Yesterday I went to the Bike store to get me a new seat for my bicycle. After I found the perfect memory foam cushion seat, I was ready to check out. While I was talking to the store manager about the benefits of my new seat, he asked me where I went to church. I told him Mt Zion and he asked “What is the name of the youth pastor out there?” I answered him with “lance Merritt”. He said “No that’s not him.”
I told him, “Um, yeah it is, because that’s me.” He laughed and said he was thinking of somebody else.

Today I took my Georgia Commercial Drivers License Test and passed! Yahoooooooooo! So if you ever need me to drive your big rig, stretch hummer, or ice cream truck, just let me know.

We are home and it was a great week. We saw many places that were still devastated even though Katrina came through 2 years ago. We traveled to Bay St. Louis and took a picture of this bank vault.

So we had another great day as Team Demolition. It was almost a mirror of yesterday. Toward the end of our day another group saw us working and decided to stop by and give us some waters. We talked and even got our picture with them. It was a great day and we were really able to see some progress after today.

Yesterday we worked on a lot that used to have a house on it, until the Hurricane came and picked it up and threw it to some unknown location. The only thing left was the foundation. This is where our team comes in. We had the job of busting up the foundation and trying to salvage any bricks that the home owner could save to use later. We cleared out the side part of his house from overgrowth and pretty much anything the storm could have swirled into his yard. Some of our team members sorted bricks into different piles and stacked them on pallets. We had a full day of hard work and satisfaction of knowing that we helped someone.

After the last two days, our mission trip work shirts have started being able to stand up on their own. So we needed to get our shirts washed before we started again. (Just imagine middle school boys, no shower, hard work, & their shirt)

So last night we decided to have our devotion at the Laundry mat. We had a fun night of studying God’s word and getting our shirts washed.

Yesterday, we provided a one day vbs for the kids in a local fema park. We had several crafts, recreation, music, snacks, memory verse & treasure box, and bible story. We had around 35 kids during our vbs. It was a fun day loving on and ministering to the kids in the park. We had opportunity to share God’s love with lots of kids and some older teens through out the afternoon.

My personal favorite part of the vbs was being able to pray for 3 teenager girls who were down and out because they had lived in the park for 2 years. It was a great afternoon.

So yesterday we traveled to Gulfport for our mission work. We arrived ate a sack lunch and headed to our first location. We helped a person who was in the hospital get her yard back to normal condition. We weeded, mowed, cut, cleaned, and even fertilized once we were through. We sent one team to a house that had a mound of (stuff) in their yard and helped lower it into the trash. We then went to an elderly ladies house and helped her with miscellaneous projects including helping her with her yard. It was a good first day. We ended the night with our devotion and then enjoying the delicious hot doughnut provided by Krispy Kreme.

Last night we enjoyed the culture down at the French Quarter. My group enjoyed some local cuisine of: Alligator, Crawfish Fettuccine, Shrimp Poboy, Cajun Burger, and a cheeseburger. There were street performers that entertained us also. We saw a magician, a water glass musician, a human statue fairy, an all silver cowboy, a jazz band, and very bad lynard skynard cover band.
Our one day of touring is over and now we are headed to Gulfport to begin our mission work.

This morning we visited the New Orleans Zoo and had a great time looking at and talking about all the exotic animals. We left there and headed to our high speed Air boat tour of the bayou. The Air boats were awesome! We had a blast feeding gators and cruising the swamp. Here is a picture of me holding a baby gator.

Yesterday we got on the road and made some good time. I always account for us stopping 18 times to goto the bathroom, but we only had to stop 17 times. We attended the New Orleans AAA baseball game and had a good time. At first we were kinda under-impressed because of the lack of attendance and lack of “crowd excitement”. But we made our own fun and had a great evening. This morning we are eating some breakfast and getting ready for a day of touring.

Caity is now a blogger! Head on over to CaityKurish.com and check out her new blog.

Today has been a good day. I have a full belly and now I am ready for bed.