Vote for meeting time

Please use the poll on the right to vote for the best afternoon or evening or multiple times to talk about what you can expect on the trip. If you have been before and have committed to go again, then this meeting is your opportunity to encourage others to go with us. Get anyone thinking about going to attend and keep recruiting.

Please come to the informal gathering at our house. We can order a few pizzas and watch the video made in Slidell as Katrina came through. If October doesn't work for you, then maybe December works better. We are all called to make sacrifices, and your time on this trip will be a sacrifice that will be rewarded many times over by the people that you will meet and the travelers that you will get to know better.

Vote on the right. I expect to see you with us sometime in August.

Title image

I decided to tinker with the blog layout today, but I wanted to keep the picture that had been behind the title description for a while. This picture is very symbolic to me of the problems in the area.

The trailer is in the background behind the boat sitting on top of the car. I am assuming that the boat is in their front yard. This picture was taken while we were in Pearlington, MS the first week of April 2007. More than 19 months since Katrina, the people living in the trailer see the destruction each time they go out their door. It is difficult to put lives back together and be optimistic about the future when you can't even clean up the past.

I read recently that depression is on the rise there. No wonder. And, now with the weather getting very hot especially down there, I suspect that the amount of volunteers there is dwindling. But, we are going back in October. And, I would like to go back again very quickly in December. Will you find the time to go along with us? About 10 are committed to go so far, there is room for another 10...

Live Earth 07-07-07

Hopefully, you are enjoying some of the music provided by the concerts. The messages presented around the music are pretty important for us on the Earth as well. If you have the opportunity, then viewing the concert on Universal HD is the way to go. Click here to go to the official Live Earth blog. You can use the Carbon Footprint calculator to learn how much CO2 your lifestyle generates.

Because I am fairly lazy and I use IM, I downloaded the latest Windows Live Messenger. Just by changing my display name, Microsoft is making donations to different causes. If you already IM and use Windows Messenger, then how easy is that to do?

Watch Jackley Video and Plan

Please vote using the poll on the right to suggest a date to get together and watch the Jackley video and to prepare for our trip back. If you know anyone in the area interested in going, then you should invite them to attend. You will get to meet people that went in April and hear their stories and be inspired to go. If you know any electricians or plumbers that we should recruit to go with us, then please let me know. We have reserved space for 20 volunteers. I think that 10 people have already committed to go. At our house, we can order pizza or something easy to watch the video.

3 Months to Pearlington

Three months to go until we go back to Pearlington. Are you excited yet? If you need some inspiration, then head over to Jane El's blog to read about her mission trip to Mexico. If busloads of high school kids can take time out to help, then you can find a week to go to Pearlington with us. You will start seeing the signup sheets and hearing us talk about it during Interests and Concerns at worship. You won't have an excuse that you didn't know about it or have enough warning to prepare. Let's get ready for Oct 7 - 13.

When I get a bit cynical about the way our country appears to be heading, I can read about good things that groups of people and young people are doing. I never heard of "gap years" when I was in college, so you could take off for a year and live off of your surroundings doing mission work etc. But, I read about it more often. It is actually a good trend for kids to give them a purpose and re-emphasize values. Check out what Jane is describing on her trip. I am heading off on a tangent very quickly about the state of our country and our privileged kids not understanding how hard they will need to work and...