helloooooo hump day

Whoooo, kids. It's Wednesday ... notorious in work trip history for being the day that it starts sinking in. Three days of tired, sore and hot. Two days to go. Three days of sometimes close quarters and differences of opinion and work style. Two days to go. Nerves get a little raw, sensitivies get a little more so. And yes, two days to go.

So today on Hump Day at Lee Street, we learned this is not Courtney's favorite sight. In fact, it is perhaps her least favorite. (Middle ladder's me.)

This, however:
makes me quite happy. Climbing the ladder, clenching my hams and glutes every step of the way, all the while wielding a nail gun ... all worth it to know that Barbara comes outside every night after work, four or five times, to look at her new siding. "She can't get enough of it," John tells us today. Worth it, man. Totally and completely worth it.

Wednesday is a day of frustrations, many due to the increasing realization that we are working ... hard, a lot, I assure you, both groups, both sites, both houses ... and then we are leaving. The people we serve, though? They stay here. With the partly-done this and the slightly-worked-on that, and the endless streets and lots of debris and loss and pain and abandonment (by locals, by businesses, by agencies, by 'help', by seemingly everyone). We visit this, and do what minimal we can to help ... for them it's every. day. reality.

So, after three days, with two to go, we also always seem to get an extra dose of the Holy Spirit to see us through. Somehow, the Spirit just knows where to move, and where to rest, and how to do what needs to be done ... so that we can do what needs to be done.

As we talked tonight, closing out the day with a lot of laughter (I had a sore side to go with my achin' legs) and some really powerful storytelling and reflection, we all repeated what we had been told by those who live here ... If it wasn't for church groups and volunteers, nothing would be happening, still. Cleanup and restoration is slow and tedious and painful and heartbreaking. But it will be at a standstill if even the church groups leave.

So we have promised that we won't. We have a two-year plan to be part of the hope ... part of what gets this gulf coast community - not just our little work team - over the hump. And if we need to develop another two-year plan after it, then we will. We will have to. We know these people ... they aren't strangers ... they're John and Barbara and Ronnie and Janet ... How can we not help them?

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John 4: 7 - 12)