Okay, dear reader, I’m under the pressure of deadline and so this post is missing not only details but also photos. I’ll get them up in the next twenty-four hours. In the meantime…
Bearing Witness
This morning’s wake-up bell went off in the early part of the 7:00am hour so we had enough time to shower up, pack up, and move all of our belongings. Living Water UMC had a 9:00am service so all of our belongings needed to be put in the back two classrooms so they had the nursery free for childcare and the sanctuary free for worship. That also meant rearranging the eighteen rows of eighteen chairs apiece back the way they were when we arrived. We ate breakfast, packed our lunches, got the sanctuary set up, and were ready to move out. As Loretta let us know what our jobs were for the day, Pastory Marty stopped by before the service to thank us for being witnesses to God’s work in Cedar Rapids. Having recently traveled to El Salvador to bear witness to the living conditions of the people and having that word, “witness,” play so prominently into that trip, his proclamation hit me quite squarely.
Break It Up
Two groups broke up two long pieces of sidewalk. How long? Well, the sidewalk was four feet in width and both groups broke up twenty feet in length. Most of the 160-square feet was broken up by hand, using picks, sledges, and crowbars. Eventually, Loretta rented a jackhammer and that made short work of some of the larger slabs of concrete. One group did an area about a block from where we’d been working all week while the other group broke up the sidewalk directly in front of the red house. The red house which, by the way, Dave M. and his crew finished putting the entire second coat on.
Dirt.
One of the largest, dirtiest, wettest, and most-exhausting jobs today was hauling dirt. I need to get more details on this one and interject them into this post retroactively but I do know one thing: this crew was moving dirt for hours and when it started pouring rain… they kept going. For a little while, they did take a break under whatever bit of cover they could find and there was some panic for around twenty minutes as everyone was accounted for but Mitchell. When the rain subsided, everyone was wet, despite their cover, except for Mitchell. He stepped out of the port-a-john, dry as a bone and ready to get back to work.
The Mystery of Scribbles
While trying to sort out which lunches needed to go to what worksite, there was one lunch that had no name, only a series of scribbles. My lunchbag didn’t have a name on it, either – just a drawing I made of a giant squid. As for the mysterious Scribbles, however, Nik, Sam, and I couldn’t figure it out but decided the case would be solved at lunch time. The culprit would have a new nickname for the rest of the day: Scribbles.
And who was our mystery lunchbag packer? I don’t know. I forgot to ask! Stay tuned…
Some Homes Change, Some Stay the Same
Wright and I took some time this morning to drive around the neighborhood where our group worked last year to see what had been worked on and what still needed work. We found a lot of surprises. Most of the homes we worked on looked to be in great shape. It was the homes which were in terrible shape one year ago that are still in disrepair and that didn’t raise my spirits any. Some still had spray-painted messages like, “Still waiting” or “No trespassing” in tall capital letters across the front of the building. Many had boarded up doors and windows, the plywood streaked with dirt and beginning to warp from exposure.
Bearing Each Others’ Cross
We also saw many wooden crosses staked all around the neighborhood. This was something I didn’t remember being there last year so we got out to investigate. Each cross is in front of a sandy, grassy lot with no house, serving as a marker to a home that was deemed too far beyond repair and had been torn down. One street had eight crosses in a row on one side and four on the other, an entire neighborhood simply gone.
Elizabeth helped fill in the gaps on this story for me. She spoke with a woman whose house she was working on about the crosses. Turns out they were put up by citizens in honor of their neighbors who have left the neighborhood. . Communication was not the greatest in the months after the flood and for many who departed for other regions, it was usually “through the grapevine” talk that informed the neighborhood of yet another person who called it quits. There was controversy about whether the crosses should be up, as some folks felt they were only appropriate markers for those who have passed away, but many neighbors – including the woman Elizabeth spoke to – said they are a poignant reminder of the neighbors who have all moved awayThe markers are not only a symbol of a fallen home but of missed loved ones.
