From Ennis to Galveston

After catching half of the feature at the Ennis Drive-In Movie, we settled for the night in Corsicana, TX at the First United Methodist Church.  Ready for a new day, we flew south for lunch and Houston and eventually hit Galveston, TX to catch beach and waves.  We visited Moody Gardens and had a tasty Tex-Mex meal at Salsas.  We are now bedding for the night at Moody Memorial UMC here in Galveston and awaiting all that's in store as our trip winds down.

Friday Fun Day!

A fun day for all! Schlitterbahn & tasty seafood in Galveston! Heading for home tomorrow!!!

The Last Day...

The pffft “touché”ers
Written by: Tracie Shippy and Emily Green

So today was our last workday at our beach not so much disaster house and we finished dry walling the bathroom and garageness! Yay! Everything is up, screwed, and basically puttied. We even had fun carving messages into small extra pieces of dry wall and passing them to each other. One problem we did encounter though was the swarms of random biting flies and mean bees. John Meacham, fearless and with no emotion, took the life of a waiting allergic reaction and swatted it with a piece of dry wall! And down the bee tumbled, while Mitchell just attempted to swat Emily. Another was we were not allowed to use our sites toilet. When asked to use it, we received this brain twister… “No. My son’s parents are up there.” Yes, interesting. So the girls went to the Valero gas station and brought back yummy drinks! Yay! Bonita decided to be the Timmy Clark of our trip and eat all of Tracie’s popcorn… but she bought her a whole new bag. After running low on supplies we all used minimum for a maximum effect. The day was quite great until we got back to the bus after a fabulous Wally World trip, of course stopping to look at albums of some artists such as Michael Jackson, Jonas Brothers, and Mandy Moore, when we found out the terrible news. Michael Jackson, the thriller of our lives, has decresendoed from this musical world. ☹
Our world of missioning is complete. Now it’s Schlitterbahn time!!! ☺ (Yes parentals, we will wear foil and oil and come back with skin cancer…okay fine. Lots of sunscreen. Love you <3)


Thursday June 25, 2009
WOOKIE POWER.

Today was the best day ever. The End.

Just kidddinggggg!

“I bet the other group will enjoy another day of air conditioning and naps”. WELL, IN YOUR FACE. The wookies walked into their crooked house early in the morn and discovered a cardboard box, and soon found their new best friend, Wilbur, the air conditioning unit thingy. We literally screamed when we first laid eyes upon the beautiful creature and looked forward to our last day of working. During lunch at the church, Mr. Cariker thought of the lovely idea of CHICKEN in addition to our chips and sandwiches. Yum. Yet while we are eating a peaceful chickeny lunch, a friendly man walks outside towards us and says, “You guys have been working hard, you deserve some brownies”. Moments later, we also received large boxes of muffins and danishes. Another yum. This day was awesomely amazingly great. We also got to see kids get attacked by sea gulls. Meacham was pleased to see the children come close to death. When we got back to work, Jack, Emily, and Diana were puttying in the front room when the creeper Evan came up and screamed to scare us. Jack suddenly jumped ten feet in the air and landed on the floor while all of us (including him) epically laughed at him. By the way, we actually found out that we had electricity the entire week, but only one outlet which were wires sticking out of the wall. We plugged in Patty’s phone to dance and sing while working and were going to make an amazing music video, which never actually happened. To entertain us during the day, we decided what Friends character and celebrity each person would be. Now Evan would like to add something, most likely being something quite ethnic and or about babies or vampires. Goodbye.
By Diana Blom and Emily Cariker


Redubbed in ye old English:

Today, we arose to find that thine Holy Eastier Wookie hath presented us with a holy relic which hath the power to cool thine blazing sun dubbed Sir Wilbur of Trane.. Soon after sunrise, we hadth begun to begin constructing the walls to the fortress in which we had thine pleasure to work in for thy week. By lunch, we hadth completed our holy tasks presented to us by Mel Gibson himself and proceeded to partake of thine Holy fried Chicken looted from the Crusade of Popeyes of 141 A.D. in which the merciless batter hadth tenderized thine crisp white meat till its surrender 2 weeks later. Production hadth increased after this holy feast, until Jack hath fainted and wet thine pants after being terrorized by the Ghost of the Duke of Heath, Evan Scallan XIVVIIXIVIXXXIVVIIII. Thine day ended with thine spirits up; saying fare ye well to our beloved friend of the cold, Sir Wilbur. The day ended with worship and competition blazed like thine intensity of a thousand suns in our daring conquest of thine colony of Puerto Rico. May God bless our trip and may our Tobacco and Indigo crops be aplenty.
Fare ye well,

Sir Evan Scallan, XIVVIIXIVIXXXIVVIIII Great Duke of Heath.

