Mark's Notebook

Carpet, Church, Clean-up

Saturday, April 29

On Saturday I was finishing up the carpet install with Nick and Roger. Mary stayed at the camp to work registration for the distribution. (Distribution is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but we were closed last Wednesday due to the storm.)

Sunday, April 30

On Sunday, we went to church at Calvary Chapel, here in the tent in Bay St Louis. They used to serve three meals a day seven days a week, but now they do only a couple of meals. They focus mostly on construction work, and they have a Sunday service and a Wednesday service. The church service was nice and all, but I find myself wondering why they don't plug into the local churches here instead. Especially since almost everyone in the congregation (except us) was a Calvary Chapel volunteer.

On Sunday afternoon we just had to get out of Bay St Louis for a couple of hours. We drove up to Gulfport, just 20 miles up the coast from here. Mary went craft shopping at Michaels while I went computer shopping at Office Max next door. We've had occasion to send some sympathy cards and get-well cards to friends, and also an unexpected birthday card for a man, and Mary didn't have anything suitable in the stock she brought with her. So she went shopping for a few things to make more cards. She also got a shipment from Stampin' Up on Monday.

Monday, May 1

We've mostly been hanging around the camp this week. On Monday we unloaded three trucks of donations. It was so much that there was no room in the storage tent. We also moved a trailer so it can get better sewage lines run to it. Then we had to level the trailer but we didn't really know what we were doing, apparently. I think I actually know what needs to be done, but we did something else at the direction of others. Anyway, it was a busy day even though we stayed here at camp. Mary and I took down almost all the tents we had repaired last week. We had another storm, mostly wind, and it just tore up most of the small tents and did some damage to a couple of the larger ones as well. Fortunately all the most-used tents stayed intact. Anyway, there was lots of moldy material in the damaged tents,including one totally soaked twin bed mattress, and mold did it's usual thang on Mary's health ...

Tuesday, May 2

On Tuesday Mary got a sinus headache, and by Tuesday night she had a full-blown migraine and could not get out of bed. She is still now (Wednesday night) quite sick and we hope she is back on her feet tomorrow.

On Tuesday I finished packing up all the downed tents that were still usable. We also made a second attempt at leveling one of the trailers but it's still not right. I also cleaned up around the camp, and I cleaned the showers. Powerwash mania!

Wednesday, May 3

Today I helped at distribution as best I could. Suddenly right around the distribution opened, we got about 60 volunteers from a college in St Louis, Missouri. I had no idea what to do with them, and there were no leaders around here to give direction. Help! I did get some of the guys for fix our two large tents that came down partially in the wind storm. That was a big score. Some helped stock the distribution tent, and some helped rearrange the storage tent so that we were able to move all the pallets into that tent that we'd received on Monday but had no room for.

One of the guys (name withheld to protect the guilty) (no, it wasn't me) got the forklift stuck in the mud behind Shirley's house. We tried to pull it out with my Toyota truck, then with the flatbed truck, and finally with Bonnie's personal huge Dodge truck. We pulled on it with the big truck from three different directions before it finally broke free. That was fun for all of us!

Since work for us began slowing down earlier this week, we've been thinking about leaving on Thursday or Friday. We told Bonnie about this yesterday, and she asked if we can stay until Sunday so we can help with Saturday distribution. If Mary doesn't start feeling better real soon, I'm going to have to take her away from here and lock her up in a hotel with A/C until she's better. But with y'all prayers, she'll be feeling better tomorrow and in that case, I have my plate full. Bonnie is leaving for a few days, and Pete is back home for a few days, so we are without a leader and there's much to be done. Bonnie went over it all with me today. If the Missouri volunteers come again tomorrow as we're expecting, we'll have it done in a couple of hours. If not, it will take me all three days, even working together with John. It's mostly clean-up around here, but lots of it is in Shirley's yard, which she's been kind enough to lend to the cause.

Please pray for us that Mary gets over her headaches, light sensitivity, nausea, and other maladies soon. Also please pray that we can continue to make a contribution here and be a blessing to the people around us.

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Last updated Tuesday 13 May 2008