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Chris’ Note

Chris masking and taping the kitchen

Yesterday, a couple of us were approached by the assistant site supervisor, Paul, about the possibility of helping him do some rehab work on his friend’s house. His friend had some personal circumstances that required him to relocate his family to the Houston area. His house in MS, however, required some work before it could be rented out. We mentioned to Paul that we’ll check if anyone on the team would be interested in helping out. Personally, I wanted to help out but didn’t think that we would be able to work on another house after working a full day at the work site. At the same time, I felt God called us to MS to be a blessing to others; it didn’t have to be someone connected with Habitat. Somehow I knew He would work it out in His timing.

The weather report forecasted substantial thunderstorms throughout the day; we were not disappointed. The weather got so bad in the morning with little chance of it improving any time soon, that our site supervisor, Brad, decided to call it a day because it was not safe to work outdoors under those conditions. I was secretly hoping that we as a team, or possibly just a few of us, would be open to helping Paul work on his friend’s house. I was delighted when Craig made the announcement that we, as a team, would all go and work on the house. I wasn’t sure how the men would react to this news but I shouldn’t have been surprised. They were all excited about working on Paul’s friend’s house, with absolutely no hesitation or reservations. Not only did we get a lot of work done, the men had a great time and worked throughout the day with much joy. I was so proud to be among this incredible team of men and representing Evergreen so well. They were a blessing to me. Mostly, I was thankful to the Lord for allowing me to be part of this ministry, to be used by Him for His purposes and for His glory and His glory alone, and to experience the true blessing of being a light to others. My prayer is that Paul’s friend would someday understand why we wanted to bless him and Paul, and that’s because it pleases God for us to do so. The Lord has been so faithful to us so far throughout this trip. Looking for more opportunities tomorrow. PTL.

Chris

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

Craig’s Note

Craig, in black and bandana with Paul

Dear friends,

We do not know each other but today my friends and I were in your house. Why? Well, we cleaned a little and painted a little, but mostly we wanted you to know that someone cares about you. Frankly, it wasn’t in our plan to visit your house because we’re really in Mississippi to build a house with Habitat for Humanity. But the rain shortened our work day and we were left with a free afternoon to help our mutual friend, Paul Waters, paint your house. I want you to know that this event was not a coincidence. You see, I believe that God caused rain to fall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast today because he wanted us to make a difference in your lives. But this is not about us doing our good deed for the day. It’s about selfless Chistian men and women doing what they are meant to do. In the Bible, Ephesians 2:10 says “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”. We do nice and good things out of obedience to God.

You know, we may never meet, and that’s okay. But today, God invited us into your lives to let you know that He cares for you and your family.

May God bless all five of you with a smooth transition to life in Texas.

On our way…

Ken, our host, got our morning got started a bit earlier, thinking we were lagging behind 15 minutes off schedule. We appreciate our comfort level and familiarity at our home away from home, but we don’t want to take it for granted and/or be poor guests.

Mo gave a devotional this morning speaking from Romans 12:1. During this trip, he is trying to be a slave to God, totally submitted to Christ, specifically denying himself (and as Steve puts it, his “Mo-ish tendencies”). He’s hoping that God will help him give him the grace and opportunities to serve God while he serves his fellow man. Steve adds, “and lessens the number of inadvertent conflicts, because I don’t think he seeks conflict.”

Weather report
The roads are wet, it’s a bit more than drizzling….wait.. no it’s outright raining…wait.. drenching…

okay… this is interesting… Steve is sort of hoping/praying that it rains so that we can go back to Paul’s friend’s place to paint…

Lorin and the coed team about to depart from Biloxi

My named was being paged over the airport speakers. Whoa, what did I do? Was there something in my baggage that was going to have me ejected from the plane? Turns out that someone just wanted to switch seats with me so he could sit closer to his family. Was this my divine appointment? “Lord do you want me to share something with these people?”, I prayed I took the time to share about our trip to MS and what we’d been doing the past week with Habitat. I was glad that I’d had a chance to share with the family and left them with a card for the website.

A short time later, a young couple took the 2 seats next to me. We struck up a conversation and I shared a little about our work in Biloxi and gave them (Justin and Shelly Brown) some background about some of the other ministries that Evergreen is involved with. I told them about the adoptions from China, Zoe Intl. and the trip to Thailand, Malawi and the kitchen, and Don Julian. Justin took my Gulf Coast card and then we both went back to our reading. After a while, Justin asked me if he could ask me some questions.

