On monday, the students from the trip shared a little bit about the trip in Chapel at Asbury College. A lot of good stories, prayers and fashion.
Caroline, one of the girls in my group, shared about two people, Keith & Michelle, we met while down there. She sums up their story very well. If you have six minutes and some speakers, take a listen.
Our first full day in Mississippi was Sunday. We needed to get the trip off on the right foot and since half of us were staying at a church there was no way we could pass up on the service.
Our home base for the entire week was The First United Methodist Church of Pass Christian. All the girls from our group were staying there. A great guy by the name of Mike Zimmerman had come down from the Mercy Center in North Carolina to lead, and most of all organize, a variety of projects for the stream of groups that would be helping in Pass Christian. Now this was a small church to start with, but luckily the Lord spared it from the worst of the storm. It had only two feet of water inside during the hurricane, and that may sound like a lot but compared to everywhere else that was the least amount of water I heard about. All of the walls, including the interior ones, were made of cinderblock, so besides having the carpeting pulled up, half the pews and everything in the extra rooms destroyed, it was a working church. But because there are so few people who are living in Pass Christian, now the already small church only had a handful of parishioners showing up for sunday services. So it was about a dozen locals and 80 of us from Wilmore on sunday morning.
And it really got to me. Seeing the locals who had been through so much, having virtually everything they owed destroyed, still there praising God, its was truly something and brought a tear to my eye. The songs were good, and there were ones I had sung so many times before, but I saw them in a new light. “On God the solid rock I stand”, has such a literal meaning and makes Matthew 7:24-27 more than a parable. “It is well with my soul” cause it sure ain’t well with my house. To believe that “great is thy faithfulness” when you look outside and couldn’t really object to a non-believer thinking “how can God be good if He let this happen?” Truly amazing and reminded me of a similar reaction I had this past Easter. Commonplace songs breaking through the monotony of routine.
Thursday morning, being Thanksgiving, we had another service. It was in the next town over, Long Beach, were the destruction was even worse. To illustrate my point, we drove by a sign for a “Kangaroo” (how the sign was still there I don’t know) but someone in my van asked what’s a Kangaroo? It was destroyed so bad we couldn’t even tell it was a gas station.
After the service we were ready to get started. There is something about meeting the people who’s town you are going to be helping. It pushed me over the edge and not made me willing to “just take it easy before tomorrow”.
As for the work on sunday (which the trip was not about, something you’ll hear more about later)? The one time I needed the measuring tape I brought, I didn’t have it with me. I built some shelves at a distribution center and got eaten alive but what we would soon dub “F’ing Gnats”. Did anyone knew gnats bite? Well I sure didn’t, but I did end up finding the big dipper on my arm.
Last week I went with about 79 or so others, including over 60 current Asburians, to Pass Christian Mississippi.
The first thing you may notice on a drive to the Gulf Coast is how many trees are down. Mississippi, like much of the eastern United States, includes plenty of roadside forests. I was about 100 miles away from the coast and started noticing lots and lots of trees down. Now, my family lives in Central Florida and had three hurricanes travel through their county (Osceola) in 2004. Well they are in the middle of the state, so they only experience catagory 1 winds, but last Christmas when I went down to visit, it noticed lots of damage and lots of trees down. But nothing comes close to what I saw in Mississippi. I knew it would be bad because of how many trees where down an hour or so away from the coast. Now the group traveled down in 9 vans and we stuck in groups of three, which we affectionally refereed to as “Triads”, but back to the story. My triad was the last one in, and it was already dark when we got there, but as we were driving to the Church we were meeting at you could tell that past the darkness that there was some significant destruction.
When the sun rose the next morning, and really the rest of the week for that matter, we had to continually pull our jaws off the floor. A doll in the dirt, a house that had been turned into an parallelogram, a school bus that looks like it was blown up, an entire house sitting on train tracks, slabs on concrete that used to be the foundation for a house, tombs on their side, a car under a house and countless more things that nearly brought me to tears. Now keep in mind, this trip started over two and a half months after the hurricane finished, but it looked like it could of happened last week. I can’t imagine what it really did look like one week after the storm.
Last Christmas in Osceloa country Florida, almost every house was damaged in someway, or at least severe tree damage. In this town, almost every house was completely uninablitable. In fact I did not notice anyone living at their home, the closest I saw was a trailer in their front driveway. And to think we weren’t even in the worst of it. We were in Pass Christian, the towns on either side of this one, were so bad that you had to have a special pass to get in. It wasn’t open to volunteer groups like ours just showing up. And to think that we were in one of the smallest towns in the area. I think criticism of FEMA, the Red Cross, Bush or who ever you want to point fingers at for a slow response are unfortunate. The destruction is so broad and major that I can’t imagine where to start. There are not enough employees, volunteers or housing to go around to handle the significant portion of the population of this county affected by the storm. They could have cleaned off every trailer lot in the country and it wouldn’t even come close. The relief might have been slow, but how to you find places for hundreds of thousands of people to stay in a day or two. Feeding them all would be hard enough. Its a crappy situation, but its amazing what has been done to this point, and amazing how much still needs to be done before the area actually looks like people live there again.
