Finally a post from Pearlington!

I know, I know, where have we been??? We've been on an adventure!

Here's the rundown of the last 72 hours:

• Plane rides pretty good. One medical emergency in air between SJ and Denver (not anyone we knew) but the amazing flight attendants handled it well. Don't know what happened, just know we prayed.
• Alamo Car Rental in at the airport will be receiving many unhappy letters from people on the team. The shuttle bus pulled into the lot and we saw....5 cars and a lot of people in the lobby, in front of the building and no one was smiling. Quote of the moment was from the shuttle bus driver who said "I know this looks bad." Hmmm...Craig saved the day and found pretty much the last two vans anywhere in New Orleans. 12 passenger vans. I'm driving "Vanna White", Craig is driving "Van Halen" and there is much laughter amongst the team. God worked it out. Praise Jesus!
• Saturday morning as the Vanna White crew was heading over to the Van Halen crews place we had a surprising encounter with the local sheriff's department. One pulled across the road in front of the van, another across the road in back of the van, effectively blocking us in. My panicked mind immediately thought "How fast was I going? I swear I was only going 35!". Turns out there was a "Be on the lookout for" bulletin out for the same kind of van we are driving with Louisiana plates. It didn't take long for the sheriff's to figure out this Church group from California weren't the ones they were looking for. Nice start to the day.

Our work sites have been varied and interesting.

• One crew headed over to Miss Anna's house on Saturday to paint. She was nervous about painting when it looked like the rain was coming in but a quick prayer with the crew and she was ready to go! They did a great job too! By lunch they had primed the walls of the garage and by dinner they had the trim primed and had started priming the house. Awesome!
• Another crew went to The Wakes house. This is the 3rd trip that we've worked at the Wakes and David helped a few of us build ramps last March. Electrical work, shoe molding, crown molding and more was installed. The crew there learned that there is a handy guide right on the saw that helps cut angles for molding...it just took them awhile (and a few cuts) to find it. Bill and Douglas were schooled on how to take a ladder down by Miss Tami. It was fun to watch!
• A third crew went to Captain John's property to get started on the foundation. He wanted his house as close to the bayou as possible. The morning was spent plotting everything out and the afternoon was spent digging (luckily a backhoe was available). Unfortunately by the end of the day it was apparent that there was no way to build where they were digging...the walls of the trench kept collapsing. Everyone came back a little sad but reported that Captain John's response when told that his house would need to be built somewhere else just shrugged and said "build it where the old house was".
• The fourth crew headed out to Miss Carolyn's house. She has 35+ cats, 4 ducks and some other animals that I can't remember right now. Her house is has been built but needed some fixing up. A trench was dug for the sewer line (and then filled back in when they found that the line would be lower than the septic tank...not a good combo I hear.), tile was laid in the entry way and an overhang was built for over the front door to stop rain from leaking inside.
• The last crew stayed back at Ben's house and emptied both trailers that house all the tools and building materials. The goal was to rearrange the trailers and it quickly became overwhelming. At the end of the day we had put in new shelves to house all the tools, found boxes and boxes of nails (many the same size), sorted through miscellaneous buckets of stuff and had tried to find a home for everything.
• Oh and Saturday the temperature in Pearlington was a balmy 76 degrees with humidity and lovely little no-see-ums.

Today (Sunday) we decided that our worship would be our service to the people of Pearlington.

• The crew at Miss Carolyn's returned to finish the sewer line, roof the overhang and grout tile. They also played frisbee in between waiting and talking with Miss Carolyn.
• The crew at Captain John's returned to start digging holes in a new place for the house foundation. We've been told that Captain John is very appreciative of the work being done...even though many of the crew felt like they were just standing around while the backhoe did most of the work. That's the nature of work!
• Miss Anna's crew had downtime today as the rain that seemed imminent on Saturday seemed extra imminent today. They eventually found work at a friend of Miss Anna's painting indoors this time. Miss Maria gave Debbie the job of climbing up scaffolding (that had to be at least 12 feet high) to sand down a beam that had been painted in preparation for the beam to be stained. Debbie even stayed "after work" to make sure her job got done before the scaffolding was taken away. This crew even had time to scout out a future job!
• The Wake's crew returned to finish their jobs well! They got done with everything they could do about an hour after lunch. There weren't any ladder or saw incidents to speak of and they were dispersed to other sites.
• Gail and Ellen plugged along on the trailers at Ben's all morning with help from Sandy, Lynn, Mark and Debbie. After lunch Gail continued to work on the trailers while the rest were sent to other places. Sammy and Melanie got to hang around and paint a shed on Ben's property. Meggie and Regina joined in about half-way through.
• The threat of rain turned to real rain just after lunch (good timing!). My job was to drive people around and around and around and around. All total today I drove 89 miles. About half of those miles came from just going around Pearlington. It's amazing how spread out that little town is...though I did pass the same guy working in his yard about 10 times.

It's a great team of people, doing great work. Our days are filled with laughter, there are good things being shared at our evening meetings and we are so blessed to be staying in two comfortable (air conditioned!) homes. Thanks for praying, keep it up!

Pictures will be posted tomorrow. It's midnight here and 6am is coming soon! Time for bed! Good night!