House building

 Cleanup efforts after the Alabama tornado of April 27, 2011 weren't finished very quickly. In fact, some areas are still feeling the effects of the storm.
 Henager, AL is one of those places and last week I had a chance to go and be a part of the healing process.
 My old boss at the Census, Lee Carter, who hooked me up with Samaritan's Purse after Hurricane Irene, called me again to join the Georgia Baptist Association as they ventured to Henager to build a new house.
 I traveled in a van with five guys from Fleming Baptist Church in Augusta-following a few others from Grace Baptist Church-Thursday morning, getting into Henager at lunch Thursday afternoon. To be specific, lunchtime.
 One thing I've learned from these first two relief efforts I've participated in is that volunteers are fed well. I'm sure that's not the case in all cases, but when there's power, there's a kitchen. While some of us were at the site building the house, others were back at the church where we were staying (Henager Baptist) preparing meals. And they were good and plentiful.
 About five miles from the church was the lot belonging to Reba and Debbie Bailey. Some others had been there before and the framework for the new house was already up.
 Reba and Debbie had been in their trailer the day of the tornado, and miraculously made it through. One of the places they thought about waiting it out was in their bathtub, but changed their mind at the last minute. Good thing too as the bathtub was demolished by a tree limb. They thought their dog Bandit, who was outside in his kennel at the time, was gone forever as well. After the storm blew through, Reba picked herself off Debbie-she said she didn't know how that happened-and went out to look for Bandit. His kennel was nowhere in sight, but found him cowering in the deep pit of an uprooted tree. They found one of their kittens under some rubble a few days later, unharmed, and instantly named her Miracle.
 They made a point of telling that story to all the volunteers and showed us all pictures of the storm minutes before it hit. Scary stuff.
 So, when we got their I joined up with Lee to help pull cable through the house. That morphed into wiring the main breaker box. I thought that was pretty impressive for me, but I realized not long after that a trained monkey should have been able to accomplish what I was doing. The monkey probably could have done it faster as well.
 Friday morning, another group from Grace Baptist Church had arrived to help, including a guy who was well-versed in the electrical field. I didn't have to redo everything I had done the day before, but I certainly had to do some reworking of the panel.
 Toward lunchtime I took a break from that and started helping with manual labor. That's probably where I was best suited, but I was finding it hard to keep up with the two 20-something guys who were in the process of digging up Reba's huge bush. We couldn't get it up before lunch, and after lunch, it took Debbie driving her tractor to get the bush out of the ground.
 I spent most of the rest of the day with various manual labor tasks as I figured it was best to stay out of the way of people who knew what they were doing in the various areas.
 Saturday morning I didn't bother going anywhere near the electrical panel and helped concentrate on helping with the interior as it was time to add insulation and start putting sheet rock up. My job was to place a box at the bottom of the beam that separated the rooms from the attic and the outside and staple it to the beam. It wasn't the hardest thing in the world to do, but I suppose it was needed.
 We left that afternoon after another great prepared lunch, and thatwas long enough for me. Others were staying until the following Tuesday and I expect the house was done by then.
 I guess I helped in the long run. If nothing else, I was able to accomplish tasks that allowed others to do the carpentry and building of things like a fron and back porch and putting siding all around the house.