Planting an Investment in the Future

We started the day off right this morning with a wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, oatmeal, and other great stuff (dessert too!). We went to mass at St. Pius X, across the street from where we’re staying, which involved a dash across the street, and we were impressed by how nice the inside of the church was. The priest talked in his homily about almost the exact things we had discussed in our reflection the night before about the gospel reading. Kind of freaky awesome, that we were in sync with him like that.

After mass, we changed and got right to work. All of the guys got moved out to a trailer outside to make room for a few families who are now enjoying the wonderful hospitality of our hosts while they have need.

Our task for the day was to go to Ortley Beach, where we spent the day doing something most people would find quite boring and monotonous, but not us!  We planted American beachgrass along a stretch of dunes which protected a number of houses and bungalows from the storm, and which we were now working to restore. We worked in teams to plant it, with some people using long pipes to make holes in the sand, and others planting the grass in the holes. We frequently traded places with each other as needed or wanted, and we had a great amount of fun doing it. Something about playing in the sand… There were other volunteers working with us, and we learned a great deal about dune ecology from Dominick, who has worked on the dune project for a number of years. We learned that what we were doing was an investment in the future, to help protect the homes along that beach from storms. If you want to learn more about the project, you can go to the Friends of Midway Beach Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MidwayBeach

After great amounts of fun on the beach, sadly we had to leave. We then moved on to take a tour of the Jersey shore boardwalk, the one shown on all the news channels after the storm, and we were able to see up close and personal the damage that had been caused, and some of the work being done to rebuild. We saw not just the roller coaster that was on the news, but the devastation around it. It is a symbol of what happened, but it is only a small part of it. It was almost surreal, walking along the boardwalk and seeing the empty shops and amusements. It felt almost wrong taking pictures, but we took some to remember what we saw, and to give you an idea of what it’s really like there.  The last picture in this post is the rebuilding of the boardwalk, showing that while much has been destroyed, much is being done to restore things to what they should be. One of the common things we have heard from those we are staying with and working with is that it seems that people elsewhere think that the problems here are mostly on the way to being fixed at this point, but in reality this is not always true.  Donations of time, effort, and resources are still needed to assist those who have lost their homes, or whose homes are unlivable, and to help those who are already here helping. And the work to restore this area is not even close to being complete.

After touring the boardwalk, we drove around the island and saw the damage caused by the storm, including houses completely destroyed or half toppled into holes, and others surrounded by mounds of sand, with water lines visible on most of them, showing just how high the water level got during the storm.

During dinner later tonight, a few of us had the opportunity to talk with the new families living here in the shelter, and were able to hear their stories, getting a personal insight into what the storm has wrought. On a positive note, after all this somberness, some of us have started playing Space Invaders and Qix on an arcade machine in the cafeteria of the Methodist church. We’re kind of trying going to beat Penn State’s high score from last week.

Our reflection tonight was on Mt. 6:25-34, about dependence on God. We talked about how it teaches us not to worry about the small things, like what to wear, and not to worry about the future, since we have enough to worry about for one day at a time.

We don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow, but we can’t wait to do it.

Peace from Sandra, Brandon, and the rest of the team.