Winds of Grace Tour 2009: New Beginnings

As we move further into the week, one of our mission sites is completed. With a sense of completion, the two groups combine into one to tackle the arduous task of roofing an entire house in the short span of a day and a half.

Ryan Traher writes on Wednesday June 17:

A rotten roof leads to a rotten ceiling. A rotten ceiling leads to a rotten wall. A rotten wall leads to a rotten room. And a rotten room leads to a relatively rotten life. My work group spent two and a half days repairing 79-year-old woman’s roof and bedroom wall that had been falling apart ever since Hurricane Katrina. We learned firsthand the result of negligence and carelessness in the midst of necessary repair when we discovered that the rot was a product of a poor patch job on the roof. We were in the shade. There was not much to do. There was never enough supplies. There were too many people for the amount of work there was. The work was boring to say the least and not the least bit satisfying. The most aggravating thing though was the lack of cooperation from the organization sponsoring the mission work we were participating in. We did have the honor of being the last group to work for LDR (Lutheran Disaster Response) in this area, but I had to face the fact that they’re commitment to these last few projects was less than satisfactory. This was the reason that a project that could have taken a day took more than twice as long. Instead of the gratifying feeling that comes from knowing your changing someone’s life, I was filled with anger, lack of patience, disappointment, selfishness. Despite the fact that I knew that the work we were doing was just as equally important as a job that was more productive, I was blinded by my emotions and loss of logic. It was not until we had finished that I found reason. We had patched up all the holes and laid new shingles and mudded the wall and sprayed popcorn on the ceiling, etc, etc. But the best part of the job was speaking with that 79-year-old after the job was done and it finally brought me peace. I do not know if I have ever seen someone so grateful to have a bedroom again; a place to sleep; a place to live. I had not had that incredible feeling I was looking for all week, but that day surely made up for it. I lost track of how many times I got dizzy from an indescribable joy that one can only experience from the knowledge that you changed someone’s life.

Even small jobs are incredibly important, and even when circumstances are frustrating there is an understanding of that. Every person at both sites came together that afternoon for an awesome lunch of fried catfish. After lunch both teams tackled the roof at the large site.

These guys are overwhelmingly awesome.




-G. Lue