Friday Question: Giving

Did you participate in the food truck and school supply distribution? What was your favorite moment during the afternoon?

now you are the body of christ…

…and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12.27)

This week as we prepare for John’s installation and for the annual stewardship campaign and for the beginning of the prayer partner project, I thought this would be an excellent reminder: we are the church and God is using us to do God’s work in the world…and it can’t be done well without each of us playing our part, just like a body.  Are you in?

 

church family–taking it to the streets

This week the read-with-the-pastors book group discussed Missional Renaissance, which talks about a “third way” of seeing the church (the first way being “a place where certain things/holy things happen” and the second being “a vendor of religious goods and services”). This third way is essentially as a missionary society–that the church is the people, wherever we are. So we’re the church at home, at our day jobs, at the playground, at the grocery store, at school, on the freeway, in the voting booth, at the doctor’s office, at the coffee shop or restaurant, etc, and we are a people partnering with God to love the world into wholeness.
One of the things McNeal says in this book is this:

“The missional church is made up of missionaries who are playing the big game every day. They live their lives with the idea that they are on a mission trip. On mission trips, people focus on the work of God around them, alert to the Spirit’s prompting, usually serving people in very tangible ways, often in ways that involve some sacrifice or discomfort. Life on mission is more intentional and more integrated. While the concerns of life (family, work, leisure) are pursued, they are part of a larger story being played out for the missionary. This story does not require a round-the-world excursion to discover or to pursue. Mission is not something “out there”; it is the defining quality of how missionary life is lived.”

Last weekend we took a first step (haha!) toward living this idea…with the CROP walk! This year we had 20 walkers from RCLPC who literally took the church out to the street.  We also raised $1981!  The Crystal Lake CROP walk raised around $11,000 total and had right around 150 walkers.  This was a great way for us to help people who are hungry, living in poverty or even in homeless shelters.  It was a great way to put our faith into action for 3.77 miles.  And it was an awesome opportunity to join feet with people from several different Christian traditions to show the love of God for the world…out in the world!

Thanks, CROP walkers and donors! Now let’s take what we’ve learned and be part of God’s mission with every step we take!

home

we had a great week, working hard, sweating a lot, growing together, and meeting people.

But even good trips involve looking forward to sleeping in your own bed….especially when you’ve been sleeping on a camp cot in a barely air conditioned plastic box.

We headed home and had a remarkably smooth travel day–everything happened on time, pretty stress-free, and we felt pretty laid back about it.  We got to O’Hare safely, were picked up by Bill and Eric in their big cars, and were deposited back at church mid-afternoon…just in time for a nice nap.

Our last night in Houma was spent at the Jolly Inn, meeting local people and learning some Cajun dances.  The music was awesome and a fun night was had!

I can’t upload video to the blog, apparently, so I’ll try to put some videos on the facebook page later this week (when I can plug into the hardwired internet at church so it will go faster!).

A few random photos that didn’t make it into the week’s blogs are below…enjoy!

the drawbridge we drove over every day on the way to work…how cool is that?  Look at those chains!!

It took four days of trying, but they finally caught one!

car dancing!

“can you feel the love tonight….”

who said painting ceilings was boring?

you don’t want to know what was written on the other car.  Let’s just say: thank goodness it rained the next day.

but while we’re on the subject of cars, I’ll just note that the car I was driving (a slightly newer version of what you see here) was SO MUCH NICER than my car. wow. it even had a back-up camera in the rearview mirror! so cool.

all the gorgeous swamp photography was taken by Mack, aspiring photographer.

Want to hear more stories and see more pictures?  Join us for the post-trip luncheon–a Cajun Lunch!–on August 8th!

Photo Finish

This morning when we walked into our house, it was all texturized and waiting for us.  First up: prime. Then: paint! Then: add trim, paint trim, clean up, and…GO!

It was like being in the final minutes of Trading Spaces…for 8 hours.

