Day 1: Mission to Mississippi 2007

We're here. Despite not getting too much work done today, I think we are all ready for bed - even though its only 9:30 EPT. Here's what we were up to:

We all made it without incident to Dulles and through the long day of travel. Our layover time in Atlanta was longish, but it did allow us to get to know each other a little bit better. Our flight landed on time at Gulfport, MS where we found the airport under heavy construction, but perfectly suitable. We jumped in our rental vans and scattered.

When I say we scattered, we ended up taking different routes to Waveland. A couple of cars hit I-10, and another bunch went on US-90. The latter route, US-90, had a notable bridge taken out by Hurricane Katrina, so the group of us that went down it did so only after consulting the MS DOT website to ensure that the road was not out of commission. The website was silent on any bridge closure, but sure enough, 5 miles away we were sent on a detour back to I-10. It turns out not to have been a total waste, because the groups that went down I-10 were backed up in traffic due to a horrendous accident (it delayed them 30 minutes; sadly, several people died in the accident).

We all eventually made it to Lakeshore Baptist. We didn't get too much done but some distribution/store work did get done. In addition, the skilled among us went (which does not include me) went with the project coordinator to survey our work site for several days. We are going to be spending effort trying to get a post foundation set correctly and will hopefully have some other painting projects to report on as well.

We are fortunate to have a couple of old pros in the kitchen. Dinner was great and we look forward to more good food!

We were able to hear Pastor Don preach - something we missed out on last year due to him attending a conference (his first break since the storm). The Wednesday evening service was great. There are two other large teams here, one from Michigan with a bunch of teens and a big group from Alabama of "more experienced" folks. All groups were down previously and felt burdened to come back. We are looking forward to working alongside of them.

I will not be the "official" team photographer this year - Robbie Berriz brought his 30D and already has been snapping away. I will try to steal (borrow?) some of his pictures and post them as soon as they are available. [Update: I was able to steal a couple of pictures and upload them:

The team waiting in Atlanta:


Unloading our first trailer's worth of goods:

The men are all bunking in the main church building (good thing I brought my ear plugs). The women are in the converted shipping containers and small bunk rooms right next to them. I think we are all excited to get to work tomorrow and ready for some rest.