News from the Coast

The first night we were here, Bobcat promised each of us that we would leave with a story. Three days in, we all have at least one story to bring home.

Like a good Minnesotan, I'll start out with the weather. It is hot and steamy all day and all night. The sunshine is beautiful and the rain--and there is alot of it!--is sudden and intense. Afternoon rains appear to be the trend this week, and the resourceful kids on this trip set up a make-shift slip-n-slide yesterday during a surprise rainstorm.

The wildlife is exotic and exciting. As a group, about 40% of our pictures probably contain spiders or other critters that creep and crawl. We've been bitten by many bugs thus far, but have managed to avoid any serious encounters with gators, or the black widow spider we found at the work site.

Our home base for the week is the camp at Yahweh Ministries. We have a dining hall, bathrooms, and men's and women's dorms. Not surprisingly, the women's dorm has a calm, serene atmosphere, while the boys have been keeping their dads up late managing spitball fights and battles involving brooms and wrestling. The group has a lively dynamic and has been getting along very well. Most of us by this point have acquired alternate aliases, among them Mr. Doug, Chester, and Ace. Your loved one may be next :)

We have been working on two mobile homes which were gifted to Bobcat a while back. When we first saw them yesterday, we realized that the only way we would be successful was if we had a vision in mind while we worked. The main trailer we've been focusing our efforts on needs sheetrock, painting, a new roof, as well as rehabilitation in the bathroom and kitchen. The ultimate hope for these trailers is that they will be used as temporary housing for families that have fallen on hard times. Everyone has played an important part in the effort, especially the youngest members of our team! We have touched up sheetrock, painted, done some electrical rewiring, mowed the lawns, replaced a window, and created a compost pile out back.

Yesterday, we experienced what can only be described by most of us as an act of the Holy Spirit. We knocked off work early when intense rains prevented us from returning to the worksite. We decided to stick to our plan to visit Dauphin Island and headed out around 3pm. We visited a few sites along the way and got a first hand look at what we've been reading about in newspapers for weeks. We saw harbors filled with inactive shrimp boats, booms lining the coast, and met some shrimpers from Pensacola, FL, who are working for BP.

Next, once we arrived on Dauphin Island, we experienced something truly incredible. Our first glimpse of the beach gave us an idea of the proactive measures being taken in Mobile Bay to compat the arrival of the oil. Huge berms of sand have been plowed up about 30 feet up from the shoreline. We could also see booms out on the water. Way out on the horizon we could see oil rigs. The beaches were virtually clear of people, until a group of about 4 arrived. Among them were a few cameramen, an author from San Francisco, and a woman named Casi Callaway from Mobile Bay Watchers. MBW is a 13-year olf non-profit organization which has recently shifted its focus from water and Bay issues of all kinds to working on the oil spill. They are organizing volunteers to monitor 1 mile stretches of shoreline in the Mobile Bay and report conditions prior to the arrival of oil as well as following arrival. We learned today that it is especially important to report the current condition of the beach as BP is required to restore the coastline to its original condition.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We talked with Casi for nearly a half hour about her work and what we, as Minnesotan volunteers, can do. Our meeting was particularly seredipitous as we had been trying all day to get in contact with organizations about volunteering while we're down here. Casi invited us to join her training session in Mobile this afternoon, which we did. There we learned how to identify an oiled beach, what tar balls look like, and how to report the conditions of a beach. We also learned that in attendance at today's meeting were officials from the state and local governments, so hopefully our presence there indicates to them just how important this spill really is, including to people living hundreds of miles away.

More details (and pictures!) are certainly to follow, but there is a taste of what we have been up to! Please, ask us questions, and ask about our stories. We are so excited about everything that is happening here and all that we are learning, and we are eager to share it with you.

And if you would, keep the people of Alabama in your prayers, as well as those in positions of political power who are faced with some important decisions in this difficult time.

-Bethany