Wonderful Wednesday!!!

Reports from the field:

Wednesday June 24, 2009

THE WOOKIES.

Official third day of working in the most crooked house in the universe, with no air conditioning, and the only bathroom was a moldy disconnected toilet, unlike the spoiled jelly drilling something mabobbers with their plethora of luxuries. Our team worked hard and almost finished intense dry wall. Little Meacham/Chuck Norris Jr. improved her nailing skills. On the contrary, Jack’s skills decreased as he cut dry wall backwards. That’s right, FAIL. But this problem was easily fixed because apparently the group before had a mental disorder and nailed on two sheets of dry wall. After hearing of the other group’s adventure the day before, we took advantage of the chance to take a break and go to Sonic (and lucky us, it was happy hour!). The crime then began when Fatterson and Evan stole the big straws for their miniscule chocolate shakes. Jack was left with a half inch of straw to drink from his large coke, because they were out of Dr. Pepper. And I quote Jack: “I worked and entire day in the heat and humidity without a bathroom or air conditioning and I deserve a freaking Dr. Pepper”. Then we met up with the jelly mabobbers and drove to Mallory’s grandpa’s boat club thing. First we voyaged to the dock, but daring Mitchell, aka “chubbs”, adventured out into the unknown ocean of deathly jellyfish (which were thought to be nonexistent at the time). He wrestled with thousands of intense, infectious jellyfish and eventually was defeated after being brutally stung. So he turned around quickly and was soon to be meat tenderized. He lived. We got over it. After everyone became creepishly fearsome of the ocean, we chose to swim in the pool. That lasted about five mintues before we saw a brown floaty in the water and quickly filed out of the contaminated area. It was apparently a “chicken wing”. Mhmm sureeeee. The rest of the night was amazing. That’s it. Please pray we don’t get creeped on by the strange fellows from the other churches. They creepishly complement our fake tattoos, shirts, argyle socks and consistently beg meahcam to show off for them. Goodnight.
Oh yeah, and Evan thinks he’s like 9765976 nationalities.
Including asian. -.-
WOOKIE POWERRRRRRR!
Sincerely, Diana Blizzzzoooomm. Aka Durrty Diana, DD, Dirty D, icy, or heyoo.


Wednesday June 24, 2009

The Jelly Drilling Crabby Coolas

Today was an early morning waking up to the screaming girls and rowdy boys from other churches up at 4 am to be on the news (showcasing all the beautiful lawns our guys mowed). We had a lovely breakfast of leftover cold pizza, made our amazing sandwiches for lunch, emptied the freezing water from the coolers and headed to our new worksite. After a 45 minutes sleep filled drive all the way across Galveston we arrived at our new worksite by Jamaica beach. We then toured our new worksite, a nicely furnished beach house, again with electricity and bathrooms, and with a messed up rusty garage. After emptying all the junk out of it, including Patrick the crab, and removing a kazillion bizallion nails and screws out of the walls, we began mounting dry wall. We had our amazing screw driverers, Mitchell and Tracie, and the terrific geometrical Emily Green cutting perfect pieces of dry wall, leaving the rest of us shamed by our not so perfect cutting skills. We successfully covered half the area in dry wall by clean up time. Mallory and John returned Patrick the crab to his wonderful home on the beach while the rest of the group loaded the van and put the junk back into the garage, discovering a few black widows the process. After a long day of work, Mallory’s grandpa graciously took us to his boat club where we swam and grilled hot dogs. On the way to boat club, Tracie “graceful” Shippy couldn’t wait to swim and took a nice cool swim in one of our coolers. At the boat club, some of us ventured to the ocean filled with many baby jellyfish that didn’t sting, but lucky Mitchell found mama jelly and after hours of intense fighting with her, he suffered a few stings from the intense underwater “domination”. These stings were later treated with some vinegar and meat tenderizer, making Mitchell a much happier little warrior. Soon after Mitchell’s recovery, the group ate hot dogs and accidently went on a private no trespassing dock to worship. (whoops) but luckily no one was home. Then we all showered loaded the buses and returned to our lovely cramped home. The boys then began the second round of Carcasonne, woohoo…

-Mallory & John






One more day of work...

