Category: 2011 Mens Team

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Day 7 – Arrival of 1-Week men’s team, and work at New Life Disaster Relief/Biloxi Christian Church

The men’s one-week team arrived safely. We did a similar tour that we had with the CoEd team. Conner’s Garden, where we left a card for Kathy, the woman we spoke with last year; Biloxi Lighthouse and Pier, Katrina memorial, CoEd team’s site of last year; lunch at Cafe New Orleans, then back to our temporary home. The 1-Weekers then went to the Habitat office for orientation, and the 2-Weekers went to work.

The Pier, a place where many fish.
While at the pier, we had the opportunity to meet a couple of folks, Sean (sp?), who is suffering from a serious condition, as well as his friend Tony, who followed the fishing industry to Mississippi, but had his home was flooded by Katrina. We have to remember that even though his home wasn’t entirely submerged, the damage was devastating. We were able to pray for them respectively. On the way off the pier, Gary M spoke with Dave, who was smiling ear to ear. Dave explained that he was a Christian, and was strongly encouraged by our willingness to pray for folks that we were just meeting casually.

Work Day
Biloxi Christian Church is celebrating paying off their mortgage with a mortgage-burning celebration. Ken, our facility director, thought it’d be a nice idea if the church looked a little more spruced up for the celebration. We did gardening, painting, performed some minor repairs including fixing baseboards, windows and a deck.

Now, we’re minutes away from our evening devotional

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LAX on, LAX off

We just sent the CoEd team off, on their way back to LAX. They got off safely after a morning visiting Mosaic. It was a great church, and Dustin, the pastor, preached a good message from Colossians about being focused on God first, then marriage, then children and then work next. Sounds familiar….

The church meets in a roller skating rink, and is used almost all week long. Afterwards, had good time hanging with Brad and Paul at a local seafood restaurant. Once again, food was good, but sharing faith and life with them was better.

As we sent off the CoEd team, they knew they had done a good thing, with a week’s worth of hard work behind them, and shared memories among them. We pray they have a safe and meaningful trip home. Just as Kyle had spoken a few nights ago, the mission began before they ever left L.A., and will hopefully not end.

It’s odd to think that even as they fly, our church is just ending service back home, and the next Men’s team will be flying out a few hours after the CoEd team lands. And we’ll receive them in less than 24 hours.

We look forward to joining up with them.

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2011 Combined Teams prepping

For our last (joint) meeting before we leave, we were instructed to “practice.”

This is from our first year, where after a few hours of hammering (which we normally weren’t used to), we noticed a little soreness in our arms. Also, we found that some people weren’t too used to hammering in a nail. Let’s not use someone’s house as our first guinea pig.
So Kelly got us some wood, we brought our various hammers, and started pounding some nails in to practice
The Stilettos were out for side-by-side comparisons, and the veteran team members, well, they stood on the wood and pointed. 🙂 Something tells me that Esther will be an interesting person to video….
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2011 Team(s)! We’ve got three of ’em

2011 Combined Team

Okay, it’s been a few months since we had finished our last trip to Mississippi, and we’ve grown in some spiritual, some waistband, and some numerical ways.

We will be sending three teams to Mississippi this year, and the prayer letter is going out soon.

1) A 1-week Coed Team;
2) A 1-week Men’s Team, which will fly out the week immediately following the Coed Team, and;
3) One additional Men’s team which will stay in Mississippi for the span of both weeks.

One of the hardest parts for us in our trips has been working with the Habitat staff, only to leave them after just a week’s work. So we’re hoping to have more time to get to know and support them by staying through a second week.

We just had our second planning meeting since the teams have been announced, where we were assembling our information/prayer letter.

If you’d like to download a copy of our prayer letter, click here

Here’s our team photos, and then a video introducing you to a few members of our team..

1-Week Coed team
(Back) Bart W, Art F, Steve O, Mo N, Kyle S
Lorin L, Esther L, Gary H, Carl A

1-Week Men’s Team
 (Back) James S, Jeff H, Tom I, Ken M
Rich I, Ron N, Jeff L, Glenn I
2-Week Men’s Team
(Back) Craig K, Brent K, Kelly C, Brian “Bu” C
Chris C, Gary M, Peter L, Tommy Y, “Uncle” Roy N

Okay, the video you wanted to see… 🙂


Interviews featuring Gary M, Jeff H, Ron N, Esther L
Still not sure what smells she’s talking about…. 

On an unrelated note.. this is Denise (one of our site supervisors from 2010)’s profile picture on facebook.. thought it was hilarious..