Competitive Puzzle League, Midwest Division
After dinner, I found two puzzles in the nursery – a 24-piece Noah’s Ark puzzle and a 40-piece Veggietales puzzle – that were both huge at around two by three feet. The record on the Noah’s Ark puzzle: Mitchell with 1 minute, 18 seconds. Champion for the Veggietales puzzle: Kelsey at 4 minutes, 23 seconds. A group of youth yet again played Catchphrase, some of us played Imaginiff earlier in the day, some went across the street to the Dollar General to pick up silly trinkets (including “farting” tubs of slime), and there was a rousing game of Name That Tune which I played every once in a while with a shouted-across-the-room answer (Me: “THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW YORK BY SIMON AND GARFUNKEL!” Eric: “Okay, point for Nate.”)
Sharing Witness
At worship, we looked at two passages: Mark 6: 1-6 in which no one in Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth lends him much credence and Acts 22:14-21 in which Paul is sent away from Jerusalem to work with non-Jews. In both cases, the scripture passages have a lot in common with us. When it comes to the Mark passage, it’s possible some of us return to people who expect us to be on mission trips doing this sort of work. And then there are others in the group who are young and who did new work like jackhammering and fence pulling and dirt hauling and so on. There may be people who don’t think we can do it, like the people of Nazareth who thought, oh this is Mary’s son, the kid we saw grow up down the street. Similarly, these are just the kids at church or down the street or my friends on my soccer team, what could they do that could change the world? With grace and patience, we can share the miracles we’ve witnessed here.
As for the Acts passage, Paul was sent out not to work with those who he feels are the target demographic for his message. Instead, he gets sent out to those who have no idea about Jesus. He’s challenged to go beyond his comfort level and spread the word to new ears. For us, there are obvious communities to share our trip with: our churches, our families, this blog community, etc. And there are sometimes non-obvious communities – friends who don’t attend church or neighbors, etc. – who could really benefit from hearing about our times in Iowa. It’s up to us to share in helpful, uplifting ways.
I shared about my time in El Salvador back in March and bearing witness to the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the solidarity marches I participated in (you can read about that trip at the UTS blog) and my witness opened us up to sharing witness with the whole group. Approximately one-third of us shared personal stories from the work or from people who we worked for. These are now all of our stories and we will share them with you back home so you, too, can bear witness.
As for Tomorrow…
Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we pack up all of our belongings and depart Living Water UMC one last time. We’ve been told we have a variety of small jobs to do on Monday morning before we head home, at least one of them being the need to make sandwiches for those displaced and living in temporary trailer quarters. It’s a job we did last year on our final day during the trip and we were told we made more sandwiches that morning than any other volunteer group had done with the Iowa UMC before. If we do indeed make sandwiches again, I’ll let you know if we beat our old record, dear reader.
Regards,
-nm
Dirt and the Deluge:
Dave S., Steve, Kaitlyn, Maddie, Brett, Elizabeth, Kate, Parker, Alex O., and I worked those sites. I am so proud of the kids who kept right on during the first cloudburst, then the deluge that followed. The homeowners were eternally grateful. The teenagers actually enjoyed the rain, with Alex crying to the skies for more…and the skies answered with aplomb! Alex also was supposed to be at another site, but the transportation wasn’t there, so like a good sport, he stayed and worked. Maddie is one of the hardest-working people I know. Kate and her mom have a wonderful relationship. Steve’s back was hurting him that day, so he asked Dave S. to trade with him, and Steve rested (but not without some good-natured ribbing from the rest of us!). He was the driest of us all until he and I had to walk in the rain to give the truck keys back to Dave and switch out vehicles! Elizabeth F. has photos of the day, in case you are interested.
Addendum (I didn’t know that it would let me write and write and write!!):
Parker worked doggedly all day, too, but also adding levity with his quotes from movies that were dead-on! Brett and Kaitlyn and Maddie are great friends, and they all inspire each other, talk with each other, and laugh with each other the whole day long! I loved all the bonding and chemistry and learning throughout the week and into the wet, “terrible, horrible, no good very bad day!”