Prine and Ms. Raitt would have been smiling at Angel's rendition...) Oops, low battery... more tomorrow...