A Week Ago Today. Thursday.

Thursday morning we wake early, to get out to our new site and get a good full days work in. The morning starts off fairly easily! Until breakfast. Haha! Ricky unfortunately picks up the herky jerkys in his gut and begins visiting food again. We head into Joplin, and try to make it and see if Ricky gets to feeling any better. He does not. He vomits a couple times. He looks bad. He heads back to the church with Jenni in Panda 2 (Both of the vans on the trip are white with tinted windows and have earned the nicknames Mama Panda and Baby Panda from the Mexico Girls. Josh and Myself utilize slightly manlier terms with Panda 1 and Panda 2, but even so, you can't get too manly with PANDA being your moniker) and the rest of us get to work on our next project. The removal another deck, the sorting and restacking of usable bricks for sale or reuse, and possibly item sorting, removal and throwing out, if the owner can make it. He has not returned to his house for 45 days. With the enormous task set before him and the emotional devastation that comes with this type of disaster, it's kind of impossible to know where to begin. His sister and brother in law show up first, after we have begun our work. They tell us a little bit about Sam, the owner of the house. He is an Art Teacher at a local school. There are bits of pottery and clay all over the place. Paintings are ripped out of their frames and strewn about the lawn and foundation of his house. We start on his deck, he wants to keep the lumber and anything that can be reused. Bricks need to be broken from the mortar, there is a pile four feet high and about 20 feet around that a group of people get to work on. Hosanna, Joy, Nicole, Hope, they are the brick breakers. The others get to hauling more brick to them from all around the property, Nora, Will, Mary, Austin, Ian, Andy, these are my earth movers. They haul everything from bricks to dirt to garbage and ANYTHING that needs to be moved from one end of the lawn to the other. They help, one by one or in small groups, with the wood that is coming off of the deck.
Suddenly up walks a man with a warm vibrant smile. Sam has arrived at his house for the first time in over a month and a half. He stops here and there as he walks up the makeshift path that cuts across his driveway and where his garage used to be, picking up pieces of his life, tossing some, putting some on the foundation of his home for later sorting and safe keeping.  As he walks up, he shakes hands with everyone and thanks them, telling us all a bit about himself and what happened. Through out the day we learn what his experiences were and how his communications from the city have been since the day of the tornado. There is much confusion, there are contractors going around trying to bully people into bulldozing their land, yammering on about deadlines and fines and fees. There are family members that are still have trouble communicating with those that lived near here. He's not a tear-dripping mess, I am sure he had those days, who wouldn't? No, today Sam is a man determined to continue putting one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. He tells us a bit about the neighborhood and who lived here and there, this family was doing well, and this man was on the first floor of his house while his wife was trapped downstairs. A teacher lived here and a professor lived there, they are rebuilding and they are not, that lady bull dozed immediately and so forth and so on. We are working together with him as he coordinates us to further be helpful to him. A suburban drives by with Koolaid and cookies, then a church van with water, gatorade and sandwiches, then another car with lemonade, then the red cross truck drives up with hydration and snacks. The people here are all eager to help those who have come to help them. We hear "Thank You" over and over again. But these snacks and accolades and acknowledgments are not why we came. We came for the Atteberry's. We came for Sam. We came to help in anyway we can.
About midway through the day, we lose Joseph. A wheelbarrow full of bricks falls on his ankle and Joy. Not ON Joy, but her feet and legs too. She turns out fine, but Joseph tweaked his ankle some and so we send him home in Panda 2 as well. Ice and rest is the rest of his day. Sam gets rid of an old computer and lets the Destructo Boys tear at it. Sam doesn't want any of his personal info to be accessible from the computer so he hands the boys the CPU and a Pick Axe. They pull an Office Space on that poor machine. The day goes on through lunch, and we return, board after board are coming up and there is a one gallon pitcher filling up with screws. The work is tough, and the sun is beating down on our heads, but we are hydration MACHINES. We are keeping cool when we can, which is rough going because every single shade tree they had was ripped apart by the storm or uprooted by dozers afterword. The day comes to an end and there is still much to be done.
Upon arrival back at the church in Mount Vernon, our home base, I make contact with the volunteer center and get the okay just to head right back out to Sams Place in the morning. This is when Jenni calls us over to her computer, she's pulled up a picture of Sams Place on google earth. We are all floored all over again as we see what once was and remember the barren dirt and concrete neighborhood that we left today. It's a brand new slap in the face of the ridiculous destructive power of these storms. We are awed. We are hushed.
We heat some leftovers for the young people and Jenni, Nora, Josh and myself all head out to a Taco dive just up the road. I LOVE THIS PLACE. It's called Taco Palace and they serve these HUGE tacos. Josh and I each get one and an order of their Super Nachos. It's money well spent. The ladies ask what is good there, and the reply comes that their taco salads are famous and best sellers, with that info the ladies each order one. We all enjoy a great meal and upon exiting the restaurant, we see that it only opened that same month, a couple of weeks before. I hope it stays around. We all laughed because it seemed funny hearing the cooks talk about their food like it had been selling for years! As Nora put it, "It's all in the attitude!"
We arrive back at the church after a stopping by a truck stop for some supplies, namely a lock that I cost us on the trailer. We got to the church and gathered all the youth for a time of worship and a small devotion. I read to them out of 1 Corinthians 13 verse 11- When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
I let them know that I had not witnessed a single childish act this entire trip, and that seeing them break sweat and bleed for these people that they had never met literally brought tears to my eyes. I had not brought a group of children, but of mighty fighters who would fight for these people in whatever manner was fit. I was looking out over the finest group of people that my eyes had seen assembled. They didn't choose the childish self entertaining ways of water parks, or concerts, but to come and work. There was a time and a place for those things for all of us! Sure! But it was not time for that. It was time to stand for these people that had nothing left to stand on but faith, and it was time to help. I could not be more proud of this group. Even now, a week later, my heart swells. I call to them to continue this way of thinking, acting and living when we return home, because it's easy to do when you're out in a new place, doing new things, seeing the fruits of your work in the smiles and gratitude of those you are helping, but it is another thing to seek these things out when you are at home, and everything is normal.
We break up after prayer, and sleep. Another early day tomorrow.