Day Three...still kicking...

Lots and lots of happy, verbal frogs...much like a chorus of Jr. High boys making armpit noises with their hands...you know the ones I'm talking about--the noises, not the boys.  Rain starting about 3 and continuing steadily through the evening and off and on during the night.  The paper mache tent did not leak...yet.

The kids continue to be amazing.  If your teen ever drives you crazy doing nothing, you need to come on one of these trips.  We arrived at Mrs. Hill's house yesterday at about 9:30.  Her yard was filled with aluminum cans, construction trash. and a collection of "stuff" that we all thought needed to be thrown away.  She also had one of the cutest puppies ever...mix of shepherd and pit bull...beautiful dog but completely puppy.  The lucky youth were assigned to take the dog for a walk first..."take a guy with you to be safe"...so Jay went. 

The rest of us started with the clean up, which made Mrs. Hill very nervous.  A group started putting cans into plastic bags so they could be taken to the recycling center.  I think we wound up with about 10 bags of cans...smushed ones.  Yeah, that many were in the yard.  The boys began to take the construction trash to the curb.

Instructions..."Put the trash between the two trees on the line between my house and the neighbor's house...they'll pick it up (meaning, we think, the trash guys).  We walked to find the two trees and found no trees...it finally dawned on us that there were two dead trees piled up in the ditch...huge piles of trash that had been there a while (with  no trash pick up)...ah ha!...we dumped! (learning in the meantime that assumptions make an .....well, you know that one too.)

Some primed new wood to paint later.  Mrs. Hill hovered and kept telling us not to throw things away..."just leave it," she'd say.  So we did...but as the morning went on and the trash cleared...as the flower beds were weeded and the yard was reclaimed, she began saying..."yeah, go ahead and put that in the front."  It was an amazing transformation and at the end of the morning we had done everything we could do without a chainsaw and we went to Wal-mart and bought her some new plants to replace ones she had lost in the cold weather last winter.  (She loves to plant things.)  It's hard to know how much work they did without being there...but you'll have to trust me, it was massive.

Afternoon brought a swamp tour with a hilarious guy.  The swamp is beautiful.  The one thing I wanted was the miracle of silence...I just wanted to be in the swamp and hear no teens...alas...but it was quite the adventure.  Carolyn or Molly asked if people swam in the swamp, but about that time the gators arrived to get their chicken treats from the driver and the question of swimming became a moot point.

The guys did a great devotion and we collapsed at about 10...check Facebook for pics... Tonight, food and fellowship at the Cajun Pres church...Bayou Blue Presbyterian...more later...

BTW...we are grateful for messages and texts...they lifted our spirits and fed our souls.  God is good!