Day 5

Day 5
The finial day. There was a sense of excitement with our whole group this morning. Everybody was up and ready to eat breakfast on time. Even Tony, who is a bear to get up, was out there eating bisques and gravy. We packed our lunches and headed of. Since it was the last day and we didn’t have to go to the warehouse before we went to our site, I made an executive decision to stop at Starbuck and get a good cup of coffee for the morning. It was a great decision. We headed straight over to Dave’s house to pick up where we left of from the night before.
The original team of Justin, James, Travis, Ryan, Sam, Jill, Jacey, and Christina started working on there normal jobs. We add a few from the second crew to put a second coat on the awning out side (which looked great by the time we were finished), and to start mudding the drywall. The rest of the second crew went on a project. We were trying to think of ways that we could bless our two families and after a little brain storming we decided to get them a gift basket with some personal touch.
You could tell that our work meant so much to Dave. Jerry Wayne pointed out how much Dave was talking with all of us and having a good time, way different from the first day. I have already given the student the finish strong talk and the just right to the work. We spent most of the day finishing the back room and the bathroom. I am proud to say that I can now do hang drywall along with several other kids in our youth group. We took a short lunch break today and got right back to work. We wanted to try to finish as much of the house as possible. About 3 o’clock things started winding down. We ran out of mud and most of our manual labor was dropping like flies. We knew that we still had to drop off some tool at the warehouse so we started cleaning up around 4. We made sure that we didn’t leave Dave with a huge mess to clean up after we left. We got all the tools together, cleaned up, and all crashed out on the lawn of his house. Heather was still out with the other team finishing the gift baskets.
It was real fitting that the song that came on as soon as we were finished and all out side with Dave was Lean on Me, I just smiled. Heather pulled up in the van and we all got packed up to leave. We took a big group picture with Dave and made plans to come back to meet him for the festival at 8. Dave handed James a CD case with about 40 CD of all different kind of music that he had burned for us, a lot of jazz, and blues. He loves music and this was his gift to us for everything we did. It was really special. A few of us headed to the warehouse and the rest went back to the church to eat and get cleaned up for the crawfish festival.
Before we left the church, Jerry Wayne and Travis, gave a dozen of colorful roses to Mrs. Nichole, the leader of our location operation. She got a big smile on her face and gave them all a huge. It really was the least we could do for somebody that works as hard as she does. There was a team from Alabama that had been serving food all week. They were so impress with our student that they kept taking pictures of the kids and thanks us for everything. It was such a blessing.
Well we all loaded up and headed over to Chris and Marjory house. I didn’t even realize this until today but the live right smack in the middle of the lower 9th Ward. This is the area that got the worst of the storm, the area that was constantly on the new, and the one that all the tourist come a visit. We had a chance to rebuild it. We were greeted at the gate by a chuckling Mr. Chris and his with wife. All the Kid piled in his small back yard and you could hardly hear yourself everybody was talking. He invited us to go into the house and we all took a tour of his the place. He has two Dalmatians and a St. Bernard mix that run the place. Marjory stopped everybody and want to thank us for everything; I thought Christian was going to cry standing behind her. We gave them there basket we had put together, It had a picture of all of us, some doggie treats, a tee-shirt for each of them, a book for her cause she likes to read, and a album for pictures with some personal note and scripture from all the kids. We placed it in a canvas basket that we drew our logo on and signed it. They loved it.
We all piled in back in the vans, including Chris and his wife, and headed over to Dave’s house. We called him on the phone and he was still eating at his parent’s house so we were just going to meet him at the festival. As we got close you could see the huge Farris wheel in the distance. Cars we lined up every where as were the people. It was one of the largest carnival/music/festival I have ever seen. You could tell the kids were excited as they were arguing in the car over which ride they would going to ride and which one was the coolest. We park in the back and met in the front. It only gets better. We were discussing our plan meeting location incase anybody gets lost and Chris interrupted me and told everybody that he and his wife wanted to pay for all the kids. He started handing out 20 dollars to each of the kids and told them to have a good time. I was going to stop him but I realized that this was his way of blessing us. This was a huge gift. Well all the kids decide get the all you can ride pass and headed to the rides. Dave met up with us and got an all you can ride pass and went of with the kids. When I talked to his sister earlier she said he hasn’t been out of his trailer in months, well he was on the tilt-a-whorl tonight baby.
We road rides until about 10:15 and headed over to the food area. Again blessed, Chris started handing out money again for all for us to get some food. There were tones, some had shark on a stick, other gumbo, some had gator, but the high light was the crawfish. It was an awesome ending to a great week. We all walked back to the van and got ready to leave. Dave came with us and we all gathered around the van to give him his basket. Christina told him that “we just wanted you to know that we love you, but more important the reason were hear is because we believe God loves you.” Kinda taken back he thanked us again and gave us all hugs. We loaded back in and went back to Chris house to drop them off. We said goodbye and got back to the church about 12. What a night.
I really can’t express to you in words how I feel. I am so proud of our kids. We honestly have some of the best there is. They work so hard this week with out a complaint. They loved these two families they way I believe Jesus would, with word and deed. They made an impact in the live of the people down in New Orleans and I believe that New Orleans made an impact in there life. I have a dream, a vision. I believe that as a Christian every place we go, and every person we meet should be better because we were there. I hope this was accomplished.