My Turn

I am very excited about my trip tomorrow. I leave for New Orleans to join a group of other volunteers in a project called Rebuilding Together, New Orleans. It is now my turn to go to New Orleans and help. Other groups have gone and done their work and I have rejoiced as each group has gone, but I have not been able to go. But now there is a work project and I have time, and so I go.

Rebuilding Together is a group which works with Preservation National on rebuilding and preserving homes. In much the way Habitat works, Rebuilding Together works primarily on repairs and restorations. I am not sure that they build any from the ground up.

I do not know anybody in this group. I will meet 19 other people and we will try to become a work team. This program provides room and board for its volunteers at a fee of $250 for a week. They supervise the work and have the work planned and organized. They ask me questions about my abilities and like so many other times, I did not know how to answer. How skilled are you at carpentry? Well, I can cut a board and nail it, but not as quickly as others and not always as neatly as I would like. Plumbing? well, I can fix my commode and change washers and know about cut off values, but glue and wrap PVC,I am not sure. Electricity? I am great with wires, boxes, and all electrical matters, when there is no electricity in the line, but I do not play with them when they are "alive." Roofing? I have roofed my whole workshop, but it did not have valleys and chimneys and complications. So I tried to say I was better than some and not as handy as others, but we shall see how it goes. They let me come. I can surely push a wheelbarrow.

This will make me very happy, and I hope that it will do somebody in New Orleans some good. But I know that I am late to this work. The urgency is way past, and the people who need this help have been suffering too long. I know it is better than doing nothing, but blessed are those who responded immediately.