Hi all!
TurningWheels is back from Mississippi and it was a really rewarding and fun experience! CityTeam graciously hosted our team at their relief camp in Bay St. Louis. Thank you CityTeam and Dresden for your willingness to host us crazy TurningWheels folks! We had 100 bicycles shipped out there last month with helmets and they were waiting for our team to assemble when we arrived at the CityTeam Camp on Sunday December 16th. We assembled all 100 bicycles the following day with help from a team of about 10 kids who were on mission trips from the local church. These three TurningWheels silly girls couldn’t have done it without our master bike builder and boss, Dave! Oh and darn those pesky fenders! I want a ratchet for Christmas!
Monday evening, CityTeam hosted a spaghetti dinner at camp for the recipients of about 40 of the bicycles. Some parents came with children who were super excited to get their new bikes and helmets. The people of Bay St. Louis were very grateful to our team and couldn’t wait for their kids to see the bikes on Christmas morning! The dinner was super delicious and the company was really gracious and hospitable! We heard a lot of their individual stories and some of them were really hard to imagine. These people had been through so much, I was just glad that we were able to help them in our own little way.
The next evening we traveled out to Pearlington, MS to deliver the remainder of the bicycles to a local church. It was supposed to be just parents picking up bikes for their children, but once the kids saw the CityTeam truck pull in, word spread fast around the neighborhood and there was no stopping them from gathering at the church! One little boy was sitting on a chair next to all of the boys bicycles lined up and kept touching a fender of a bike and wiggling excitedly in his chair. Finally, he walked up to and asked me what time they would be getting their bikes because he had to be home before dark! He had an excited but panicked look on his face and I told him to talk to the pastor. I don’t know if he worked it out or not, but I did see him riding his bike as we left well after dark. I giggle and think he was willing to deal with the consequences as long as he could ride that sweet new red bike home!!! As we pulled away from the church, most of the kids were already zooming around the church excitedly on their new bikes. It was a very rewarding and heartwarming experience for us as we rarely get to be on the distributing end and just to see all of the smiles of the really sweet kids was a really special experience for us all.
On Tuesday, we headed over to a house that was destroyed by the hurricane and being rebuilt by CityTeam volunteers. Dave installed ceiling fans and we also helped to paint siding for the house. The owner of the house was a super neat lady who was so excited to see her home finally coming together as it was really close to completion. A few of the volunteers brought in a Christmas tree and decorated it. We believe this family will be in their new home by Christmas!
We took a break for a while and wandered down to the water where we found a child’s old stuffed monkey sitting on the sea wall which had obviously been in the water for quite some time. There was a lonely vibe attached to the site of the tattered monkey sitting on the seawall but it was in amazingly good condition but had seashells embedded in its plastic hands and feet from being tossed around in the water. It was eerie to imagine that this was once some child’s beloved toy and sad to realize that it would never be reunited with its rightful owner. I felt it was symbolic of the total loss for the families that once called home this now very sparsely inhabited neighborhood as many have decided not to rebuild here. For some reason, this simple stuffed monkey touched me in a very deep way and I connected with what so many must have felt in the days following the storm, the feeling of never really being able to return home again. We left the monkey on the seawall as it just didn’t feel right to remove him and it may seem silly but I won’t be forgetting that feeling and the site of him for a very long time.
We then just kind of meandered through the lots of destroyed homes, staring in disbelief at the belongings and wreckage left behind. There were tables with broken odds and ends that families had left behind like rusty egg timers, broken frames, old trophy stands, warped records and really everything you can imagine. At one point Dave found an old pitchfork and Dave being Dave and Susie being Susie, posed for this shot. For me, it was a bit of comic relief in an unbelievably heartbreaking environment.
Wednesday we took a break from all of our hard work and traveled down to New Orleans for the day. Driving into New Orleans is a really sad site. Almost all of the homes are close to completely destroyed with very little rebuilding going on. Once we reached the French Quarter, we mistakenly entered via Bourbon Street. Personally, it was a bit disappointing as it just felt really dirty with the seedy bars and icky clubs and it is definitely not a place I would recommend taking children! Finally we found our way off Bourbon Street and were delighted to find a really great street band called “The Sweet Nothings Street Band.” Dave paid them 5 bucks to wow us and they did with a really great rendition of an old Sophie Tucker song called “Some of these Days”. These girls were so talented. I was instantly annoyed at the thought of the ridiculousness of the music industry now and it really irritated me that I couldn’t be downloading this song and talent of this caliber onto my Ipod right then! Really, the music was that great.
We also saw some cool really art galleries and ate beignets of course. We even bought the obligatory t-shirts for the kids! (Including Sarah!) Oh, and the Voodoo shops were really quite a sight. I didn’t want to touch anything, shrunken heads and voodoo dolls aren’t really my bag, but Sarah was quite curious about the Goofer Dust!!! We also easily avoided paying 20 dollars to have our foes meet an untimely end! Creepy!!!
We met Dr. Love, the self appointed mayor of New Orleans and were bamboozled into shoe shines and animal balloons but I even look back on that fondly! My balloon was amazingly a monkey of course! Unfortunately on the way out, Susie took quite the tumble and slide on the sidewalk, but for anyone that knows Susie, it wouldn’t be a trip at all without the obligatory fall!
The next morning we rose at 5am and caught our plane back to San Jose, turbulence and all. It’s nice to be home but this experience has convinced me that outreach efforts beyond our community are so very valuable and necessary! Thanks again to all of the donors that made this trip possible, CityTeam Ministries and Ms. Dresden! We couldn’t have pulled this off without you! These are just my personal experiences and feelings, hopefully Susie, Dave or Sarah will add to the blog and give their point of view on this amazing journey.
-Deb