But at 430pm, when we had Barbra, her daughter and son-in-law, and her son walk into a finished (well…except for the floor) room, it was all worth it.  The long hours in the crazy heat and humidity, the muscles tired from mudding/sanding/painting, the bodies covered in all kinds of substances from dust to sweat to paint…all finished!

And it was a photo finish, as we literally worked down to the wire putting up trim around doors and windows, painting trim and screwing in door pulls. The breaks we took today were pretty much just to wait for paint to dry so we could put up…more paint.

At the end of the day, with Barbra’s family and our whole team, we stood around the room and dedicated it.

We could tell we were in the presence of Africa-American Southerners during the prayer, as they “AMEN-ed” and “hallelujah”-ed and “yes, oh yes!”-ed along with my prayer.  We pulled into the camp 5 minutes before dinnertime, dirty, tired, and happy.

Tonight we are headed to the Jolly Inn, a local place well known for Zydeco music and Cajun dancing.  Tomorrow morning we leave Houma at 730am to head back to the airport.  See you in the afternoon!

The Secret Garden: swamp edition

(sorry for the weird formatting–I can’t fix it while I’m at Starbucks for my half hour of internet access…)
Today was marked by both frustration and fun.  In the morning one team had another not-the-right-equipment moment (as well as an “oops we forgot the housekey” moment), and the other team found we had to mud more when we thought we were nearing the end of the drywall sanding.

But by the end of our half-day of work, there was texturizer

going on the walls in our room, and the other team had the baseboards installed throughout their house.

We stopped at lunchtime to go on a swamp tour for the afternoon…and it was fabulous!

We started our swamp tour by arriving about 2 minutes after 2pm (the start time of the tour)…and watching the boat pull away.  They were able to call the boat back for us and we got on the tour after all—hallelujah!

The tour was fantastic, with stories and music (including an authentic Cajun Accordion!), cool plants, and, of course, ALLIGATORS!

We got to see Ron (“A Cajun Man”) call some of “his” alligators over—animals he’s known for a long time—and feed them raw chicken legs on a long stick.  PeeWee and Mo both swam right up to the side of the boat and jumped out of the water to get the chicken—really really close to us!

It was very cool.  Mo even came when he was called—we spotted him off to the right of the boat, and Ron called him and he swam over!  When Ron said “HURRY UP, MO!” Mo even swam faster!!

We also saw crude oil tanks and pipeline, tanker barges, and natural gas pipeline caps.  In the middle of an environment that, for the most part, looked as if it had never seen a human being it was so pristine, these were a reminder that the modern world has intruded on this beautiful corner of creation in a lot of ways.  In the midst of all this, we saw blue herons, egrets, cranes, alligators, swimming grasshoppers (those huge black ones can swim!!!!!),

the bald cypress (whose roots curve up and poke above the water for better breathing), tons of Spanish moss, and the invasive water hydrangea.

It was a very interesting afternoon!

When we arrived back at the camp, around 4pm, we happened to notice the thermometer at the front of the camp….and it was H-O-T!!!

Dust and Dedication

Last night we enjoyed the hospitality of the Bayou Blue Presbyterian Church—incredible Cajun food (even for vegetarians!), great laughter, and a lot of passion. The people were wonderful, the presentation they gave about coastal wetlands, their gratitude to volunteers who’ve helped restore their lives, and their passion for helping others was hard to put into words.

After dinner, it was our group’s turn to lead devotions for the whole camp.  Our youth did a FABULOUS job, leading people in reflecting on what it means to be a neighbor, complete with a Harry Potter version of the parable of the Good Samaritan. They taught and led an energizer, they did a great skit, they prayed, they led conversation, and even had Scott (and site organizer Colleen) lead us in singing With My Own Two Hands. It was truly a sight to see these youth in this leadership role—a role they have grown into handsomely over the past several years.  I can’t wait to see what they might do next!

