News From the Last Team

Hi friends! Sorry we missed blogging last night, but due to some unexpected bus trouble (easily fixed) and a late night exploring the French Quarter, the blogging had to wait. Today, Taylor and Andrew will be sharing with you about the adventures of our third work team:

Our team started off the week by deciding on a sweet name. "Team Sheetrock Your Mom" consists of Noah, Ben Babcock, Andrew, Taylor, Holly, Glenise, Tim, and Denny. Tim narrowly escaped being tossed in the site dumpster because he forgot his Tyvek flight suit.

Aside from dumpsters and pigeon-baiting, we sheetrocked a house for a woman named Ann. Her house was gutted a year ago after it was flooded to the ceiling, and was just now being restored. Ann and her family had lived in the house for 15 years, and she told us about how God had always provided for them, and how excited she was to redesign the house - she sees every disaster as a possibility for blessing.

When we arrived at the house the plumbing and electrical work had been mostly completed and sheetrock had been started. We had much to do in this one week at hand. As we started working we realized that we would be hanging sheetrock on the ceiling first, but we quickly found that toolboxes and folding chairs would have to take the place of ladders. Two teams out of our group sheetrocked while Glenise and Taylor got started puttying the finished walls and ceilings. Over the course of the week, Ali joined us to take some shots for the Minnesota Daily. By the end of the week, all the sheetrock had been hung and a first coat of putty was well underway for another team to continue.

Yesterday, we worked a half day so we could go on a swamp tour and then to the French Quarter. The swamp tour was amazing: we saw a bazillion alligators which were all named Boudreaux by the tour guide, who also passed around a baby alligator and an alligator snapping turtle, and shot marshmallows to the myriad Boudreaux with a wrist rocket. Afterwards, we stood around while our broken-down bus was fixed. Then, we ventured to the French Quarter and Bourbon Street. Favorite features of the French Quarter were Cafe du Monde and the beignets, which are like puffy clumps of funnel cake with a metric ton of powdered sugar, and the live music pouring out of cafes and clubs into the streets- to which we danced the electric slide... and other people actually joined in. That was pretty much the whole day. Regards, Taylor and Andrew.

Thanks so much for reading our blog - our work is over for this trip and we're just finishing up a celebratory turkey dinner and are getting ready to climb on our bus for at least 24 straight hours. Minnesota here we come!

(posted by Rebecca, Taylor & Andrew on Friday, March 16, 2007)