More Trip Photos

 Breakfast in fellowship hall at Westminster Presbyterian Church
Paul, Bill, Rene (from WPC), Liz

Barb, Dianne, Liz, Bob M., Mark, Barb, Bud, Bill

Liz

 

Barb

Westminster Presbyterian Church

 Westminster Presbyterian Church's choir practicing in the sanctuary

Bill, Mark, Paul, and Bob M. visited the Ryman Auditorium (formally Grad Old Opry House and Union Gospel Tabernacle) is a 2,362-seat live performance venue, located at 115 5th Avenue North, in Nashville, Tennessee and is best-known as the historic home of the Grand Ole Opry.

Links to PDA Volunteer Photo Page and WPC's website

Here is a link to Westminster Presbyterian Church's PDA Volunteer Photo Page
Link to WPC PDA Volunteer Photo Page

Here is a link to WPC's webpage
WPC's webpage

Photos of homes being rebuilt

 Downtown Nashville during the May 2010 Flood

Our host Church, Westminster Presbyterian Church of Nashville

 

 The WPC kitchen

 

WPC Fellowship Hall where we had our  meals and gathered for devotions or cards.  Every Wednesday  night WPC has a Church dinner and we were their guests the Wednesday we were there.  Afterwords, a gentleman named Jim gave us a tour of their Church, maybe the largest Church many of us have seen, and we had the treat of hearing their choir practice as we visited the sanctuary and chapel.

Mark, Liz, of FPC, Anne and Rene of WPC, Barb and Bill of FPC

 

Bud, Mark Barb and Barb

Tom of PDA giving an overview on Monday morning of the houses to work on this week.

Orientation on Monday morning, we heard about the devastation that the flood caused and how PDA and  WPC have responded and how we could help.

Below is the home where the men's team installed tile flooring in the kitchen and cement board for tiling the bathroom floor and shower.

 Below is the home of Latrice and Eleanor where we installed bathroom floor tile, a tub suround, patched walls, painted, cleaned windows, hung bi-fold sliding closet doors, and other finishing work.  

 

Bob, Mark and Latrice

 Bud, Bob, Mark

 Bill and Paul

 Bud

 Mark, Bud, Bob

 Mark, Bud, Latrice, Tom, Eleanor, Bill, Bob, Paul, Bob

 Sign post at with signs made by Churches that have participated in PDA work in cooperation with WPC

Burger King Revelations

As you might expect, it is very humbling to arrive in Nashville, TN and learn from our PDA (Presbyterian Disaster Assistance)  hosts of the devastation caused by the “greater than a hundred year flood”.  There was the excitement which comes with the arrival at the home of Broderick and Kia whom our team had the privilege of helping for the next several days.

With PDA mission work we have come to expect and appreciate the inconveniences that come with the task, like working in a home that currently has no heat and no running water.  Conditions that make home repair challenging at best!

Unlike my first two PDA trips, this week I was part of an all woman team.  Since our site had no working bathrooms we needed to finish facilities nearby from time to time.  After rejecting a nearby Shell gas station which failed to meet our standards, we discovered a burger King about a mile away.

While chatting outside the “ladies room” door on our first trip, we met Jenny, a wide smiling woman who exuded warmth and  southern charm.  Observations about our speckled work clothing led to sharing our PDA mission with her.  After thanking us profusely for our efforts, the conversation shifted to her concerns about the upcoming storm with the few inches of snow predicted, which would shut down Nashville.  She cheerfully shared her “winter dressing” techniques and explained that with a drop of ten degrees she simply added one more layer of clothing.  By the time she had walked us out to our van, we loved Jenny and think of her as our sunshine angel.  Relieved and refreshed we returned to our job site.

Being assigned to the same job site on Tuesday, Nature’s call led us back to the same Burger King.  This time we met Gwendolyn, who immediately upon learning we were working with PDA blurted… “Where were you last May when I needed help?”.  Shortly, she launched into “her flood story” and we made our second memorable Nashville friend.

By Wednesday, we were looking forward to our “necessary” trip to the Burger King.  Our experience turned out to be more sobering.  The lady’s room door displayed the red occupied sign causing us to stand outside and wait.  I was not prepared for the haunting face of the woman who appeared through the opening door.  She wore a scarf on her head, a silky sports jacket, three quarter length pants and clutched a soda bottle and a plastic bag.  But her most unusual feature was her eyes; one clouded probably by a virus and the other which stared straight through me. 

Later standing waiting for my team, I noticed the same woman headed for the lady’s room again clutching her bag tightly to her chest.  When the lady’s room door displayed the occupied sign, she immediately took a right hand turn into the men’s room.  Now I was really intrigued to follow her actions.  Shortly, she immerged from the men’s room and went outside.  I wrongly assumed she had gone on her way, but just as my team was about to leave, the woman reentered with her bag and soda can in tow.  She seemed to float past us again headed to the rest rooms.  It began to dawn on me that she might be doing her laundry in small batches probably returning to a cart or car parked outside.  It was her “invisibility” that left me feeling troubled.  We had been in very close proximity to each other but had passed without a real encounter.  One of our group had not even noticed her!

On Thursday, within minutes of arriving at the Burger King, the men’s team joined us for lunch.  With so many friends chatting and eating together, we didn’t “meet” anyone new.

