Hi Everyone,
Well, Dess just blogged last night about our adventures in eyeglasses. I figured i'd give you a bit of an update of the last week. It's been pretty intense and tiring for us, so you must want to know what we've been up to.
Last week Friend Ships held their first annual Disaster Response Training. About 50 people from around the United States congregated in Lake Charles, LA to participate in this training. The training consisted of many lectures and some practical work shops. Dess and i both got to teach in a work shop. We had 2 hours to teach about our different topics and then we got to repeat it 4 more times because the people had the opportunity to attend 5 of the 7 work shops available. Dess' work shop was on disaster response radio broadcasting. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Dess' voice could be heard on 107.9 FM as she pronounced public service announcements and played her rocking gospel and hip-hop music. So, she was the perfect candidate for teaching this course. She was able to create the atmosphere of a mock radio station and had the participants speak over loud speaker to get the feel. Dess did an awesome job and many of the people who came to the training spoke highly of Dess and said she had the perfect personality for it (and that was even before they knew i was married to her!!!).
I did the work shop on roofing. It didn't go as bad as i had expected. About the week before the training i was told that i was going to supervise groups tarping a RV for Miss Gwen (the founder of Friend Ships mother). This disgusted me and made me not want to do it. Then, Dess knew a lady through the food ministry who needed her roof tarped. She had gotten her roof fixed after the hurricane, but it started leaking again just two weeks ago. I gave a 15 minute talk about tarping and then we piled into cars and vans and drove to the lady's house. We would put up a few sheets of vinyl and nail it down. Then we'd pack up and head back to Port Mercy. It was awesome because we finished tarping the roof during my last work shop. Everyone who came to my work shop was able to go away feeling more comfortable working on roofs and hammering in nails. I was glad.
Last night Dess and i went to an arena football game. The home team is the Swashbucklers. Arena football is a fast paced game with lots of action. We had a good time screaming and cheering. It made for a late night to end our tiring week, but it was worth it.
Well, for any of you who are waiting for me to respond to my "tag" from Sarah, you'll have to wait a bit longer. I've gotta do some deep thinking before i come up with 8 things. Keep checking the blog and i'm sure i'll come up with it sometime soon.
That's a bit of what's happening with us.
3 comments:
Joel, that's cool that your students got to apply their skills in a practical and helpful way immediately. I bet they really appreciated that. Congratulations to you and Dess on becoming teachers!
Sounds like you guys had a pretty successful event. We're going camping this week. We sure could use a good tarp guy. Love you guys. Miss you. Hope the humidity there isn't killing you. Praying that the papers will come through in God's good time.
Jo, thanks for your encouragement. I hope that the people who came to the training will come back to help Friend Ships out in the future. I know we need all the help we can get!
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