Day Two...

THE PUTTY MOWING DUMPSTER DIVERS
Group members: Paul, Mrs. Meacham, Mrs. Cariker, Mitchell, John, Jacob, Emily, Tracie, Abigail, and Mallory.
Blog written by: Abigail and Tracie
Our work day started at around 8am today and ended at around 4pm. We did a variety of jobs including painting, base boarding, puttying, sanding, dumpster diving naming Abigail, and lawn mowing. Most of the time the girls and the guys were split up, except for when Abigail and Tracie decided to be men and help with base boarding. In the afternoon the guys left our worksite and mowed lawns for the block that would be on The Today Show tomorrow. Waking up early in the morning yesterday has still affected our work habits, meaning we were lazy today. We still did work, but the girls took a short afternoon nap on the moldy school floor till Tracie woke me (Abigail) up. Hopefully tonight we will go to bed early enough to wake up tomorrow ready to work. We also get to switch work sites tomorrow, which is pretty exciting. No more dumpster diving! After a long day of work, we spent 10 minutes waiting for Paul to find the entrance to Sonic so we could get slushies. They were pretty amazing, and Bonita(Mrs. Meacham) bought them for us.
Names made for Abigail: Liquinail, Zebratail, Killer whale, Pass-or-fail, Parasail, Walking trail, Rattatail, Chippendale, Rain-or-hail, Supersnail, Swaggagail, Saggin gail, Laddergail, You-got-mail, Broken Nail, You’re-in-jail, I-eat-quail, Bucketpale, Scabigail, Tan-or pale, Staircase rail, Napigail, Happy Trail, Trapigail, Flabbigail,


Today is Tuesday. The Wookies continue their beastly wrath of house repair and remodeling. It has been a hot but rewarding day. As we played a game with clothes pins, we dry walled and filled in cracks with putty. We felt the heavy beads of sweat dripping down our faces because there is no air conditioning. I think we all at least drank four Gatorades and at least three waters. The house we have been in, circa 1900, is oddly shaped because the house originally only had an upstairs. This made cutting dry wall even more difficult. We are determined to get as much as we can done. After a hard day of work we’ll be ready for tomorrow.
Sarah Meacham, Emily Cariker, and Diana Blom

Off the Van & Ready to Work...

Our adventures as best told by our adventures....(one from each workgroup)


Ze Liqui-Nailing Paint Patról

We woke up and met at the church at the “dark and early” hour of 5am, and soon enough we embarked southward to Galveston. About six hours later we arrived at the island to the humid and hot goodness that the gulf is known for. After a brief picnic lunch at the base church, we divided into two groups. Our group was assigned to what was formerly Galveston College before the hurricane, but is now slated to become an elementary school within a few years. The floors and walls of virtually all of the rooms were in pretty bad condition, but between the groups before us and the current work that we were doing, the building will hopefully turn out to be a great facility for the young kids of the city. Within our group we divided into guys and girls. Guys did a bunch of baseboard work in one wing of the building while the girls proceeded to paint a couple of the larger rooms. The ladies ended up having waaaaaay too much fun with the paint (as always) and the guys soon learned that liquid nails and hot, unventilated conditions do not go well together. A few circulation fans later and after some fresh air breaks, we engineered a great system and cannot wait to resume our work tomorrow (and hopefully have another great board game showdown in the evening!).
-Mitchell on behalf of Ze Patról

The Engineering Wookies

Now that Mitchell covered all of the boring stuff… We can get to what you really care about-our group. After our delightful picnic lunch, we went to a house that was under about five feet of water during the hurricane. We had our work cut out for us- dry-walling, framing, cleaning, and tape and bedding. Alas we had NO supplies. I repeat NO NO NO NO NO supplies. We prepped as much as we could, saw the cats (they were creepy) and toured the house (it was creepier-there were scary old pictures). We also saw a man dancing in the streets and preaching the gospel for all the world to hear along Avenue M. So… we are excited to hit the ground running and get all that we can done. Till tomorrow PEACE OUT and RRRRRRRRRRRRR( that’s wookie for goodbye)
-Jack Eidson on behalf of the wookies