Friday

We are finishing up our last jobs around Mission on the Bay and Camp Coast Care. We will get clean (!) and head out around noon. We have had a great time, come closer as a group and done a lot of good work -- in spite of intense heat. We know you've been thinking about us and praying for us ---thank you! We've missed you and look forward to seeing you tomorrow at St. Luke's.

Day Four

Everyone went back to the site from yesterday, but only half of us stayed and worked. The other half had to wait to get an okay, and then went to work at Ms.Lee's house to finish getting the house dog-ready. The half that stayed, and the half that didn't, had a lot of hard work to do out in the hot sun.
Since all the nails were already out of all the wood, we had to finish moving the good wood into the trailer. We then went through piles of debris and laid that on top of the good wood trying to keep them separate. We had a bunch of little pieces of wood, and a bunch of old, rusty metal. There was a lot of insulation in the piles of debris, which meant an explosion of fiberglass any time anybody moved stuff. We loaded up 10 huge trash cans with the little stuff and hauled it all to a dumpster. There the team had to unpack everything from the trailer into the dumpster. Some of the more bulky items were way harder to get out of the trailer than in. Then we came back to camp and took showers. Jan took a group of us out to Sonic, with one condition: after dinner, the other group, which was still working at this point, got to go to Sonic while we took care of our camp chore. This sounded like a fair deal to us.
We, Maggie and Elizabeth, were part of the group that went to Ms. Lee's house. For this task we had to nail rat wire around the perimeter of the underside of her house to prevent her dogs from gettting under. To prepare for the rat wire we had to dig trenches around the house to fit the wire under. Once this was finished, the wire had to be measured and cut with dull wire clippers. We then had to fold in the top and the bottom to fit the height, while the length was cut. After fitting it into its spot, we had to hammer in unique nails UPSIDE DOWN. To say the least it took several tries. After that, we had to shovel the dirt we previously dug up back onto the trench. I, Maggie, have to give props to Elizabeth because there was a section of wiring that was behind a set of stairs that had to be crawled underneath to nail. Elizabeth crawled under the stairs and nailed the wire, with several tries. She had to crawl under the stairs with spiderwebs containing egg sacks, and several spiders. Earlier that day, we had also accidentaly dug up a bees nest, which was next to the stairs. Anyway, for luch we all met back at camp and had some fellowship time. We did not get back to camp until five o'clock. Everyone was gone when we got back to camp, except for Audrey, who said everyone had gone to Sonic. However, it all worked out in the end, and we got to go to Sonic while they did our trash duty.

Please see our pictures of work but know that the camera that was at Ms. Lee's house won't load into this computer. We promise to share pictures of everyone as soon as we get home.

Day Cinco minus tres

Hey Everyone!