Today we split into two work teams.  My team went to the same house we’ve been working in—and we had the extreme pleasure of SANDING DRYWALL!  YAY!  It was such a good time.  From 8-2, with breaks for water and lunch and the pleasure of sitting down…sanding drywall.  There aren’t many pictures because it was so ridiculously dusty that all the pictures were terrible and we feared for electronics in the dust cloud.  (don’t worry-we had masks and glasses!)   But even though the work was hard, hot (masks + glasses = HOT faces, even when we had both the air conditioning and the fan on…and they blew more dust around!), and tedious, we had a good day.  At one point I was taking a break outside and through the window I heard the group inside SINGING!  There were camp song classics like “down by the bay” and “I saw a bear”.  Awesome!

The other group had a strange day—they went to the house that needed to be finished ASAP because it was being dedicated this afternoon at 3pm.  Unfortunately, their supplies and tools and construction manager didn’t arrive until almost lunchtime, so they did a few things, they napped on the floor, and they visited a local gas station for snacks.  Then they had 2.5 hours to finish all the flooring—installing carpet in two rooms.  By the time we all arrived for the dedication at 3pm, it was all done and looked completely fabulous!  It was a joy to attend the dedication, to see the woman who is able to move back into her house (when they began, several people thought the house should just be torn down, but they worked with it and were able to turn it into a nice home for this woman, Magaline).

Now we’re showered and waiting for dinner.  Tomorrow we have only a half day of work, because in the afternoon we’re headed out for a SWAMP TOUR!  Yes, we promise to wear plenty of bug spray….

getting down and dirty!

Well, last night turned out NOT to be spaghetti night—our inside source was, umm, apparently not inside the dinner calendar.  But no disappointment here—it was red beans and rice night! YUM.  We loved it—great flavor, both sausage AND vegetarian options…and we finished up with banana pudding topped with Nilla Wafers, so all in all a great dinner!  The granola cookie bars were the nighttime snack, and they were also as delicious as they smelled!

We had our first experience of the evening program last night, too.  We began with some trivia about the area we are living in this week, then moved on to the slideshow of various teams at work-sites.  Lots of teams look like they’re having a great time, though our group thinks they look like they’re not getting as much work done as they should.  (Our worksite was visited today by the photographer, so we can see how that would happen—she loves to find things and get people to have some fun on breaks from work, taking funny pictures. Here’s the AFTER-the-photographer shot.   )

Anyway, after the slideshow, one of the groups leads devotions for the whole camp (about 90 people including all the staff).  The group from Decatur Georgia led last night, with a devotion time that included singing, scripture explained, and a game where we practiced (and then talked about) teamwork and how when we all work together we can accomplish great things—much more than we could do as individuals.

After devotions it was off to free time, which for two of our girls and me meant moving!  We discovered that our pod was SO ridiculously humid and hot we couldn’t handle it anymore, and we moved to an empty pod that had good air conditioning.  This also required moving our stuff and some cots, because the pod was empty due to being furnished primarily with broken or sub-standard cots.  We soon sorted that out and now we have two pods—one for our dirty clothes and shoes (the humid one), and one that’s nice and cool and not at all humid (for sleeping and keeping the rest of our stuff in).  We joked that we’re living like millionaires, with a separate house for a shoe closet!

Today we were off to work by 8 (after half our group got up at 5.30 to prepare breakfast for the whole camp—good work ladies!), and once we got to Miss Barbra’s house we got busy finishing up the drywall and mudding. We hoped to be done by lunch so we could sand in the afternoon, but it didn’t quite turn out that way.  We mudded and taped and hung drywall…and half the group painted outside too (the house is now yellow with green trim)…and we took our lunch cooler to a local park…and we had snow cones (called sno-balls)…and we went back to discover that we still had more mudding to do.  We were covered in drywall dust, mud, paint, and sweat and we still have work to do.  But tomorrow we should be able to finish that and move on to sanding and even texturing the walls. woohoo!