So what could we learn from these encounters?  Is it possible that God sent us each of these people to teach us or remind us of something important?  Could Jenny represent God’s desire for us to warmly greet and encourage even strangers?  Could Gwendolyn call us to task for not noticing the needs of others?  Could our “ghost woman” accuse us of not wanting to acknowledge the pain others suffer when we are too absorbed in ourselves to reach out to those in need?  Could we be blinded or too comfortable surrounded by our friends to be open to extend ourselves to others?

Our “Burger King visits” gave us much to ponder.  Hopefully, the days ahead will be improved by these lessons.

Bill Smith's Comments, January 26, 2011

We know we are a long way from home when the local schools are closed when the weather forecast is for a possible 1 – 2 inches of snow!

The homeowner for whom we were rebuilding her house was excited that we were completing her home today!  So excited that she kept saying thank you to each and all of us.  Finally she said that she would just bake us some cookies!  She returned an hour later with fresh baked warm chocolate cookies!  Yes, the cookies were really good.  But most rewarding was her excitement about seeing her flood damaged house being repaired!  And to be done today!  And we from First Pres Pittsford were part of this.  One day at a time, one home at a time.

One more of an estimated 1,000 homes requesting help rebuilding from the May 2, 2010 flooding!  Many  out of money with only partial reconstruction completed.  We can be proud of the week nby PC USA’s Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and our own Church support of this mission team and Nashville.

Bill Smith

January 24 to 29, 2011 Mission Trip to Nashville

Nashville Mission Trip 2011

A group of ten members of First Presbyterian Church of Pittsford (FPC) is currently in Nashville, Tennessee on a Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) mission trip to help rebuild homes damaged by a major flood last May.   There were 31 deaths due to the flood which resulted from up to 19 inches of rain received in a two day period – May 1 to 2, 2010.  The Cumberland river crested at 52 feet in Nashville.  (see more information about the flood below)

PDA reached out to help FPC after our Church’s fire that was caused by a lightning strike in 2004.  We became aware of how important PDA can be and since in January 2006, FPC has sent many groups of volunteers to Mississippi to help with rebuilding homes and lives after the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster.  PDA still has volunteers helping with Katrina recovery, although some of the camps are beginning to close, including the Pearlington Mississippi camp that FPC volunteers went to many times.  The needs for rebuilding in Nashville are on a major scale and our volunteer leaders chose to come here this year – we are the second team to come to Nashville, following one that came the first week of January.

We are staying at Westminster Presbyterian Church (WPC) in Nashville - http://www.nashvillewpc.org/home.cfm.  WPC has approximately 1,900 members.  WPC had been sending groups of people four times a year to help rebuild homes impacted, but after the flood last May, WPC became a PDA site to help rebuild homes in Nashville.  Also staying here this week at WPC and working on rebuilding for flood relief are four volunteers from Pennsylvania. 

FPC/PDA volunteers have split up into two groups.  One group is working on interior painting and staining a small three bedroom house which is at the bottom of a valley.  Kia, the homeowner will move in soon with her husband and four daughters, aged 2, 8, 10, and 15.  Another PDA team had installed woodwork and trim.  Our team stained the woodwork and painted bedrooms.  The family’s daughters had chosen the colors for each of their own bedrooms. 

Our other FPC/PDA team worked on the first floor of a two story home which is the last home to be renovated on its street.  The homeowners are Latrice and her aunt Elenore.  We got to meet Latrice’s son and daughter on Tuesday when the Nashville closed schools for the fourth time this season due to a snow storm (it got all the way down to 30 degrees and the storm piled up to two inches of snow on the city).  At this house we installed a bathtub enclosure, bathroom floor tile, repaired drywall, painted 3 rooms and stairwell, hung sliding closed doors, and cleaned windows (what a difference that made!  There was still grime on the outside of the windows from the flood).

One of the best parts of our experience has been to meet the homeowners – both of our teams have found that we were helping wonderful families and our work has meant so much to them.   We’re very pleased that both of these homes are very close to being completed and that the family’s lives can soon get back to normal.

We’ll be posting more stories and pictures about our trip in the next few days.   

About the Flood:

Youtube video of the damage caused by the flood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjaQoOdJvI

Excerpts from Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Tennessee_floods:
The May 2010 Tennessee floods were 1000-year^[1] floods in Middle Tennessee, West Tennessee, South Central and Western Kentucky and northern Mississippi as the result of torrential rains on May 1 and 2, 2010. Floods from these rains affected the area for several days afterwards, resulting in 21 deaths in Tennessee, six people in northern Mississippi, and four deaths were reported in Kentucky.  There was widespread property damage.^[2]
Two-day rain totals in some areas were greater than 19 inches (49 cm).^[3] The Cumberland River crested at 51.86 feet in Nashville, a level not seen since 1937, which was before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control measures were in place. All-time record crests were observed on the Cumberland River and others. 
Flooding on the Cumberland River damaged the Grand Ole Opry House, Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, Opry Mills Mall, Bridgestone Arena^[13] (home to NHL team Nashville Predators), and LP Field (home to NFL team Tennessee Titans) with several feet of water.^[14] Grand Ole Opry performances were moved to other venues in the Nashville area.