July 15 & 16
Saturday we had a build day. Mike is the construction supervisor for the Fuller Center and he had been saving up work for us at a home build in Bossier, LA (pronounce Bo-zher). This was for Mr. and Mrs. Combs. Mr. Combs had to go to work, although we did get to meet him. Mrs. Combs worked on painting with us. We had several tasks to complete—cleaning the yard, mowing, framing a shed, installing hurricane clips in the house to hold the roof on, painting the outside…It’s hard to keep 25 people busy, so some of us ended up going to the surplus store to do work there. We unloaded a truck and put together light fixtures. People will buy the lights if they can see what they look like, but not if they are in the box. Also, they can tell which parts are missing when they are put together. Most of them did have missing parts; that’s probably why they were donated in the first place.
After we got cleaned up, we went to an all-you-can-eat catfish place, Port-au-Prince on Cross Lake. Renee Hooks, one of the staff, took us out. That was a very long dinner. The way they make sure you don’t eat way too much catfish is by feeding you hush puppies, bean soup, and cole slaw and making you wait a really long time before getting any catfish. Doesn’t matter—it was all very tasty. I was ready to be done by the time we finished, though. We didn’t have any down time at all that day.
On Sunday, some went to the Catholic Church where we were staying. Judy and I decided to go to Mt. Canaan Baptist Church where Renee goes. We were the only white people in the place at the 8:00 am worship service. We also felt rather underdressed. The service took nearly 2 hours and included two offerings, a benevolent offering and regular tithes and offering. The sermon was roughly 40 minutes long and there seemed to be a tag team that helped the speaker know when it was time to quit. After one person touched him on the shoulder, he said he was about out of time. After the second person touched him on the shoulder a few minutes later, he actually did conclude his sermon (after a shorter time). The speaker was a younger minister. Pastor Harry Blake also spoke. He recently celebrated his 80th birthday and will retire a year from December after 51 years at Mt. Canaan.
In the afternoon we had a little free time. A group of us walked downtown and ate some breakfast. I don’t remember doing much other than that. We had our team meeting at 4:30, where we change what chores we’re doing for the week and then talk about our high and low points for the week.
Then back to the Fuller Center for a dinner of red beans and rice (which apparently always includes sausage). Two vans were in use to transport us back to the church. I got in Miss Renee’s van. i wasn’t paying too much attention—checking e-mail and Facebook—and noticed that we were getting a tour of the city. I still didn’t pay much attention as we went to some of the wealthier parts of town and heard about who lived here and who lived there, and what the director of Community Renewal International did to get Millard Fuller to come. We saw the entire Allendale neighborhood built by the Fuller Center; the first three houses that were built; the empty lot where the house used to be where Miss Renee grew up…We saw a lot. It was rather astounding.
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Miss Renee had the windows of the van open for us because the air conditioning did not work in the back of the van. She said hello to everyone who was outside. At one place she was cajoling a young woman to get her mother to come to the door and wave. Her sister came out instead and explained what was going on. We got almost back to the church when she decided we needed to see the section of houses built for veterans, situated near the VA hospital. She said hello to someone sitting on his porch, and then asked, “What do you have in your hand?!!” He was smoking. It’s clear that she knows everyone in those houses. That was a fun evening, but it was also a bit crazy—what we expected to be a ten or fifteen minute drive lasted for at least an hour!