Mississippi Trip
It's time for an update. I'm back in Lowell, but I thought I'd do a post about the missions trip that I took to Mississppi. I last went there in March, and a lot has changed since. We left from Boston on a Saturday, flying to Baltimore, to Atlanta and then to Gulfport, MS. Gulfport has an incredibly tiny airport (only six gates), but it's still considered international. It's functional, but still very much under construction. You can see the vents, wires and things on the ceilings by the gates.
It was nice down there, weather wise, for the first few days. Compared to the 20 degrees here in MA and he snow and ice storm approaching, we figured we had it made in Bay St. Louis' 70 degree weather. There was one day where people were mowing the lawn and we we working outside--it really seemed like summer in January. Then the temperature dropped to about 40 for the rest of the week. That was a bit of a shocks, since we thought it was going to be 70 the whole week. We wound up wearing the long sleeved shirts the whole week--which was all right since it was all of us, I think.
Unfortunately, two days before the trip, I started to get a bit of a cold, so by the time our three plane trips were done, my head had a lot of pressure in it. We made a Wal-Mart trip to acquire things--I had to get some cold medicine. Then, we began our foray into the unique Southern cuisine. I tried a "po-boy" (think of a sub) at this nifty restaurant called Daniel's. As we walked in, a man excitedly told, "Quick! Grab a seat--the game is starting." Of course, we were wondering, "What game?" It happened to be the New Orleans Saints. They were absolutely crazy for this team.
I'm trying to decide what to write about since so many stories have come to me as I've thought about this. There's no way that all of them will be written down, either. Our work was a little different from the last trip. We did all sorts of on three houses. Well, technically, four. Let's see if I can detail them--that would make more sense here.
The first house was across from the church. It was a little white building with a porch that needed some exterior painting done badly. The catch: the siding was asbestos and had mold all over it. So, we had to carefully clean it without disturbing the panels. Thankfully, we had a cleaning expert-extraordinaire on our team who knew what would work. Our other tasks included sanding the chipped paint on the trim (that was wood), and then painting. The painting required all sorts of craziness--balancing on sawhorses, discovering fears of heights, leaving people on porch roofs, and other death-defying stunts. At one point, I was trying to get the trim at the top of the roof, but I couldn't make myself go up another rung on the ladder. I explained to Erin, "I don't have a fear of heights; I have a fear of going down ladders...one way or the other." The nice thing about this house was that the owner plans to give it to an older couple in the church. It will be nice for them since it's right across the street.
The second house was for the church secretary. She had some tile floors installed that needed to be scrubbed and then sealed. I've never sealed tile before, so it was quite the experience. We cleared out one of the rooms--that included moving boxes of tile (which resulted in some pretty interesting bruises the next day--sort of a purplish-green...kind of cool). The guys cleaned up her yard, including weed-wacking and mowing her lawn. Inside, we took off our shoes and got down to scrubbing the grout. The next day we sealed her floor with two coats of this stuff. It was kind of funny that day since it was very cold inside the house and we discovered how cold tile gets since we were in our bare feet trying to get this foam stuff into the grout. In the end, it was awesome to talk to the homeowner and see how happy she was that her floors were done. She's a few steps closer to moving out of her trailer into the house again.
The third house was a few streets from the church. The homeowner has kids, but they're all away in college. So, her cat and very hyper dog keep her company. We painted two of her rooms, and stained two floors. This process resulted in some interesting frustration: painting beadboard. I think Gretchen put it best, "When I get my own place, remind me to never install grooved plywood. It should be part of wedding vows or something." It wasn't terrible, it was just comically frustrating. Our other interesting moments involved getting dried paint off the floor. Interesting. Once we finally washed the floor and stained it, it was beautiful. We could finally see the character and grain in this floor that was dusty, gray, and kind of ugly. The last day that we worked, we went to go poly her floor and the homeowner was so excited about her floor that she started without us and was waiting for the first coat to dry.
The fourth house was pretty simple stuff. We just went to this lady's house and swept all the rooms, picking up the bits of wood and sheetrock that contractors left all over the place. I thought about it later--it would have taken her a week to do all of that work, and we managed to do it in the course of a few hours. The water in her house went up to the ceiling, but you could see the transformation in her house--the walls were painted and some molding was installed. It looked really sharp.
I'm not sure if I can say that I learned as much on this trip as I did on the previous trip to Mississippi. I suppose the other trip was more profound because so much debris and damage was visible. I did learn on this trip. Nothing incredibly profound, I suppose. I quipped to someone that I learned a lot on the trip--how to stain an entire floor (I've only done boards and small furniture), seal tile, etc. On a spiritual level, I simply found a joy in serving. It wasn't a sudden realization. It was a sort of determination to do the best possible job that I could to help out the various home owners that we worked with. Those that hadn't gone on the trip before immediately started talking about wanting to go back--I can understand that feeling. There is something about forming connections with people and serving.