One of the things we knew about but couldn’t quite conceptualize until we got here was the wildlife situation.  There are crickets/grasshoppers/locusts (jury’s out on what exactly they are, since we can’t just google the picture in our curiosity!) that are almost the size of our hands.  There are lizards everywhere (today we watched what we think might be a bizarre mating ritual!). There are frogs—one even hopped into our pod the first night and took up residence on my pillow, only to be evicted by Molly.  There are fire ants—including a whole nest of them in a flowerpot near where we were washing paintbrushes today!  There are dragonflies in all the colors of the rainbow.  There are bugs of all kinds.  Our bug spray gets a workout every morning and evening, but there’s still some mosquito action.  Aside from flinching basically every time something flies toward us, and running to try to catch lizards (and failing every time so far), we’re handling the wildlife pretty well.  There’s also a dog at our worksite, a 4 month old boxer-german shepherd mix named Scotty.  He’s very adorable, and commands much of our breaktime attention, and is also teething so he attacks everything with his mouth—shoelaces, Katherine the alligator, everything. And yet we love to play with him!

Tonight we are headed out to a local church (or possibly a rec-center run by a church? the directions aren’t completely clear yet)—the Bayou Blue Presbyterian Church—who will feed us Traditional Cajun Food.  They have been feeding the groups at this PDA camp every week for four years, with great love and great homemade cooking.  The staff are all very excited, which tells me this might be one of the best meals of the week (at least for people who eat meat or seafood…but I have high hopes on the vegetarian front too!).  Can’t wait!

First Day At Work!!

We just got back from our first day at work.  We’re working in the home of Miss Barbra, remodeling her add-on room.  We’re trying to get the project finished by the end of the week, which means today we hung drywall, taped and mudded. Tomorrow we’ll finish that up (hooray for sanding!), and maybe get started on texturing and painting.  We also hope to be able to do some work on her lean-to patio area, which has some wood-rot and other issues.

It’s 95 degrees today, and probably 95 percent humidity too.  We watched the temperature climb in the room where we’re working, from 79 (with a fan) when we arrived to 87 and still climbing when we left.  We’re fortunate to have Carl, who actually knows how to do things like hang drywall, as he’s helping us all find our way and do the best job possible with the resources we have available.  We’re also fortunate to be an awesome team that knows how to work together, to divide labor, to do what needs to be done, and to work hard with positive attitudes! I can’t imagine doing this with any other group.  :-)

Tonight is spaghetti night…and I just walked through the kitchen to smell some delicious oatmeal/m-n-m granola cookie bars. The whole place smells great!

You might notice a small stuffed alligator in some pictures—it’s our workteam mascot.  I don’t think the alligator has a name yet, though that may be coming tonight.  Watch for this alligator to make appearances throughout the week.  :-)

we’re here!

Our travel experience was uneventful, even for Amanda who was flying for the first time.  Everything went smoothly and we were able to get to the French Quarter in time for lunch—beignets! mmm, beignets.  fried, donut-esque goodness covered in powdered sugar….

We spent the afternoon exploring the French Quarter—until a rainstorm forced us to spend just over an hour in the covered flea-market-y bustle of the French Market.  When the rain finally stopped, we wandered through the neighborhood (including along the ever-famous…or is that infamous? Bourbon Street—but don’t worry, it was 430 in the afternoon!) toward

La Bayou, where we enjoyed traditional (yet really nice) New Orleans food, thanks to a generous RCLPC benefactor.  Some of the more memorable things include many in our group

trying alligator (tastes like chewy and juicy chicken, apparently) and a few muffalettas (we LOVE the olive salad on top!).  And be sure to check out Scott’s po-boy, with shrimp and fried green tomatoes—it was a sandwich as big as his head!

After dinner we made a stop to pick up sunscreen and bug spray, and then started the drive toward Houma.  About an hour southwest, we got here at about 7.45pm and have been getting used to life in the PDA camp.  We sleep in “pods”—corrugated polypropylene tents (they actually look sort of like laminated cardboard)—that fit three of us, on cots, in each one.  They’re air conditioned at night, at least supposedly.  The one I’m sleeping in is on a faulty circuit and so the air turned off several times during the (very humid) night.  That’s supposed to be fixed today—hallelujah!

This morning we are having orientation with UMCOR (the Methodist equivalent of PDA) who is coordinating our work this week.  Then it’s off to work!