On Tuesday, July 22, we cancelled our usual picnic with the deaf students because weather reports claimed that rains would begin that evening. Instead Dolly chose to linger over the ocean (and South Padre Island) picking up strength and didn't hit until Wednesday.
The volunteers spent the day in the dining hall, snacking and playing cards together. The kids got a little stir crazy, but everyone's good spirits impressed me. Perhaps the closed quarters were rougher on the staff than the volunteers. By the evening, I had to lie on my bed with my eyes shut listening to Bach on my ipod and desperately trying to imagine I was alone. Maybe I'm just peculiar that way.
The volunteers couldn't go to the work site (which meant I had packed my last lunch cooler - a cause for great celebrations), but many of the staff were kept busy preparing and delivering food to various shelters. Isaiah 55 prepared food for the firemen who were rescuing and feeding flood victims. Erin reported that they were deeply grateful - never before had anyone remembered them during such a time. As it turned out, these were the same firemen that had helped get the drug dealers out of the hospital site. They'll remember I55, and who knows what benefits this new relationship may bring in the future.
Wednesday afternoon and evening brought steady rain and heavy winds - one gust in the stairwell nearly sent me back down the stairs. The winds whipped and moaned around the building; sometimes I could hear things crashing on the street below. It was eerie.
Thursday brought calm. Some of the staff drove families at the shelter back to their homes as the floods receded; the volunteers did VBS with children still at the shelter. I didn't get out of Casa Verde to the aftermath, but reports were that flooding and damage weren't as bad as they have been in the past or could have been. But I guess that little fact doesn't hold much comfort or significance for those who did lose their homes. Ashley reported driving a family back to a house that seemed to be not much more than some boards leaning against each other, surrounded by flood waters. The father got out of the van thanking God that his home was still standing.
John took all the volunteers in the school bus to see the sites they had worked on last year. On the way back, the bus got stuck in deep, deep water and the head gasket broke. Somehow - John never ceases to amaze me - he managed to tow the bus with a pickup truck and back it through the gate into the parking lot. It "just so happened" that one of the volunteers has been a mechanic for decades, and he was able to repair the bus in time to drive the team to the airport on Saturday morning. When he had everything out to replace the head gasket, he discovered a frayed belt that otherwise never would have been found until too late. If the belt had broken, it could have meant the end of the engine.
And here are a few pictures.
On Wednesday late morning, a few of us wandered up to the roof to see what we could see. It wasn't raining yet, and the wind hadn't picked up. A few hours later, winds of 50-60 mph would make it too dangerous to be on the roof where the ledge is not very high.
It was a pretty constant source of amusement to me throughout the summer to see Mexican beer advertised on the top of Casa Verde.
Casey and me
Casey and Ashley hold on for dear life. Except you can probably notice the wind wasn't really blowing at all.
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