It was nice down there, weather wise, for the first few days. Compared to the 20 degrees here in MA and he snow and ice storm approaching, we figured we had it made in Bay St. Louis' 70 degree weather. There was one day where people were mowing the lawn and we we working outside--it really seemed like summer in January. Then the temperature dropped to about 40 for the rest of the week. That was a bit of a shocks, since we thought it was going to be 70 the whole week. We wound up wearing the long sleeved shirts the whole week--which was all right since it was all of us, I think.
Unfortunately, two days before the trip, I started to get a bit of a cold, so by the time our three plane trips were done, my head had a lot of pressure in it. We made a Wal-Mart trip to acquire things--I had to get some cold medicine. Then, we began our foray into the unique Southern cuisine. I tried a "po-boy" (think of a sub) at this nifty restaurant called Daniel's. As we walked in, a man excitedly told, "Quick! Grab a seat--the game is starting." Of course, we were wondering, "What game?" It happened to be the New Orleans Saints. They were absolutely crazy for this team.
I'm trying to decide what to write about since so many stories have come to me as I've thought about this. There's no way that all of them will be written down, either. Our work was a little different from the last trip. We did all sorts of on three houses. Well, technically, four. Let's see if I can detail them--that would make more sense here.
The first house was across from the church. It was a little white building with a porch that needed some exterior painting done badly. The catch: the siding was asbestos and had mold all over it. So, we had to carefully clean it without disturbing the panels. Thankfully, we had a cleaning expert-extraordinaire on our team who knew what would work. Our other tasks included sanding the chipped paint on the trim (that was wood), and then painting. The painting required all sorts of craziness--balancing on sawhorses, discovering fears of heights, leaving people on porch roofs, and other death-defying stunts. At one point, I was trying to get the trim at the top of the roof, but I couldn't make myself go up another rung on the ladder. I explained to Erin, "I don't have a fear of heights; I have a fear of going down ladders...one way or the other." The nice thing about this house was that the owner plans to give it to an older couple in the church. It will be nice for them since it's right across the street.
The second house was for the church secretary. She had some tile floors installed that needed to be scrubbed and then sealed. I've never sealed tile before, so it was quite the experience. We cleared out one of the rooms--that included moving boxes of tile (which resulted in some pretty interesting bruises the next day--sort of a purplish-green...kind of cool). The guys cleaned up her yard, including weed-wacking and mowing her lawn. Inside, we took off our shoes and got down to scrubbing the grout. The next day we sealed her floor with two coats of this stuff. It was kind of funny that day since it was very cold inside the house and we discovered how cold tile gets since we were in our bare feet trying to get this foam stuff into the grout. In the end, it was awesome to talk to the homeowner and see how happy she was that her floors were done. She's a few steps closer to moving out of her trailer into the house again.
The third house was a few streets from the church. The homeowner has kids, but they're all away in college. So, her cat and very hyper dog keep her company. We painted two of her rooms, and stained two floors. This process resulted in some interesting frustration: painting beadboard. I think Gretchen put it best, "When I get my own place, remind me to never install grooved plywood. It should be part of wedding vows or something." It wasn't terrible, it was just comically frustrating. Our other interesting moments involved getting dried paint off the floor. Interesting. Once we finally washed the floor and stained it, it was beautiful. We could finally see the character and grain in this floor that was dusty, gray, and kind of ugly. The last day that we worked, we went to go poly her floor and the homeowner was so excited about her floor that she started without us and was waiting for the first coat to dry.
The fourth house was pretty simple stuff. We just went to this lady's house and swept all the rooms, picking up the bits of wood and sheetrock that contractors left all over the place. I thought about it later--it would have taken her a week to do all of that work, and we managed to do it in the course of a few hours. The water in her house went up to the ceiling, but you could see the transformation in her house--the walls were painted and some molding was installed. It looked really sharp.
I'm not sure if I can say that I learned as much on this trip as I did on the previous trip to Mississippi. I suppose the other trip was more profound because so much debris and damage was visible. I did learn on this trip. Nothing incredibly profound, I suppose. I quipped to someone that I learned a lot on the trip--how to stain an entire floor (I've only done boards and small furniture), seal tile, etc. On a spiritual level, I simply found a joy in serving. It wasn't a sudden realization. It was a sort of determination to do the best possible job that I could to help out the various home owners that we worked with. Those that hadn't gone on the trip before immediately started talking about wanting to go back--I can understand that feeling. There is something about forming connections with people and serving.