This is Elizabeth and Maggie coming to you live, while we're typing...but not as you're reading. This morning started with another serene morning prayer on the shore of the bay. We didn't have breakfast duty, so we had a little wee bit of free time before breakfast. That was nice because we knew that there was PLENTY of work ahead. Our group proved to be hungry beasts by eating eighteen boxes of cereal. We have a picture posted below of the leftover cardboard recycling. For today's work the whole group got to work together. It was great to be working in a large group with friends. We all worked at Camp Coast Care (CCC) and started by taking everything (and we mean EVERYTHING) out of the kitchen. Then we had to disassemble around 60+ bunk beds. We were moving at a fast speed until we were disassembling a bed that REFUSED to disassemble! Alex yanked and pulled, and couldn't pull apart the top and bottom bunks. I (Maggie) had to step in with my amazing bunk breaking down skillz (WD40) and corroded the bed apart. Needless to say, Alex had a much easier time after that. We followed the vans that were loaded with kitchen supplies to the new CCC location and then proceeded to unload the vans that we had loaded 15 minutes previous. We had an efficient assembly line of St. Luker's and another church to bring kitchen items into the new sites kitchen. When we drove back to CCC we had done such a marvelous job of clearing out the warehouse that Mr. Mark (the guy who tells what to do,/ runs CCC) had run out of jobs for us to do. We waited around for and hour and played games, but he never showed up. When we went back to camp we proceeded to do various odd jobs such as weed-whacking, glove matching,box painting, food organizing, and worst of all, cleaning the refrigerator bottom which was covered in gook. Of course, this is the job we had, and to say the least, it was NASTY! What seemed to be remnants of old ice cream, spinach, and mysterious green powder, had congealed at the bottom of a refrigerator that had been turned off for weeks. With the help of a bottle of FANTASTIK, two paper towel rolls, and a mudding knife, we were successful in scraping the majority of the gunk out. Due to trauma, we have erased most of this story from our minds. After cleaning, we had the usual shower/beach time. We have a different chore everyday at Mission on the Bay, and today's (6/16) chore was getting and serving dinner. Dinner is a surprise everyday because they make it at CCC and we have to go get it then serve it to roughly 70 people. Just to let you in on a secret, don't mess with the food servers or we will mess with your food. We served BBQ chicken, veggie chicken nuggets, corn on the cob, rice with carrots, peach cobbler, and apple cobbler. If you can imagine how many dishes that took, that's how many we washed. If you can't imagine it...it was A LOT. This evening's compline was led by Jan, who told a touching story about a turtle, and where we find GOD. After we read prayers and gave stories about where GOD touches us personally, we sang numerous songs. We (Elizabeth and Maggie) then had to leave to get the blog finished, which you see had not been finished until today. When we went back outside a beautiful chorus of alleluias drifted through the camp. Yes, it was our group. (We have some amazing musicians). Well, that about wraps it up...or at least all we can remember. You will have quite a story to read this evening. We look forward to talking, or blogging, with you soon. We miss you all...WE HAVE ONLY SEVEN MINUTES TILL DINNER SO WE GOTTA GO, BYE!!

~Maggie (the fox) and Elizabeth (the deer)

Day One

Today there was an optional service on the beach at 6:30-ish. Some people went, but it was wayyyyyy too early for us. Our group was in charge of setting up breakfast, so we had to be up early even if we didn't go to the service. We had orientation, which was outside, so it was veryy HOT and pretty long...it was repetitive... everyone who talked to us said basically the same thing. We were like UMMMMM TIME TO GO!!!! But anyways...one of our work sites was shoveling dirt around a fence. There was a woman with dogs, and the fence needed to be secured so the dogs couldn't dig out before she could move in. The other group went to the old Camp Coast Care site to clean it out. We were in this group. We had to move EVERYTHING out of this storage shed, and everything was then packed into a van or truck and moved to the CCC's new site. It was HOT, but there was another group there, and it was really cool to find out more about them and be able to work with people we didn't know. After the stuff got mostly moved out we got switched to inside work. We had to take mattresses off beds, clean out the fridges, and take stuff off the shelves in the dorms. Bobby got to ride the four-wheeler to take out the trash. It was pretty terrifying, I'm not gonna lie. A bunch of us climbed on the stack of mattresses that got moved out, and it was super fun. After finishing our job for the day, the girls of the CCC group went down to the beach with Bobby. Nick came down later with a group of the digger girls, who were covered in dirt. Then we came home and blogged. YAY US!

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N.A && A.L

The St. Luke's team has arrived at Mission on the Bay! Our drive down was long, but not bad. We were graciously hosted by St. John's Episcopal Church in Ocean Spring, MS on Saturday night. Their EYC had a hamburger and hot dog cookout for us and then joined us for Compline on the beach. We slept in their preschool building -- nice and cool. We attended the 7:30 worship service this morning, packed up and headed down the beach to Bay St. Louis. We spent the afternoon in the French Quarter of New Orleans -- details will come later! We are settling in to our quonset huts for the night and promise to write more, post pictures and keep you up to date on our mission. Keep us in your prayers as we start to work tomorrow.