Road Trip: New Orleans, Part I

Before I started my wonderful, but time-consuming, never able to do anything else but work and recover, full-time job, I had decided to go with husband Roland on one of our church's mission trips. Roland had actually planned this one, and one of his criteria for choosing the location of the trip was comfortable accommodations. Lo and behold, the RHINO outreach ministry out of St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church, founded in September 2005, 3 weeks after Hurricane Katrina, totally fit the bill.

Last Thursday, we arrived in New Orleans and checked into the Brent House Hotel, where all the volunteers are housed. We were treated to a dinner and NOLA hospitality at a home of 2 of St. Charles Presbyterian's parishioners.

Friday, we headed over to our Habitat for Humanity build that was partnered with RHINO. This house was almost done, but there was still work to be done. My contribution involved painting. First the concrete footings that held up the house, and then interior doors. I actually painted the doors with a couple of other folks from a South Carolina group, and we painted outdoors. In the heat and sun. Which had the advantage of drying the paint quickly.

Anyway, I do have some pictures...

 The house we worked on, a typical shotgun style home. See those curlicue decorative things up in the corners on the porch. I caulked around them! Never caulked before, but yes, it's really easy.

The concrete was poured on Friday which made getting up on the porch kind of challenging, considering the step planks hadn't been installed.

Roland was measuring and cutting the planks for the porch steps. He's the one in the gray tee-shirt. I wanted to document that he had all his fingers both before and after using the power saw.

Our group. Me on the left with super cute and sweaty hair. And those awesome khakis I'm wearing did belong to my son. Guess they're mine now.

So that was Friday, Saturday we did something entirely different. I'm saving that post for part 2.