Back To Baldwin

We arrived Sunday afternoon and there were several friends here to help us unload the truck.   We were unloaded very quickly, thanks to them, and unpacked and ready for some football by 4 p.m.   The rest of the day was spent just watching these guys run around banging themselves up over a ball.   I LOVE IT!!!!

It's good to be back.   There is something about this place that just touches your very heart when you arrive.  It is a combination of the setting on the Bayou Tesch, the people that work here, the people that come here to volunteer, the weather and MOST of all WHAT is accomplished here.  

BUT...I forget how very poor the people that live here really are.   We had to stop on our way in and get a few groceries and it hit me that many of these people are the most poverty stricken families in the nation.   Many are crippled and mostly, not all, but most of them are black.   AND...sad to say but in Patterson where we stopped they seem very rude.   I guess if I'd had to live like they have I would be too but it is a shock.

The little town we work in, Baldwin, we see very little rudeness.   People are still poor and a few are crippled.   One lady that comes to get food when we give out the commodities for the month has a leg that just upsets me no end.   It looks like a bad surgery job to me but of course I know nothing about this.   It bends OUT at the knee instead of in and we all make sure someone helps her get to the desk to get registered.

There used to be a train that went through town every 2 or 3 hours during the night.   I LOVED that train and decided if I could live within a couple of miles of a train track I wouldn't mind that at all.  I've only heard the train a couple of times since we arrived on Sunday.   Not sure what happened.

But...we are here and loving it.   I am back in the sewing room and yesterday had NO volunteers because they needed everyone to open boxes of supplies and help DUMP them into the big cardboard boxes they use.   These are then taken over close to the tables where the kits are sorted and assembled.   Ted is getting to open boxes and help dump them and crush the old cardboard boxes into bales for recycling.   SO...once again he's working and I'm, well, I'm having a good time in the sewing room.