Faith Journey Life Journey

Greetings, dear reader. Just a quick note to say I’ve added photos to yesterday’s blog post about Day 1, if you wanted to head back that way. Also, it looks like Faith Journey Life Journey is off to a great start with over 150 independent visitors in its first twenty-four hours of existence. Thank you for following our mission trip and I hope you come to find Faith Journey Life Journey a great way to learn more about Excelsior UMC as time goes on.

And now, on to the details behind our first full day in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory…”

We awoke at the crack of dawn. Well, not that early. More like 6:30am. Many of those who slept in the sanctuary awoke much earlier, though, as sunrise’s first beams pierced through the front doors and gave the room a light illuminating. As for the men sleeping in the nursery in the back of the church, the room was more or less pitch black the entire night and we all enjoyed every minute of sleep right until our 6:30am alarms went off.

After a breakfast of sweet pancakes, spicy sausage links, and sugary cereal, we made our sack lunches and prepared for the day. Our caravan left right on time at 8:00am to meet our handler, Steph, at St. James United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids. Some vehicles in the caravan took a wrong turn and after following them for a while I relaxed and listened to the GPS. The route “Emily” (that’s the name of the GPS’s British accent we chose for the trip) gave those of us in Mazie ended up a pleasant surprise.

Revisiting Last Year’s Journey

St. James UMC is on Ellis Boulevard, and that turned out to be very near many of the homes and buildings the group worked on last year. We only got a cursory glance as we rushed to make our appointment time, but I was amazed at how good the homes looked, one year later. Their state of repair was leaps and bounds beyond the dilapidation we witnessed last year, including the piano store we gutted for use as a warehouse for relief tools and supplies. I hope to return to the area for a few moments to shoot some video and snap some photos to share here on the blog.

Block By Block

Steph, who has been working in Iowa three weeks now after spending time in other disaster areas doing UMC-sponsored relief, gave our group some insight into what happened back in 2008. With a particularly wet winter and plenty of snow to melt and trickle into the Cedar River, it didn’t take long for it to overflow its banks and take over the surrounding 500-year flood plain. The church we met in, St. James UMC, had water in the sanctuary up to the base of the windows. Steph told us this as we sat in rows of chairs that all would have been covered in water. Plus, the sanctuary is elevated to about a 1.5 story. People were taken by surprise in the surrounding neighborhood and hope was in short supply.

At first, recovery efforts were focused on getting one house at a time completely renovated and ready for that family to move back in immediately. However, they found that people didn’t want to move back in. They’d take one look at their perfect house and the devastated neighborhood they’d be moving back to and said it would be impossible to have that situation sit well with their soul. With that in mind, they started a new program called “Block By Block” which has volunteers working on several homes at once in one particular area so the focus is now the neighborhoods getting rebuilt together rather than single homes being finished one at a time. If it takes longer as a whole, the positive trade-off is neighborhoods are coming together even more. So far, the UMC’s Block By Block project has finished nineteen blocks of one hundred eighty homes with eighty being worked on by volunteers right now. Of those eighty, we were given several tasks to tackle at four homes.

Our First Work Assignments

Our caravan headed west on 1st Street and arrived at the four homes we were to work on. I’ll do my best to record who was where and doing what but with forty-five of us that isn’t always easy. At any rate, here’s the five homes and their major jobs…

Home #1 – What’s red and red and red all over?

Tall and bright red with white trim on the windows, this home needed touch-up painting high and low. Professional painter Dave M. and Loretta headed a crew of Molly N., Hattie, Alexis, and Kaitlyn for this job, doing their best to add an even second coat of red paint. It’s tricky work, as there wasn’t a gray primer put between the original white paint and the first coat of red paint. This means it’s easy to put coat after coat of red on and still have patches of white show through. Still, the crew carried on and the work went well. Hattie, Alexis, and Molly painted each other a little bit, while Loretta and I learned from the homeowner’s daughter the building behind the home used to be a church and the red home was the former parsonage. There’s a lot of storied history on this particular block and she was grateful for all the work we and other crews have been doing. She even had a cooler in the back filled with bottled water and Mountain Dew for the crew.

Home #2 – Upstairs / Downstairs

Around the corner from Home #1, a crew led by “Captain Eric” sanded down the back porch so they could paint it. The volunteers who’d worked there before finished the drywall and mudding, which is great, but the mudding wasn’t necessarily the greatest so there was a tremendous amount of sanding that needed to happen. Rather than judging the group who came before us, we took it as a lesson for what could happen when volunteers rush through a job and we’ll keep it in mind when it comes to our own work. Eric, Molly D., Kelsey, Trevor, and Wright scrubbed down the room and coated it with bright white paint.

Downstairs wasn’t any less dusty. Pastor Kent, Erin, Jacob, and yours truly spent time wiping down the walls so they could get a coat of water-resistant paint. We peeled away pieces of rubble and dirt and swept it all up, then moved all belongings and furniture from the walls so they could be painted. Later in the afternoon, Sam and Brett moved into the basement to adhere the paint – something they became experts at last summer.

Home #3 – Indiana Jones never saw this many bugs.

