TRIP #1 - JULY 19-25, 2008

Central Iowa is battling unprecedented flooding this spring caused by large winter snowfalls followed by record-breaking spring rains. Pastor Sheryl Campbell of St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Waterloo, is located in one of the hardest hit areas in Iowa. Waterloo is a community of 67,000 and is at the heart of the massive floods.

Our first Servants team leaves for Waterloo on Saturday, July 19th at 5:00 am. We have three eager team members that are ready to help in the beginning stages of flood recovery and demolition. Please pray for Chris, Gary and Dave as they journey to Iowa to serve.

Countdown 2 Days

Chris and Gary started gathering the tools, coolers, first aid kits, sun screen and other supplies on Thursday. Saturday morning will be here before you know it!!

The team arrived safely after driving straight through 15 hours on Saturday. They were able to attend worship on Sunday and listened to a great music group playing southern gospel music. The team will post pictures soon.

ONE LONG DRIVE approx 930 miles

Wow! It was one long drive. We finally arrive in Waterloo, Iowa at 11:30PM. Pastor Sheryl said she would meet us at the church & get us settled. We set us camp in a storage room & a little kids classroom. There was another team already asleep (several teens & 3 adults).

A Super Sunday

Sunday started at 5:30 for some of us. Gary forgot about the time change & was up an hour early.

There was a Gospel Quartet at the church today & also the "Christian Motorcycle Association".

It was a great way to start off our week here in Iowa.

The whole church stayed for desserts & fellowship afterward then Pastor Sheryl introduced us to Pam. We will never forget Pam. We worked in her Garage for 7 Hard hours sorting & organizing the entire garage. There were thousands of pounds of clothing and other item to be distributed to the flood victims and it all need organized. WHAT A JOB!

Day 2 - And The Drywall (or shall we say"Wetwall") Came Down!

Today we met James Bond from World Hope. He sent the three of us and two local gals, Mary & Jana (from the host church) to work at "Operation Threshold".
They are a nonprofit community action agency who service thousands of clients in the surrounding areas with help for housing, WIC, family planning & energy assistance. This agency literally lost ALL their records in the flood. Nothing was salvageable.

The 5 of us spent 8 hours using sledge hammers, crowbars, our hands & our sweat, to tear out drywall, drop ceiling, insulation, office furniture and glued carpet.

Check out the before (above) & after (below) pictures.

This is our debris pile. We pitched everything we could out the windows.

Do you like our Monkey Suits? I (Chris) am the Chief Ape so I didn't have to wear one, but tomorrow we will be "mucking" out a house in Cedar Rapids and you can be sure even I will be wearing one. I saw a team come back tonight from that area and their suits were brown & their jeans underneath were wet up to their knees from mucking & then washing down walls & floors. Bet you can't wait to see our photos of tomorrows work.

Day 3 - Cedar Rapids "MUCK OUT".

We phoned Mary, the homeowner, to meet us at her home and give us some instructions on what she needs us to do. A crew from New York, 3 guys & 1 gal, met us there to help with mucking out. They are working with World Hope also.

Little did we know that Mary was at work when we called her, but she came to meet us and spent the entire day working along with us. Here's a picture of Mary chatting with Gary. Notice Gary's monkey suit around his ankles.


We had nominated our team member, Dave, and one of the guys from New York, James, as the ones to go to the basement. The door to this basement was an opening in the floor covered by a board with hinges. This is me standing on the stairs to the basement. They got me in the monkey suit and I was very grateful to have one for this job. If you look close, I have totes on too.


There was no electric, water, or a way to get light into this muddy, dark, storage filled space under the house. God Bless these brave souls for spending several hours grabbing soggy, muddy items they couldn't even see and handing them up to us to put out to the curb. Then to go back down there after that armed with shovels and 5 gallon buckets to shovel the mud up off the tile floor & hand those buckets up to us. We coined them as the "Muck Brothers". When that part of the mucking was over I gave them both a 5 min break. Now you know why Dave looked so relieved on his break as I snapped this photo.

Mary owned the house 2 doors away and part of our crew spent the day there tearing off drywall & lathe, ripping out cabinets, and clean out work. Mary's mother died last year & she needed to take care of that house as well. Mary lost everything in this flood. Here is a picture of a room inside her neighbors home to give you all an idea of what approx. 3,500 homeowners had to deal with after the flood.

At the end of the day it is amazing to look at the pile of debris that we removed from the home ... in this case 2 homes. Those big black blobs in the lower left of the photo below are some of the piles of mud that came out of the basement. I lost count after 32 buckets.

Stay tuned for tomorrows......"POWER WASHING". Same property, clean monkey suit.

Today was our last day in Cedar Rapids at Mary's house.

We finished power washing the 1st floor & the majority of the basement. I started doing the Clorox spray to kill the mold after the power wash. Not enough hours in our day.They will have to go back & finish it without us. Gary, where is your face mask?

Watching everyone work & taking pictures wore me out, so I took a break and sat down on the curb to eat a few chips.

On my trip down the block to the port-a-potty, I saw the "Big Claw" truck heading our way to pick up our pile of debris. This is them removing our pile.

Below is Mary's home without the pile.

That is Gary in the window on the right, using a squeegee on the floors.

Look at these 2 guys munching again.

Speak of eating, St. Paul's had a chicken dinner for us tonight. We we arrived, the local TV station had a reporters interview us ... before we ate or showered.

Tomorrow we will go back to Operation Threshold & tear out drywall. We may have a team of youth from "Group Work Camps" to join us.

Oh by the way, Mary's mothers house has all the drywall out now and they started tearing out the buckled hardwood floors. Still lots of work to do there.

Wanted to put our last day of "work in IOWA" photos on the blog, but we didn't have access to the Internet until now, so here it is.
Thursday morn we worked again at Operation Threshold. At around 10:00am a group of 25 youth arrived to help out & wow what a help they were.

They were part of a program called "Group Workcamps Foundation". This organization plans Summer work camps for teens, usually a week long. They have programs to choose from all across the USA. There were approx. 400 youth doing home repair type projects in the Waterloo area for the week. We were glad to have them work with us for the day.
This picture is of Tom & I. Tom is the coordinator of "From The Heart" ministry/organization which host the Group Workcamps.

Before we departed, we left our "we were here mark" on one of the walls. I'm pretty sure that this wall was torn down before those teens were finished for the day. They were amazing!


We were headed back to the church to shower and pack our bags for our 2 day journey home.

THANK YOU PASTOR SHERYL

A special "thank you" goes to Pastor Sheryl at St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Waterloo for hosting our team. She was a great blessing to us and the other teams as well.

It takes many people to help rebuild after a flood of this magnitude. We are blessed to be a part of it, however the real heros are those who live there that continue to work hard and focus on the hope for the future. Pastor Sheryl is one of those people!

We are looking forward to sending more teams to Iowa in the upcoming months. Please call Servants at 717-378-0336 if you are interested in joining us! Ask for Trent Davis or Todd Jackson.

And from our team, Chris, Gary and Dave, we want to thank you for your prayers and financial support! God bless you all!!