Camp Noah

I am spending this week at St Ann's working with Karen and Glenn feeding 160 teenagers from Boston. Again, I'm amazed at the dedication, patience and willingness to serve that these young people have. It is really hot here, with unbelievable humidity, and these kids have been working outdoors. They, and their adult leaders, start with Mass at 7:00am. After breakfast they make sandwiches for lunch, pack their ice chests and water jugs and head out. They show up back here late in the afternoon and head straight for the showers. Then it's a little quiet time before dinner. After dinner they have a prayer group and are in bed (although I hear some grumbling this morning that they are not ASLEEP) at 11:00.

And it all starts over again the next morning. I try to speak to each one when I see them. My "Hi" NEVER fails to produce a BIG smile. And I'm fighting a summer cold, so in a few cases yesterday and today their smile was NOT a return of mine.

Some people have asked what's keeping me in this heat. Mainly, it's the stories. A 9 yr old girl, now 11, whose Dad left with her two younger siblings while he made a quick trip to get his mother. The water came up so fast he couldn't get back. This little girl floated her brother and sister on pool floaties through the flood waters to higher ground.

One mother told us that when she saw the Camp Noah announcement in her church bulletin in the spring she decided that her 9 yr old son didn't need to go because he was doing so well. Then, last month when the radio and TV started talking about the coming hurricane season, he started taking things from the house and hiding them - toilet paper, toothpaste, bottled water. And she knew he really did need to talk with someone about his anxiety.

A story one of the volunteers heard this week - an elderly couple were on the roof of their house as the water continued to rise. A small boat with a little girl floated past and they tried to get her to come to them for safety. She was too scared to respond so the husband said, "Well, we can't let her float away to heaven knows what fate. If she won't come here, we'll have to swim to her." They did, got in the boat, and turned around to see their house being swept away.

I thought I had one more Camp Noah and then a week of rest before I headed north. I just went to the Camp Noah website to get the link for this Blog and found another Camp that I might be able to do.

And that's the way things continue to happen.