Day 1 with Samaritan's Purse: Deployment to Minot, ND 8-15-11

I arrived in Minot, North Dakota, yesterday around 6:00p.m. This is my first deployment with Samaritan's Purse and we are here to do flood relief aka gut houses following the flooding of the Mouse River in June of this year. Over 4,100 homes were damaged in the flood and 90% of those people do not have flood insurance. SP focuses on homeowners who are disabled, elderly, single parents, and uninsured. In other words, those who probably need our help the most. We do not work on outbuildings, garages that are not attached to the house, rental properties, or commercial properties. The house must also be the family's primary residence. For this deployment, our base camp is the First Assembly of God church on the southern edge of Minot. We have a cook who will make breakfast and supper for us and we will put together our own sack lunches before heading out for the day. There were porta-potties outside but thankfully we were able to use the bathrooms in the church instead. SP brought up two shower trailers from North Carolina for us to use which would prove to be a huge blessing. There was nothing better than a shower of the perfect temperature after a day of hard work.

I was lucky enough to get a Red Cross cot. They are a-mazing to sleep on!

                                                   

The big shower trailer. I believe it had 7 showers in it.

                                         

One of the nicer stalls in the shower trailer. Not all had sinks and chairs.

We started the day with breakfast at 6:30 followed by devotions, orientation, and a safety briefing. I was placed on Mike Brunelli's team and am the youngest by at least 30 years. Our first job was a rural property that they had worked on last week. The men ripped up the flooring in one room and the women pulled up nails in the floor and swept up debris.

The homeowner was very thankful that we were there to help his family and chatted with us a couple times between going about his daily business and meeting his wife at their storage locker in town. He said that if you have copper wiring or plumbing people come by and tear it out. Looting in general is a real problem since the flood but with copper going at such a high rate, if you don't take it out yourself someone else will. Someone even broke a beautiful two-pane window in the home we were working on. This house was built in 1880 and moved out to the countryside sometime in the 1940's. As I found to be the case with almost every house we went to, you could see the water line on the house.

When we had completed our work there, we presented the homeowner with a Bible signed by the team and prayed with him. It almost made me cry. This man and his family will have to practically rebuild their home and are currently living in a FEMA trailer.

After lunch, we went to a house that was supposed to be 80% done. It was NOT. The owner, Gary, was nearly ecstatic to see us. He came out of Satanism 30 years ago and has been a Christian since. He insisted on praying with and for us before we started work on the house (built in 1932). Most of his prayer concerned our safety, how thankful he was that we had come to help, and how thankful he was for Christian fellowship. It was very touching.

The women pulled nails out of the studs in the walls and removed cement board and some kind of awful wall board. It was black and almost tarry on the back and really stuck to the walls and nails. The men also helped pull nails and shoveled out the downstairs bathroom. The sewer had backed up during the flood and they said that it was pretty nasty downstairs. I heard them breaking up the shower too.

The chaplains came by with popsicles for us in the middle of the afternoon which was a nice break. The chaplains are part of the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team and are somehow deployed with SP to every disaster that SP goes to. We have four chaplains (two married couples) every week who stay for two weeks and as they rotate on deployments, you get a new pair of chaplains every week.