Slide Show from Mississippi Trip

The group that went to Mississippi for ALSO (working with Habitat for Humanity) put together a short slide show.

The Last Day in Mississippi

Hi Everyone!
Hopefully by the time you hear from us next it will be in person!
That's right, we are done our service work and are waiting to leave the Habitat for Humanity compound.
Today we worked at the house and the warehouse again till lunchtime and then we had lunch on the bus on our way to a beach!
On Wednesday Les, one of our bus drivers, came up to us and asked us if we would like to go to the ocean on Friday afternoon if all the work was done. Of course we said yes. So, today we went to a local beach in Waveland and dove in!
Unfortunately the weather was and still is taking a turn for the worse, so we only spent about an hour and a half on the beach. It is now raining cats and dogs outside and if you step out into the lovely thunderous afternoon you will get soaked.
Tonight we spend on the bus and drive all day tomorrow until we reach Jamestown, ND, where we spend the night in a hotel. The next morning we finish the trip with a ten hour drive to RJC. Monday morning bright and early we start school again.
Sorry for no more pictures, the computers aren't being very nice and won't let us put them on. You'll have to wait.
Thanks repeatedly for your prayers and support.
Katie, Bronwyn, and Judith

ALSO Saskatoon Day 3,4 and 5

ALSO Saskatoon has had an exciting few days. Day 3, 4 and 5 saw groups of students working in different locations in and around the Saskatoon area. The students were eager and anxious to get going, get their hands 'dirty' and get their placements and get to work!

We had two groups serving at two community schools in the inner core of Saskatoon. At Pleasant Hill Community School our students were placed in classrooms and asked to help out in many capacities. Duties varied from helping with lessons, serving and cleaning up snack, playing games in gym class, chaperoning field trips to wiping noses and tying shoelaces!

Stephanie Willie participating in gym class.

Wade Goerzen looking for the right answers in the grade 6 classroom.

Samantha Bloomfield helps out the teacher by providing some much needed one on one math time with a student.

Carly Dyck already has a loyal following in the kindergarten class.

Besides the regular 'school duties', the students at W.P. Bates also helped prepare an ethnic meal for the cultural evening held at the school. The students helped entertain the children of the families while their parents attended a workshop.

Caitlyn Hegedus and Jesse Ho spends time with Richard, giving mom a much needed break. Richard suffers from autism. Richards family has only been in Canada for 5 months.

Torrey Falconer helps out at the craft table.

Kiersten Cancade gladly helps out with babysitting this newborn baby girl!

The students grow more attached to the children with each passing moment. Leaving on Friday will be difficult.

We also had a group building a fence at the 'Farm in the Dell' located near Aberdeen. Farm in the Dell is housing project for adults with disabilities. It is the dream of its' founders to provide a loving nurturing enviroment that fosters independence and also celebrates each individuals strengths and gifts. They are hoping to be fully operational by fall of 2010.

Our last group was located at Camp Shekinah. The groups was providing the muscles behind many projects at Shekinah. Some of their duties included cleaning out the bushes, staining building, and bridge building. A beautiful sunny morning was spent erecting the grand white tent on the main field. It definitely required many hands!

Suzanne Luitjens and Lloyd Schmidt 'sew' the seams together.

Luke Driedger-Enns drive the anchors into the ground. Thank goodness the ground was thawed out!

Joey Fan and Gerry Au Yeung break a sweat pounding in the countless tent pegs. I think they will be sore tomorrow!

Jordan Wiens , Luke and Lloyd work together to lift the end of the tent.

All hands were necessary to help secure this tent! Thank goodness there was no wind this morning!

They rest of our week will be spent at these four locations. Our badminton players have had to take a break from their placements to participate in regional playoffs. They join us when they can. Our ALSO week is soon coming to a close. The students have spent much time learning, observing and doing. So much too learn .... so little time!

Mississippi Work Day 4

Good evening!

Today was a very long day and it isn't quite over yet!

This morning our group was split up; half of us went to Trey's house and the other half went to Habitat for Humanity's big warehouse. The people at Trey's house were painting baseboards and touching up siding as well as finishing the caulking and started hanging a latice around the bottom of the house. At the warehouse we did a whole lot of moving stuff. We moved everything that wasn't organized into piles and that was a lot of stuff. On the outside of the warehouse there were big piles of wood mixed with hoses and garbage that we had to sort out into organized piles. Then we went inside and moved all the stuff away from the walls and put up shelving and moved all the stuff (quite heavy by the way!) onto the shelves. We also cleaned up everything and put it in order so you could find anything you wanted.