This home was across the street from Home #2. The crew dubbed themselves Team Tuck’n'Point taken after “tucking,” the taking away of crumbling foundation and putting in fresh concrete, and “pointing” out where the damage was so the tucking could get underway. Pat and Bob were under the front deck much of the day doing the tucking while Marlys, Jake, Elizabeth, Mitchell, and more were around the sides of the home pulling weeds and debris as well as large chunks of ruined foundation. Kate told me later that every time they pulled away a big chunk of cracked concrete, a pile of various bugs spilled out onto her and the other workers. All the agoraphobics in Team Tuck’n'Point, however, used it as an opportunity to bond with one another.

Home #4 – You mean there was a post-hole digger the whole time?!

Next door in Home #4, Chris led the trio of Julia, Katie, and Olivia into the bathroom and set to work painting it up pretty. Meanwhile, a nine-member crew of Dave S., Eric, Nick, Chris, Nik, Derrick, Jenna, Morgan, and Kate were in the backyard putting up a fence. Of course, first they had to take down the old fence. It didn’t take long, however, compared to getting the new fence up. Using a plumb line and plenty of patience, the crew measured out a straight line for the new privacy fence and dug the post holes with hand-cranked post-hole diggers. Afterward, they found an electric one in one of the UMC supply trailers which caused a little laughter and shrugging as they went to work setting the posts in the holes with freshly-mixed concrete. Parker pulled bag after bag of cement mix into the backyard via wagon and the group mixed it and packed it in. They set wooden trusses up to keep the poles upright and the rest of the fence will have to wait until tomorrow once the concrete dries.

Home #5 – Paint Your Basement

Steve took a small crew down to the basement to put a fresh coat of paint on the floor and I’ve got to say, they were so efficient they were done before I had the chance to snap a single photo or shoot a single second of footage. That’s how we like to do it down here in Cedar Rapids: quickly, yes, but efficiently and well-done, too.

Enter Mama Jenny.

In the middle of the afternoon, LYFE Camp Senior Counselor Jenny dropped by to say ‘hi’ and deliver us some much-appreciated popsicles. Nicknamed “Mama Jenny” at camp this year, she’s an old friend of Eric and mine, the three of us having been CITs way back in the day (like thirteen years ago). She’s now a youth director in Cedar Rapids and was excited to have us in her city. One of her youth, a young man named RJ who also came to LYFE Camp this year, is joining us for some work tomorrow.

Cool Pool, Hot BBQ Chicken, and Veiled Worship

After a hard day’s work, we went back to the church, changed, and most everyone headed out to the Marion Municipal Pool. This was such a hit last year that we decided to do it again, opting to go tonight rather than Sunday as originally planned in case of rain (likely). After a quick trip back to the church to get Alex N.’s forgotten swimming trunks, he and I rejoined the group in the pool for cannonballs off the diving board, sunbathing, and the Don’t Look Game except played in the pool instead of its usually land-based play. I don’t know what the game is really called, and I doubt I can explain it without photos. I’ll try to get a few photos of how the game is played tonight so we can put them up as a little tutorial, dear reader.

We came home to a scrumptious meal featuring BBQ chicken right off the grill and assorted side dishes. Having eaten our fill, we kicked off worship with a few songs, including “Blindman,” to fit thematically with our scripture for the evening, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6. We have come to see what work needs to be done for others on behalf of God and the veil of ignorance or a desire not to know the suffering of others has been pulled back. The veil has been lifted and we cannot put it back. We discussed what has surprised us so far, what part of the work will stick with us, and who we have connected with so far. Small group conversation must be going well because I kept interrupting it to move on to the next component of worship.

We closed worship by reading our “letters from home” – your comments on this blog! Please keep them coming; they meant so much to our group.

Don’t Stop Believin’

The night ended for me and a crew of musicians (Eric, Trevor, Alex, Alex, Sam, Kelsey, and many more) singing a few tunes on our eclectic collection of instruments: a guitar, a conga drum, a keyboard, and a ukulele. We played “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” Katie Perry’s “California Girls,” a slow-then-driving version of “Surely the Presence of the Lord Is in This Place,” and a rousing, everyone-singing-along rendition of “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey. Now that’s a setlist to close the night!

Highlights and Wrap-Up

A few great / funny moments from today include Molly and Eric doing some Kung Fu Fighting, a local DJ sputtering off his “garbagemouth” style between today’s pop hits at the pool, yummy leftover pizza, uproarious games of Catchphrase, checking out Kang’s Tae Kwon Do (or as Chris called it, “The Karate Store,” Wright’s excitement of making the cut-off for 21+ “adult swim” at the pool by a mere two months, Brenda leading a group of young women in beading art projects, and despite efforts to clean up as much as possible, many of the girls who had paint in their hair still have paint in their hair (especially poor Molly D. who accidentally leaned against a wall and got primer in hers). As for me, I was excited to get Faith Journey Life Journey off the ground and get the blog rolling.

Tomorrow brings another full day at current and new work sites. Keep those comments coming and I’ll let you know what we’re up to soon, dear reader.

Regards,
-nm

Today’s photo gallery is below. Click the pic for a bigger version: