Reneau Gang: Ike Mission Trip

Last week Chris and I went as sponsors with our church for a mission trip to Galveston, TX to help rebuild the area that was devastated by hurricane Ike six months ago. We had 43 all together that went, 34 youth and 9 sponsors. We arrived on Saturday and got settled at Westgate Baptist church, this is where we stayed for the week. Sunday we attended church at Westgate in the morning and then the afternoon we did some site seeing in Galveston. We drove over to Galveston island, but we had to take the ferry to get to the island so we had a huge coach bus on the ferry but the kids loved it. They fed the seagulls on the ride over, there were so many of them it was a little scary. They would just keep flying at you because they think anyone on the ferry has food to feed them. When we arrived on the island we saw first hand all the major damage that Ike did to the island. It was unreal, everything was gone and everyone was just living on their land in FEMA trailers. These trailers are so small that I couldn't imagine what it must be like to go from living in a nice size house to having your family in a trailer that is probably around 800 sq feet if that. I just felt great sadness for these families who had lost everything.

Monday through Friday we worked at a church in Bridge City, TX that had lots of damage from the storm. They needed lots of painting to be done, baseboards to be installed, dry wall installed, doors hung and so much more. Since we had so many kids with us we decided to split them up in two groups each day and let a group work at the church and take the rest out into the community and help people with their houses. I stayed at the church for most of the week and headed up the painting team. We painted 12 rooms overall and each room had to have any where from 2 to 4 coats and some rooms which were a nightmare ended up with 5 to 6 coats of paint. Chris and another guy named Jeff and some of the youth guys helped hang dry wall and put up baseboards. The other team that went out helped out the people living around the church buy helping them removed drywall, floors, trash ect from their homes so that when these people get their insurance checks they can start rebuilding. The one thing I noticed most was that the people who are living through all of this just seemed so tired, their spirit is broken and just seem hopeless. Everyone was so thankful for all that we did and some would just cry over the fact that we just took away their trash. It really made me see that these people are hurting so much and I think they feel they have been forgotten. I just hope that by us all being there and doing this work for God that it made them feel that God has not forgotten about them. He is still there and He will help them rebuild and heal their community. It was such a blessing to be able to be there and give everything I had for God last week. I truly realized that what we did last week is what being a Christian is all about. It is giving everything I have to God and allowing Him to work through me so that people can see His compassion, His love, and His greatness. I am so thankful for Gods faithfulness to me and all of the blessings He has given me.

Here are some pictures from the week. I will post more on picasa.

Breelyn and Lexie who were in my room.