For lunch we went to a park in Pass Christian where Billy Morgan served us lunch. So we had a chance to try traditional Cajun mudbugs! Can you possibly guess what those are? No???????? Well, we shall tell you! They're crawfish, all intact and rather spicy! (although Billy called them mild!) After lunch he told us sad and hearfelt stories about Hurricane Katrina. After the stories we parted ways and went back to work for the rest of the afternoon.

This evening we went to Gulfport to an outlet mall to shop. It was lots of fun and everybody bought something except for Jim who is trying to keep his 'no buying things' record.

Thanks muchly for your support!

Katie, Bronwyn, and Judith

Winnipeg ALSO signing in!

The ALSO group in Winnipeg has been having a meaningful and intense time of learning in the North End of the city.

The Winnipeg ALSO group outside the Graffiti Gallery in downtown Winnipeg, showing off their urban art creations.

A lot of time has been spent listening to stories of poverty and social issues at the fore front of inner city Winnipeg.  We heard from Kenny at the Vinyard Flatlanders Centre on Main Street about how he miraculously had his criminal record erased and now has a passport and can travel internationally for missions represented by his church.  

We heard from Brandon, who through RAY (Resource Assistance for Youth) got off his addictions to hard drugs and now is helping other youth on the street. 

At the Graffiti Gallery we saw how after school art programs are helping kids at risk stay off the street and learn to market their creativity rather than expressing themselves in a criminal way.  

We heard from Dale, a residential school survivor (thought after his story, the students thought he was more of victor!) His message of forgiveness and peace making was inspiring.  

We heard stories of police brutality from Copwatch, a citizen organization who documents unfair police action against the public.

Today we spent time in Siloam, a drop in centre, shelter, soup kitchen and clinic run by the Nazarene Church of Canada. There we worked the kitchen preparing breakfast and served on the front line. 

All these experiences have affected the students deeply, and we look forward to hearing how it changes them later on in life.

Work Day 3 and Pictures!!

Another glorious day in Mississippi, ya'lls and all.

Today started off warm, and just kept getting hotter!

We all started off by finishing our projects that we started yesterday.

The main project of the day was to complete all the work on the exterior of the house and take down the scaffolding. We also finished the painting on the inside and started painting the doors.

All the doors are hung and all the windows are installed and most of the baseboards are on.

Habitat for Humanity expected us to finish this house before Friday but they didn't know exactly when. Tomorrow, only half of us are staying at the house to put on the finishing touches of our job. The other half will be going to Habitat's huge new warehouse to help organize and set things up there.

We met the whole family today who we are building the house for. Their names are: Trey, Tonya, and Tamara. They also have a four-year-old boy but we didn't meet him.

Waiting for instructions.

Eating and hanging out at lunchtime.

Sam G, Hannah, Sarah, and Katie M. cleaning paint brushes!

Our faithful trooper, we named him Fred.

The Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church in Pass Christian.

Our good friend, Billy Morgan.

Thanks again for all your prayers!

Katie, Bronwyn, and Judith

Mississippi Work Days 1 & 2

Hi Ya'll!

How ya'll doin'?

Okay, enough of the southern accent, time for some Canadian eh?

Our first work day was yesterday (Monday) and we were all assigned to the same house (that means 44 people including our chaperones and bus drivers). The house we were assigned to had one weeks worth of work done on it before we started and the first thing we had to do was to paint everything in sight. Or at least, it seemed that way. Really, we had to paint the exterior siding heron grey and the interior walls first with primer and then with eggshell. Something we found amazing was that within one hour we completed the amount of work that one person would be able to do in a week. We work seven to eight hour days and if you start adding, you'll come to the conclusion we did.

Both yesterday and today we did more than just painting and some of those things included: making railings for the deck, scraping mud (both real and building mud) and sweeping the floors, finishing the outside trim, putting in soffet and fascia, installing doors, and putting down flooring materials. I think that the biggest hand has to go to the many people that did the caulking both yesterday and today. They did such a meticulous job and it really is important to seal all the little holes everywhere even if they seem insignificant. Good job guys!

Our temporary home on the Habitat site is in bunkhouses, the RJC girls being in one called Waveland, and the RJC guys being in one called Pass Christian.

They are quite comfortable and just the right temperature: not hot!

In our free time we have a number of things we could be doing including playing board games, basketball, volleyball, reading, eating, watching TV, and contacting home on the lovely computers.

Tonight we went to Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church in Pass Christian for a revival service. This church is Billy Morgan's church. Billy is a man whose house RJC built two years ago with MDS, in Pass Christian.

