New Bern

On Monday, I went to New Bern with a team from my church. It's been over a month since Hurricane Florence hit, but people there are still gutting their homes.

Backtracking, a week and a half ago I got an email from the church pastor sent to the congregation about a planned work day-trip to New Bern on Monday, the 22nd. I read that email and immediately thought, I'm going on this. I'm not employed, I have no plans, they need my help. Time to go serve.

We were a team of 17. My parents were so excited I signed up for this; they asked me if I knew everyone who was going. Nope! I knew the three pastors and the woman who was leading it up. That's it.

We left the church at 5:30 folks. That is so early to me! I've only driven at that hour once, that I can remember. I got to the church and was oddly so much more alert than I ever expected. It didn't truly matter, because I wasn't driving (and I may have not agreed if I had to!)

After receiving assignments at the church headquarters in New Bern, our team split into three groups - two teams on the field, and three ladies who stayed at the church to serve with meals and the upkeep of the church. My group of 7 (6 men and me!) went to three homes over the course of the day. At the first house, we met L, the homeowner, who was renting out the space. He had already had a team come and pull out the drywall and insulation inside the house, but they didn't tackle the crawlspace under the house. We spent almost 5 hours at L's house. None of us thought you could pull out that much from a crawlspace. But we did it all. All the insulation, all the ducts, which were sopping wet, the plastic floor liner, the duct shaft under the house and up into it. And poor L wasn't even done when we left him. With two feet of water in the house, the wood floors in the house that were under carpet will need to go, so will the tile he had in the back room and the tile in the bathroom. He also probably needs to update the molding around the windows, as the water rolled right into the house through them. He's planning on rearranging the layout of the house since it's already down to the studs anyway. And he's right, no time like the present! Personally, I couldn't help but feel something for the renters, who lost all their possessions. There was a pile of some of them right outside the front door, which we moved to the curb. Picture frames, clothing, baby dolls, and little girl's shoes. Some little girl who used to live here lost her toys. And that broke my heart.

When we finally finished the crawlspace and left L beyond thankful for our work, we stopped at the church to receive our next assignment and then went to meet S, who needed some carpet pulled out of an enclosed garage. We were a little excited at the thought of an easier job. Upon arrival at the house, we find that this room has a lot of stuff in it, including a small pool table that would not have fit through the doorway when parallel to the floor, meaning we'd have to take off the legs. So while the guys are beginning to remove everything from this space and deciding what to do with this table, Joe is on a roll and already cutting a line in the carpet to start pulling it up, and I have an idea. Don't take everything out of the room. Do it sections at a time and move the stuff around in the room. Then we don't have to do anything with this table. Everyone agrees that's the way to do it. But pulling up carpet in a one-car garage with quite a bit of furniture in it is a tight job for 7 people. So I begin tackling the closet, which is overflowing with stuff and the carpet is heading that way, so there's no way we can pull it out with all this stuff here. Part way into this task, I can now see that the carpet stops at the doorway, which is awesome news. I do not want to pull everything out of this space.

This is a quick job, and S is amazed at how quick we're moving. I asked her how much water came in the space, and she said enough to cover her foot but she could still stand in it, which didn't really tell me much, as you can stand in three feet. There were three brick steps that you had to go up to get to the rest of the house, so I'm guessing not that high, as all she wanted out was this carpet.

We were in and out in of S's house in less than an hour and back at the church again. Soon we were on our way to another house that sounded like it was going to be our worst job yet, which is saying something, because that crawlspace was something else. And so, we go to meet C, an elderly lady who needs her ceilings and the blown-in insulation in the attic pulled out after a roof leak during the hurricane. We arrive and immediately notice two things from the driveway - the house has been tarped, and very well, and this house is incredibly small. We head inside to check out the ceiling and find two more things - it's warm, and there's furniture everywhere. This woman has her house set at 85 and there clearly isn't room for all 7 of us. Meanwhile, her ceilings, are terrible, honestly. There's damage in two of three bedrooms and the living room. One bedroom will need to be all pulled out, in the second, it's possible to save half the ceiling, but it's stucco, so it may be wiser to pull the whole thing. The problem is, this house is so small, and this woman needs to live here. Once we pull out the insulation in her attic, she won't have any insulation and it's been cold at night. In order to do this task and make living here doable for her, we'd need sturdy plastic to use for a makeshift ceiling to keep some of the heat in. We'd also have to do one room at a time because she's got big furniture in each room and it'd have to fit in another room while we worked on that one. At first, we thought we'd just take care of one bedroom and get something started for her, but ultimately, we couldn't do the task she needed at all because we didn't have anything to put in place of the ceiling after we pulled it. So we returned to the church and gave them a better report of what she needed so they can assist her properly later this week.

This wasn't an easy trip. It wasn't meant to be. But we devoted a day of our lives that didn't count for much and our two teams made a remarkable difference in the lives of four others. We need to consider ourselves blessed when we are spared from such destruction, and serve and help those who weren't. Some of them truly lost everything and we have everything to offer.