Turned out he was a Christian and he wanted to know more about our global focus on outreach because he wanted to see his own church develop a global focus. As we shared he mentioned David Platt and the impact his ministry made in his life. I asked Platt was the author of Radical which I read last year in preparation for my 1st mission trip to Biloxi. We both liked what Platt had to say and went on talking throughout the entire flight. Shelly shared how she’d been saved through a blog that was written by a Christian women who returned her emails and calls and helped her come to know the Lord.

Shelly went on to start her own blog in spite of being a busy mom of 3 kids- ages 5, 3, and 1. She’d reached a point where she’d decided to stop blogging as she felt that it had become an idol in her life, but one of her readers contacted her and begged her not to stop as they had become a Christian as a result of reading her blog! Praise God! Anyways, we ended up asking Justin and Shelly if we could pray for them and before we could start Justin ended up praying a beautiful blessing for us and our church because he was so inspired by what we do and our theme of being blessed to be a blessing. We did manage to pray a blessing for J & S and their church and future. (J is studying with Moody Bible College and thinking of going to Texas to go to seminary.)

Divine Appointments have been defined to me as times when God arranges a meeting that wasn’t on your schedule. I wasn’t “supposed” to sit with the Brown’s but God certainly set up our meeting and it was wonderful!

I’ll close with a “building” joke that one of the guys shared with me. We’d been working up on the slippery metal roof and he said, “If you wash your soles/souls you’ll have a better walk (with the Lord.) Thanks, it was a great week in Biloxi and in spite of being REALLY sleepy since I’ve gotten home -I miss you all and would have stayed another week if it had been an option…next year…2 week coed team?!?…yeah team, go!

So much going on today.

Work on site started with a bang.. a thunderous bang this morning… there was a chance of rain today, but we arrived on site and started our work, but stayed off that shiny metal roof, just in case….

But by 1100a it was quite clear that we’d have to shut down most operations. The only thing that was still going on was that beloved set of stairs at the back of the deck/porch. All the men worked on it in some fashion, wondering what James’ problem was…. See, James spent most of his week digging holes with Gary Ho last week, often running into buried cinder blocks, abandoned sewer lines and other obstructions. He joked on video that he was leaving a few awkward holes for us to dig this week. But it turned out that the remaining holes were in pretty soft soil. Sorry James…. 🙂

But as half our crew watched a couple of the guys pound away at the ground and posts, the others, including Jim and Shirley/Nannie sat around and had some hot coffee and donuts as we waited out the storm. The sharing and mutual encouragement was much appreciated, but it was soon decided to shut down all efforts for the day.

Plan B
Now comes the even more interesting part.

Yesterday, Paul, our friend and one of the site supervisors, had asked if anyone would be available for an additional work project. A longtime friend of his had recently lost his job, relocated and was trying to rent out the home that he and his family hurriedly left behind. He was going to paint a few rooms of their home for the cost of materials, in order to support their hasty departure and difficult circumstances.

Although a couple of us wanted to help, we couldn’t figure out how we could fit it into our schedule. But then it rained… it poured… and there wasn’t any work that we could do inside the house we were working on. Craig, our team leader, decided that if it continued to rain and we had to shut down at Habitat, the entire team would go.

It rained, it poured, we ALL went. Even our new friends, Jim and Nannie drove out to join us. The entire group cleared the home for painting, masked and primed all the walls. Paul was amazed at how much work and how quickly we were able to finish.

The difficult thing is that Paul’s friend has had some difficult situations and losses recently, and struggles to believe in God. And here, a rainstorm, two groups from opposite coasts of the country, combine to help him and his family through heart and task.

God is good. All the time. We didn’t want Paul, or his friend, to feel forsaken.

And we’re glad to help

It wasn’t until Saturday, on the coed teams last day at the work site, that I was struck by a new meaning to Paul’s words from 1 Cor 3:10-13.
“By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work.”

In reflecting on the work we’d done the past week I saw many parallels in the building process to our Christian growth. In working on the house I witnessed first hand how things are done in “layers”. The foundation and framing was done by previous workers and we were adding to their work. Brad had us screw cement boards to the floor of the bathrooms and in the process we found that there was a spot that wasn’t level so he showed us a power planer and in minutes we’d leveled the spot so that our cement board was no longer rocking on it.

