Hi folks,

 

   Texas is really hot!  It's so hot most of us have had experiences with sunburn. The good news is the folks here are extremely warm. We're repairing a mobile home for a beautiful 69 year-old widow. She had sustained a lot of rain damage during both hurricanes and things had started to rot. She's a real Southern lady named Miss Ginger and has taken everyone to her heart. Her daughter and she appreciate us so much they've fixed us lunch the last couple days. We have one day left to finish her trailer and we're all getting anxious that we won't be as far along as we hope, except for Leonard and Carey. They both think we'll be done just fine and in time.

 

   The area where we're staying is a suburb of Beaumont. Everything here seems new. The church where we're staying looks to be less than three years old and the hardware store across the street just opened last week. Ms. Ginger lives in China - what a hoot! We were all making fun of the town's name and were really surprised when we found out we were going to be working there. There are a couple homes in Ms. Ginger's community that are still being repaired or abandoned totally and we see a couple homes here and there when we drive around town. Yesterday, though, we went to Galveston, via Crystal Beach and saw nothing but devastation that was astounding. Some areas looked like the hurricane had just hit a couple months ago, not several years. Crystal Beach went for miles without any houses, only some pilings here and there. The areas where they were rebuilding had piles of debris everywhere. They were still in the process of clean-up.

 

   We took the ferry to Galveston and had a nice, uneventful ride, but as soon as we got off the ferry we continued to see more destruction. The "family park" had been rebuilt, but there was another park that was just a bunch of pilings and when we went into "town" there were several hotels that were destroyed. They were rebuilding Galveston pretty quickly, but it was unbelievable all the destruction we saw. We saw trees about 20 feet tall with debris and clothes still caught in their branches that we estimated were about 20 miles from the beach  It was very sobering to see the devastation, but it has really done all our hearts good to help Ms. Ginger get back on her feet and have a dry home again. You would be really proud of ouir group. They are doing some amazing work here.

 

Carol and the Senior Week of Service Team
p.s. - Here are some pictures from yesterday & today.