Salem Katrina Team Report November 7

Today we truly had Oregon "boots on the ground" with our team working in several areas. Joan, Wayne, Rick and David worked in homes, mostly doing wallboard. Wes and Mary prepared a hot breakfast (more on that "disaster" below) and delivered gifts to the local police department and elementary schools. Morella continued her super coordinating job as assistant city manager of our PDA tent city. We're looking forward to Ed's arrival tomorrow afternoon and Karen's next week.

Another Katrina impression: We have developed an expectation of leaving this place. We can look forward to returning to our green valley and safe homes. People of Gautier, and everywhere along the Gulf Coast, can only look forward to years of rebuilding, of hoping their strength holds out. That people won't forget them.

Now, about breakfast. Naturally, being in the South, we wanted to offer hot grits with our scrambled eggs when we started cooking at 5:30 AM. Reading the directions on the bag carefully, Wes (we name the cook here to spare the others any blame) added "salt" as directed and then cooked the whole bag. First mistake! Turns out that a bag makes more grits than the pot can hold! So, we quickly scooped out what was going to explode anyway. Finally, at 7AM we served our hungry crowd of teams from all over the country. Slowly, somehow, it came to be known that Wes had mistaken the container of "salt" for sugar. And thus was born the world's first, only and last awful pot of "SWEET CHEESE GRITS!???" Tomorrow, a couple ladies from Baltimore will rescue our crew from such cruelty and they've volunteered to prepare grits the way they should be done.

After lunch today we delivered stuffed animals from McMinnville's Willamette Valley Medical Center to the Gautier Police Department, and then many, many more boxes (three van loads) of the bears to the Gautier Elementary School. That school is now actually two schools, having taken into their building the entire student body and staff from another of Gautier's three elementary schools. Every teacher and staff member of both schools has lost their home, and all 67 of them are living in FEMA trailers now. The principal is a wonderful lady who happens to be expecting her first child, so she really appreciated the beautiful infant quilt made by our Salem Quilt-a-Thon folks. Tomorrow we deliver more bears to that school and to one of the town's medical centers.