Check out My photo gallery, Asbury College’s Photos (of which I took a couple) and WilmoreToThePass.com for some early pictures and updates of what we did during the trip. I will be posting more pictures and stories in the weeks to come.
Normally we worry about regretting things we did. But recently it occurred to me that you can, and I have, regret for playing it safe. Lalah summarizes a conversation I was apart of very well, so I’ll save the writing and let her explain it:
There is something about being around missionaries that kind of leads you to think like them.
We were at the ol Wal-Mart. Looking to pick up some items that would make a good little dinner, and we were fancying some brownies for dessert. While we were there deciding if we wanted double chocolate chunk brownies, or deluxe fudge brownies, or brownies with frosting or maybe just get the cheap ones of on the bottom shelf, I realized that this is a uniquely prosperous problem. That was our big dilemma for the night; which pre-packaged, just add eggs, oil and milk brownies to buy for dessert. There we were, standing and staring at a wall of brownies, 3 six footers looking from our toes to over our head at brownies. At this point I realized there are countries that don’t have huge mega stores like Wal-Mart selling a 100 of everything. Even other well off countries don’t have the kind of insane selection that we do here in America. We get used to being the most prosperous country in the world. Then I went on to realize that there are people all around the world who haven’t had a brownie before. Even more then that, there are a billion people who are just lucky if they have something to eat tonight
Now, we bought some kind of brownie, I don’t remember which, but it was darn tasty. I’m not planning on giving up desserts anytime soon. But the G8 Summit and the Live8 concert, have really brought the situation to the forefront of everyone’s mind, lets remember those who haven’t been as blessed as we have. Be thankful for what you have, don’t complain about what you want.
Unlike, Julie and Steph, I haven’t quite been able to figure out what the soundtrack of my life would be. However, I have been making a playlist every month the represents songs that I just discovered, can’t get enough of, or describe thoughts/feelings of that month. So here it is, the soundtrack of my year:
May ’04
Don’t Tell Me by Avril Lavigne
Don’t Leave Me by Blink-182
Every Little Thing by Hawk Nelson
Accidentally In Love by Counting Crows
Barrel of a Gun by Guster
June ’04
Who Knows by Avril Lavigne
Shiver by Coldplay
Letter Read by Rachael Yamagata
In This Diary by The Ataris
July ’04
Walkie Talkie Man by Steriogram
California by Hawk Nelson [Free Download]
Girl on LSD by Tom Petty
Low Income (Its Friday!) by Wyclef Jean
Barbie Girl [German] by Rammstein
Spider-Man Theme by Michael Bublé
September ’04
Punk Rock 101 by Bowling for Soup
Always On My Mind by Phantom Planet
Take Me by Hawk Nelson
Vertigo by U2
Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been by Relient K
German Test Drive by Spymob
Pittsburgh by Huntingtons
What’s My Age Again by Blink-182
One Year, Six Months by Yellowcard
1985 by Bowling for Soup
Ode to a Butterfly by Nickel Creek
October ’04
Be My Escape by Relient K
Age Six Racer by Dashboard Confessional
High Of 75 by Relient K
October Nights by Yellowcard
November ’04
Life Of A Salesman by Yellowcard
Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet
A Praise Chorus [Live] by Jimmy Eat World
First Date by Blink-182
My Alien by Simple Plan
December ’04
I Celebrate The Day by Relient K
Christmas Day by MxPx
Green Christmas by Barenaked Ladies
Sleigh Ride by Johnny Mathis
February ’05
Again I Go Unnoticed by Dashboard Confessional
Somewhere Only We Know by Keane
We’re Going To Be Friends by The White Stripes
March ’05
Such Great Heights by The Postal Service [Free Download]
Quit Your Life by MxPx
The Wonderful Cross by Joel Engle
Curbside Prophet [Live] by Jason Mraz
April ’05
Life After Death & Taxes (Failure II) by Relient K
Beautiful Soul by Jesse McCartney
Save the Last Dance for Me by Michael Bublé
I haven’t spend time updating this blog recently but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to waste my time on the internet anymore.
It’s been a while and I am sorry to disappoint this entry is more informative then educational or entertaining. At least its good news. You might have noticed that this blog only gets updated about every month or so. Well I can’t promise that that is going to change anytime soon, but I do have some other great updates for all ya all.
