Report from Roland: April 1st - No foolin'!

Jay has his camera, and has taken a roll already. Today, after waiting around at a Habitat site (almost a whole block of homes that are in the stage of drywalling and painting) for over an hour, we finally got over to a house a mile away. This house also had its drywall done, and Jay and I had a somewhat lighter day in working in a much more finished home for a disabled widow. She served us coffee/iced tea and pineapple pudding cake for our afternoon break.

We drove back to our demolition house from yesterday for pictures, to find a FEMA subcontractor loading our massive pile of debris onto a rather mini-truck with just a small caterpiller with bucket and claws. The subcontractor asked us how he could get more help from LDR or Habitat in finding out which of our home projects had piles of debris for him to haul away. So, I passed his info onto the folks in the little green house. And, oh yes, that woman in the convenience story by Tent City, the one with the husband who was suicidal, still hasn't gotten her work done -- a matter of priorities plus the nature of her roof: flat, with special roofing needs.

This morning just before we went out to work, Bob the Roofer showed Jay and me his very extensive handbook of his records of all the shingle donations, donors, amounts, locations, etc., etc. VEry impressive the work he has done, both on roofs and back home in Phoenix with getting out the word.

Tonight, Saturday, it's rather quiet at Bethel, before a new surge of volunteeers tomorrow. We all went down to Tent City for chow. Jay and I just finished one of two DVDs on WLOX's Katrina story -- took nearly two hours to look at. I opted to sleep tonight on a Tempur-pedic in the long classroom, just to see how g reat it realy is. But tomorrrow night, back into the sanctuary. Jay says "Hi" as we turn in for a shorter night as we set the clock forward.

Oh, one more thing from Miss Linda from yesterday's work with the St. Olaf folks: she passed out piles and piles of Mardi Gras necklaces. I took 6. Want some???

Good night! I'm excited for tomorrow.

Roland