Raquel Jillian

Day 4

Monday, January 29^th was our first day of work. A brief run down of the day was:

• 6.00 wake up and get ready for our first day of work
• Pack lunches before 6.45 and put them in the coolers
• Breakfast at 7.00, morning devotions b Joanne Eidse
• Get list of what you are doing for the day, where you will be, with who you will work and of list of supplies you need to take along
• Drive to your site and get as much done as possible. The first day I worked with Joanne, Jake, and Dale (a long termer). I only knew Joanne from that group but itdidn’t take long to get to know everyone. We went to “dead eyes” (as his friends call him) place and painted his walls and stippled his ceiling. It was my first time doing a ceiling and it was a good learning experience. We jut on the second coat in his house and then called it a day.
• Be back at the Church some time after 5.00 but before 6.00
• Shower before supper (if you are lucky) or after
• Supper at 6.00 and give a report of what when on during the day
• After supper Erik and I headed off to the one couch that was there and wrote emails, talked on MSN, watched Hailey videos.
  

Day 5

Tuesday was a lot like Monday minus Jake the expert painter; he joined another team for the day so Jo, Dale, and I went back to Mr. Pete’s to finish the second coat around his house. He is such a sweet old man; the first day he didn’t seem to keen on us being there but he needed to adjust to another new group. But the second day he was totally different. It was neat to seem him come in and talk to us and check up on us and making sure everything was going ok. He always made a point to tell us that we were doing a good job and say how thankful he was for us helping him.

Day 6

The half way point of our trip. Jake, Jo and I got the privilege of going to Joe Buras’ house. He was the highlight of my time here. What an amazing man. I must say I have never met anyone like him. He has such an astonishing outlook on life and has an amazing attitude. Him and his wife spent 2+ years building there house and have lived in it less than 4 years before Katrina hit. As they evacuated one of their daughters ran though the house taking pictures of before the storm. They were some of the first people back and they took after picture; words do not even begin to describe the after photos. It was absolutely sick. I can’t ever imagine going through something like that. The people down there are phenomenal. There house was in bad shape, the structure and foundation were still in tact but it needed a lot of work. Joe, his 15 year old and 9 year old sons gutted there house and cleaned up there yard. When they thought all was lost they made the tough decision to board up there home and come back next winter and take it from there. They were at an all time low and couldn’t take the hash words of people telling them, “Well at least you have a roof.” They felt bad for what they had and couldn’t stand the comments. Minutes before they were going to close the doors for a year they got a call. MDS was going to come in and help repair there once new home, make it livable again and into a home again. We painted the first coat on the house on day 6. Later in the evening Erik and I did our evening routine and went on the computer check to see if Amber and Darcy emailed and watched videos of Hailey.

Day 7

Back to Mr. Joes place we went to paint our second coat and much more than that get to know Mr. Joe and his family better. I can’t say enough how awesome I think this guy is. He can talk and talk and talk some more! It was awesome! All day we painted, he sat and talked, we painted some more and he talked some more. He shared all his stories with us and I loved every minute. He talked about how Katrina was a huge blessing to him and his family. When he told people from his church that when his pastor asked him what he thought of the hurricane, they thought he was nuts. He explained that God gave him that house the first time and if He wanted him to have his house back he would get it. He got to meet amazing people through MDS and it was an amazing way for people to come to God and rely on Him. So for him this was nothing but a blessing. After our painting we got to take all the paper of the floors, revealing the tiled floor throughout the house. It was so awesome to finish painting and clean up and begin to see it looking like a real home again. There 9 year old son Adrian, has always shared a room with his older brother, he has never had his own room. The day they packed up and left before Katrina hit Adrian started to move into his own room, he moved in his t.v. bike and some belongs while everyone else was running around packing up as much as they could before leaving there home. We got to paint Adrian’s room for him. The brightest colour of sky blue you can imagine. He got to pick the colour of his very first room all to himself; and sky blue was his colour of choice. To see the look on his face and how incredibly happy he was, was the best feeling in the world. To bring joy to so many hurting people was unbelievable. There are so many other stories I could tell about Mr. Joe but those are tales for another time.

Day 8

It was only a halfer for work. Olivia, Erik, Orv and I boated out to the Bayou and finished priming and working on a shed they had built early in the week. We finished at around 11 and headed to Miss. Ruby’s to see what everyone else was up to and to drop off some tools further down the Bayou. Miss. Ruby then took a few of us on a tour of the Bayou, pointing out her old school, the cemetery, the churches and her friends’ houses. It was a neat experience to see her community and have her show was around. She is an amazing boat driver and even pulled out a few doughnuts for us. We got back to church, packed, cleaned and started our journey home at around 1.30. We stopped for supper at Wendy’s in Grenada, Mississippi. Let me tell you there bathrooms are less than ideal, much less. Olivia and I went to the bathroom together as girls do; we walked in and burst out laughing…one would usually find stalls in a girl’s restroom but not this Wendy’s! Two toilettes were what were in the room, no stalls or anything. After we composed ourselves we decided to take turns, no stalls were really more of a guy’s kind of thing. Seeing as the door didn’t lock we stood guard for each other and then proceeded to tell the guys our humorous story. We loaded back into the van and are continuing our 28 hour drive back to Manitoba. Cheers!

Day 9

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