First off, we have launched Pete & Jay’s Tip O Da Day. In it, Jason and I pretty much just make up some crap everyday. So where my blog isn’t getting updated, just check out the Tip of the Day for a daily something or other.
Most of you already knew about that one, but here’s something I bet you didn’t know. Tonight I updated Pappy’s Pictures. I still don’t have any from 2005, but I’ve pretty much got 2004 covered, and as an added bonus there is a new page on there called Matt in Action and of course the update of a county favorite Crazy Headshots. And if you order within the next 10 minute I’ll throw in a new Crazy Jason Pic and AFS. I know there are a lot of great pictures out there that should be posted, just send em my way!
One other fun item you might notice is that pretty much all the new sites are at PeterVCook.com Yes, I bought my own domain name and am pretty much now, officially, a complete geek. So please people, call me up lets go to Chili’s or something, cause at this second I feel like all I do is update my sites (aka. I’m no longer cool).
With the extra time available to me not having to work due to the Christmas holiday I have had some great time to do things such as read. So I opened up “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer, the chapter I am on is titled “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing” . “Ah oh” I thought to myself, “this isn’t going to be fun”, which traditionally in these types of matters means, “this will be good for me”. Tozer starts out that before sin God gave Adam all sorts of gifts, and it was good, but now, in the post-fallen world these “things” can cause problems. We cling to them. The words me and mine “are verbal symptoms of our deep disease”. I find it interesting that it is now the day after Christmas, where we rejoice because of the piles of things we have just received. Today, definitely doesn’t help to cure this disease. Just as God’s gifts to Adam were blessings, having things/gifts isn’t bad, the problem comes when we try to possess these things.
I was watching one of Christmas gifts and on it Jerry Seinfield said in one of his interspersed standup bits that he has had stuff stolen from his apartment several times. The first time was the worse, a “they took my stuff” attitude. But after that you don’t even bother calling the cops about it. I think we have to get to that point. Abraham had to learn that lesson a very hard way, he had to be willing to sacrifice his son in order to obey God. Afterwards Isaac was safe and Abraham had a wife, a son, sheep, camels, and descendants as numerous as the stars. “He had everything,
but he possessed nothing.” Everything we have is on loan from God. Tozer has a great suggestion for when his readers begin to examine themselves on this issue, I think it’s a great suggestion for whenever we examine anything before God: we “should put away all defense” and not resort to excuses. That really hit home for me, because I immediately want to make defenses when being confronted.
I think a former pastor of mine, expressed the attitude our hearts need to have in regards to stuff very well when he said something along the lines: we need to let things rest in the palm of our hands, making them easy to remove not trying to hold them tightly with our fingers clinched around them. Then it won’t be so bad if they are taken away, at least they weren’t ripped out of our hands and heart.
What is it like being God trapped in a baby’s body?
In our “Top of the Week” meeting at work this week, we had a little devo as we do every week. The conversation lead to a discussion about, the fully divine, Jesus as a Child. How much did he know and how much did he realize about who he is early on in this earthly life? Such as, God trapped as a helpless embro, was it just torture, once being able to do anything at all, and self-limited only to kick on occasion? Or did he grow into his realization as the Son of God and Savior of the universe as he got older? He did obvously know who he was when he was 12 and his family lost him back at the temple ?Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?? (Luke 2:49)
The discussion reminded me of a song: “I Celebrate The Day” by “Relient K” that asks that same question. And I think expresses it better then I just did in the previous paragraph:
And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior?
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever?
General Mills should probably take notice and add a new iPod shaped marshmallow to me magical Lucky Charms.
Alright times are a changing. It’s taking me longer to post an update, I’m commenting on a month and a half old news article and kids are no longer looking for Lucky Charms at the end of the rainbow. According to a survey of 500 Welsh kids (we’re not talking about grape juice here people) 22% of them wanted to find an iPod at “the end of the rainbow”.
Don’t get me wrong I love my iPod (maybe too much, but that’s between me and my counselor). But kids in this century are sure getting expensive tastes. In the same survey adults said that they were hoping to find bikes, roller-skates and candy at the end of their childhood rainbows. Sweets and pets were still top ten responses for kids and adults, thank goodness for tradition. There’s nothing quite like feeding your slobbery dog a bag of Pop Rocks. But we found that dog digging through the neighbor’s trash and those Pop Rocks we like a jar of alabaster. I did have a bike growing up but I swear my bike didn’t start at $250 and come in 5 fruity colors.
Let me tell you, back in my day we were lucky to just have a rainbow. Much less a rainbow with iPods littering the backside. When we did find a rainbow we were happy if we found more than dirt. We loved those rocks, they made great toys. Pets? Footballs? Those were rocks to us. I sure wish poor Jimmy would just learn to catch. “Black-and-Blue-Jim”, that’s what we used to call him.