The service was unlike any other we had ever experienced before. Forget anything like Saskatchewan Mennonite services because this was the farthest thing from it except for one thing: praising the Lord. They sang differently, they preached differently, they even prayed differently, but that one thing stayed the same. They praised the Lord as we praise the Lord. AMEN!

Now, here are the pictures we promised you! Hope you like them!

Playing UNO on the bus to pass the time.

Graceland!

The cathedral in the French Quarter, New Orleans.

Thats all for now folks, more pictures tomorrow!

Thanks for all your prayers and support, God bless you!

Katie, Bronwyn, and Judith

ALSO Saskatoon Day 2

The ALSO Saskatoon group continued with day 2 of the CHALO program at the MCC Centre. The day started with another session with Dana Barrand. The first assignment was to describe what 'privileged' and 'under-privileged' looked liked. The stereotypes and single stories were explored and challenged. The students participated in a discussion and brain-stormed solutions for closing the distance between the two groups.

Yuri Yuel leading his group that consisted of Kiersten Cancade, Carly Dyck, Brooklin Perran and Caitlyn Hegedus.

Dana Barrand leads the large group in a discussion.

Carmen Pauls offers a few suggestions to Kaitlyn Baker, Torrey Falconer, Suzanne Luitjens, Jessie Ho, John Baker and Luke Driedger-Enns.

We then went out to volunteer for the rest of the day at two organizations. One group of students went to 'The Bridge', a drop in centre in the inner core of Saskatoon. The students help clean both outdoors and indoors. They also help serve the noon meal to the clients.

Caitlyn with Carmen clean up the perimeter.

Kiersten and Brooklin help outside as well.

Yuri is on indoor clean up detail.

Carly helps ladle out soup from the huge vat.

Brooklin joins in serving the noon meal.

Yuri and Carly receives instructions from one of the permanent staff at the Bridge.

The second organization was Chep - a Child Hunger and Education Program. The students cleaned up a community garden plot and divided the area into equal sizes.

Jesse and Kaitlyn work as a team.

Luke and Torrey measure lengths of twine.

Hammer away Suzanne!

Luke and John stake the area.

ALSO Saskatoon Day 1

Well our week of learning outside of the classroom has begun! ALSO Missinipe, Calgary and Winnipeg hit the road early this morning in hopes of reaching their respective destinations this evening.

ALSO Saskatoon headed to the MCC center to begin our week with the CHALO program. We began our day by exploring and putting a face to the issues of poverty, disability, sustainable living and immigration. Our stereotypes were challenged to be not necessarily incorrect but rather an incomplete description of individuals. The rest of the day was spent on a "Race for Understanding". Each group travelled on foot or by city transit to a list of destinations. We visited numerous organization who provide services for each of these areas. A few of the organizations we visited were:

International Women of Saskatoon

Saskatchewan Intercultural Association Inc.

Open door Society

Newcomer Information Centre

The Crocus Cooperative

Autism Services

Sherbrooke Community Centre

Eco-Waste Reduction Centre

CHEP-Community Gardening

Aqua-ponics Program

YWCA

Switch Drop in Centre

Salvation Army

Persons living with Aids Centre

And that just to name a few! We concluded the day back at the MCC building with all groups sharing what they had observed and learnt during the day.

Time was spent journaling and reflecting before returning to RJC for the evening.

The introduction to the CHALO program with Dana Barrand at MCC Sask

Torrey Falconer and Kiersten Cancade explain their poster on immigration

Brayden Holman was spokesperson for his group who worked with Disabilities

The "Race for Understanding" began at the bus mall in downtown Saskatoon.

Adam Ens organizes his group who was looking into sustainable living.

Lloyd Schmidt and several students study the bus routes.

Carmen Pauls, Brayden Holman, Jordan Wiens and Steven Tetreault take to the streets on foot.

Lunch was on the fly! Any comfortable spot will do. Jessie Ho, Kiersten Cancade and Torrey Falconer find a bit of shade.

The flags outlining the window are representative of only a few of the nationalities using the services of the Newcomer Information Centre.

Torrey leads the way to the Open Door Society

One group of students waiting patiently at the bus for the others to return after a long day walking and bussing through the Saskatoon inner core.

Debriefing at the MCC center.

Discussion groups.

Journaling at the end of the day.

Stephanie Willie and Brooklin Perran

Carly Dyck

Colton Regier

Jordan Wiens and David Wiebe

Luke Derksen and Steven Tetreault