Mission Trip Update

A team of eight Westminster church members spent the week of August 14-19, 2011, working on various projects on 5 houses that were damaged in the June 2008 Cedar River flood: Steve Hughes, Michael Gregg,  John Paul Wirrick, Edison McDonald, Gary Moulton, Bob Michaud , John Young , Ken Govaerts. 

All homes worked on were being refurbished by a coalition of organizations formed to recover homes that have not yet been restored.  The organization is named Block-by-Block.  These are homes that have been abandoned by the owners and remain a blight on the otherwise renewed neighborhood.  Block-by-Block purchases the homes and through grants and money recovered by selling the restored homes, is able to complete the renewal of the neighborhood in this way. 

All work is done by volunteers from faith based organizations from across the Nation.  PDA participates in providing volunteers, but is not a part of the coalition.  Our team worked on demolition, installation of new windows, painting and construction of a porch on a home that had been restored except for the front porch.   

The team was housed in Christ Presbyterian church, a small congregation of 140 folks that have opened their church facilities to volunteers for the three years since the flood.  We lived in dormitory like sleeping rooms with showers and a fully outfitted kitchen.  An individual offering was made to the church for their hospitality.

 A donation for tools and materials of $2,562.25 was made from the Pearlington fund.  This is to establish a basic tool set for the project since Methodist Convention, a partner in the project, is leavingCedar Rapids.  The Methodists had been supplying all the tools for the project and are now taking their tools away to other locations.  Unfortunately, resources for faith based disaster recovery are limited, and it is becoming more difficult for Cedar Rapids to attract volunteers due to the critical demand in other locations.

 This was a very successful mission trip with challenging projects and rewarding outcomes for the entire team.    We hope to return to Cedar Rapids in the future.

 Ken Govaerts, Project leader