Later we had to place a tape on the floor along all the seams. (Sort of like what you do with dry wall.) Then we mixed a putty/cement to seal the seams. That’s so water doesn’t get into the sub-flooring. Anyways, we had to make sure that it was put on smoothly so that later when another group came in they’d be able to set tiles on it. We had to make sure we did a good job so that they wouldn’t have to make too many adjustments or corrections.

Paul says we need to be careful how we build. In other words we need to present the gospel of the Lord as accurately as possible so that when the next “crew” comes in they won’t have to take a planer to what was already laid down. Or if they do, that they won’t have to make too many adjustments…since none of us is perfect there are bound to be needed adjustments. But like one of the guys said…only God’s perfect and that’s why we have caulk-to cover up the cracks when the ends don’t meet perfectly.

In making the wrap-around stairs for the porch I saw how the base for the stairs had to be hung evenly or the next step of nailing the boards on would not be level. Each previous step needed to be done correctly and with accuracy or it would require more sanding, removing and re-nailing, to adjust things in their proper place so that the end product would be acceptable. How many times have we had to have our misconceptions about who God is “sanded” and refined? As a new Christian I thought that God was all about “Love” and that love would cover all my sins. It wasn’t till I became more mature in Christ that I learned that God is also a “Just” God and that our sins needed to be paid for. I learned that the only thing that could compensate for my sins and keep me from an eternity of burning in hell was the precious blood of Jesus. In other words, Jesus had to die for me to pay for the sins that I am guilty of. There had to be a balancing of the scales for a Just God to be satisfied and because he loved me so much he sent His son to pay the penalty for my sins.

I thank God for His loving provision for me. Now it’s up to me to try to live a live worthy of that love!

We’re on the road again.

It went from cool to cloudy to non-stop raining. During that time, we packed up our tools to wait out the storm. Some of the guys worked under the decking on the posts. The rest of us stood around with a lot of ideas, opinions and other “helpful” chatter.

Coffee and donuts = fellowship, so we took our 10am break during this time and enjoyed the hot coffees went out to get. Stories of life and faith were swapped as the rest of the team were sledgehammering away in the background.

But now we’re on plan B. Paul, our friend (and second boss) has a friend who recently lost his job and is relocating. Paul offered to paint his home so his friend can rent it out. Paul “put it out there” to see if we’d help, but he kept saying “I know you’ve already done enough for the Habitat home, and you don’t have to feel obligated….”

Given that we can’t work on the Habitat site today, we’re more than willing to help Paul in his personal act of service, and it’ll give us an opportunity to bless the home with our hands.

Jim and Shirley were only too eager to join us and are part of our caravan. Uncle Roy says that we’re like a minstrel band, going from gig to gig.

Personally, when preparing for this mission, God said to be true to purpose, but to have no agenda. I’m glad that God’s plans are good. I love this team. We are different, have different talents, personalities, but at the end of the day, we just (as Jim said) want to help “make God look good.” It’s our band of brothers (and sisters) and we’ll take this show to the next place, the home of someone who could use a reminder that God loves him even though he might feel forsaken.

There have been predictions of rain on the horizon, and they have come true.

It was pouring rain a moment ago, now it has broken and the skies are cloudy. Either way though, it’s humid. Have we mentioned it’s humid down here? Oh, well, compared to Southern California, it’s humid? Yep. Humid.

The first week’s moderate weather has changed this week to a heat that sapped the strength of every man into a van-sleeping volunteer, then today with the rain, we’re reminded of the first year we came out here, when the framing was barely up and the job site was covered with water. That very same day of thunderous storms and pouring rain, then an afternoon of clear skies and rising heat. Well, that helps explains the humidity….

With that in mind, we don’t know exactly what we’ll be doing on the job site today. If raining, presumably, we’ll be working indoors, much better than atop a tin roof in a thunderstorm. Habitat usually has backup plans for situations like this, even to the point of doing administrative work back at the home office. There’s always the chance we’ll be doing some touch up work in an existing home.

No matter where we end up working, we’ll try to take heart to Kelly’s devotional (his first!) this morning, to not only use all of our abilities and gifts, but use them as to the Lord. He encouraged us to try to move past doing a job “good enough” or saying “that’ll do” and to approach our efforts pursuing excellence. Each member of this team has an unspoken contract with every effort of this home. There are so many nails, joints and other small elements of the home that we will touch, that no one will probably ever see again. But that’s probably why it’s so important to do them well, because we will be the last human that will know if it was done well, helping this home last a little longer.

Thanks Kelly, for that reminder and encouragement, and in line with Jim, we’ll try “to make God look good today.”