For all wondering if I arrived safely, I did and without any big excitement. I arrived in Mobile Saturday night and was picked up by some long termers from Oregon. We then drove down to the base here in Bayou la Batre and I met the rest of the long term team that is staying here at the MDS base. There are folks here from Canada as well as from the states. I was informed that I was the Princess of the base since I was going to be here for 3 months. Sarah Yoder a fellow long termer is the Queen as she is here 6 months.
On my first full day here in Alabama I went to church, enjoyed a southern meal, took a tour of some of the harder hit areas and lay on the beach. It was quite an enjoyable day.
This week we have a group of Amish here, so it is very interesting getting to know them and hearing the stories from the work sites. They have a great work ethic and have a ton of energy. They group is mainly young people. I have been working in the kitchen with two other ladies. We were all fairly new but the head cook was here in the fall and so knows the ranks a little more. It has taken a bit to get into the groove and that groove will change fairly quickly as people are leaving in a couple weeks. There have been a number of shopping trips and so finding space for all the food has been a skill that has quickly developed. We are feeding 50 people this week.
We are stationed in a building right next to a strip mall. They have put up walls for bedrooms and to divide areas into office, dining, kitchen, bathrooms and storage. We also have a number of trailers out back where people sleep. It is quite homey. The weather has been wonderful, mid 70's most days, although today chance of rain and high winds. There was talk of tornado but I assume that these warnings come quite often down here.
I thank you all for your prayers thus far. Team unity amongst us is something that is greatly needed as we work and live together quite closely. The walls here are thinner than North Court at Bethany, if that is possible. So sound carries a lot at night. I am learning things about myself everyday and about the generosity of people.
Tonight one of the people whose house we have been working on is coming to share with us, I am looking forward to hearing his story. One funny sight we saw the other day was a trailer in the ditch and on the side spray painted was something to the effect of "Looters will be shoot and that means..." and then the person had filled in a couple names of people that I guess were a threat it was a humorous sight amongst the gravity of all the wreckage.
2 comments:
hey Nicole, sounds like you are having fun times... being a princess is fun..not that i would know...hey i just realized that you don't know who this because i clicked anonymous..that is a tough word to spell correctly speaking of spelling correctly is it supposed to be 'looters will be shot..? not shoot... or did the graffiti artist write it that way? any ways i thought i'd say hi and stuff i'm sure matt would say hi if he knew i was writing this...me and susan talking about are giving awards to arts related people just like with sports a couple from the crews from the productions the p.o.i. team, players, the unashamed team etc.
maybe you'll get an award...any ways i should get back to homework hopefully talk to you later
-LuKE DUchArmE
dang nicole...i'm glad you are getting such an opourtunity...for sure I'm praying for you. Just that God would encourage your heart, and not let you wallow in your humaness (you are too wonderful for that) and that you will sing for joy everyday...because you have a lovely voice. Love you.
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