Saying Good Bye To Lake Charles, LA And Hello To Coralville, IA

Well, another round is coming to an end. And it seems as though we just arrived here in Lake Charles, LA. Today is Tuesday the 23nd of February and we leave on the 25th to head back to campus in Vinton, IA for a few days of transition. Then we'll head off to our next project in Coralville, IA on March 4th doing invasive species removal and getting trained to do controlled burns which will also include a pack test (firefighter training) which is pretty cool.

Patrick writing little messages for Griff and Trisha on the ceiling haha..."Griff stinks"...."Trisha bites the big 1 "

Now, on to the last post for this project. We've been gaining numerous amounts of experience in how to take apart a room and rebuild it. A few different houses, but our main focus has been on Ms. Mary's house. This lady is in her 80's and acts like she's in her 20's haha. She always has stories that make us laugh and we're gonna miss her deeply. A few pics i'd like to share show the progression that we've made in this one room in her house (see my facebook account for a whole lot more photos).

These 2 pics show how the room looks while the flooring is in progress. We are laying down the flooring in preparation to place the "stick n' peel" tile down.

Shannon is making some cuts for the walls while Michael (our TL) and Daniel help with supporting.

Griff and Shannon placing parts of the wall together.

These 2 pics kinda show you the big progress that we've made.....the walls are in place with insulation, the floors are in with the tile down, and the trim on the top and bottom of the walls. We are actually pretty excited and proud of ourselves for this room because it is something that we started and we finished with some pretty good results. We were so excited at the end of the day yesterday when all of our hard work these past few weeks have finally paid off. And Ms. Mary was pretty grateful as well.

Ms. Mary is opening her birthday present from all of us (card and framed picture). She's definitely been a joy to work with, with all of her stories about her life.

Children's Day in Lake Charles at their civic center was an ISP that we did. And this pic here is Lyndsay with a cat face painted. Her and a few of the other girls helped work the face painting booth that was set up for the kids while the rest of us worked running the games.

There was a band there to keep us all entertained and even a man that had his trained birds. He did several tricks that were pretty cool.

And finally, the Community Day that Shannon and I set up with Friend Ships finally came. We generated a few volunteers to help us out and we had a pretty successful day. Packaging, taping, labeling, and preparing food and clothing for the next shipment out to Haiti. This is something that all of us were pretty excited about since we couldn't personally go to Haiti to help out. We wanted to do something. And this was definitely one way to go about it.

These 3 pics show us boxing up clothing and food and even some already prepared for shipment. It was pretty fun and exciting knowing that the work we were doing would help out soooo many people in Haiti that needed it.

Us walking onto the ship at lunch time about to get a tour.

A few other ships that Friend Ships owns and a little van that we saw on their land that I just HAD to take a pic of. I thought it was pretty awesome :)

And now this will conclude our stay here in Lake Charles, LA and a new path for us to take opens up. I wish I could give all of you a better idea of just how much this project has touched me. Not just the work being done and the impact I know i'm making....but the people. The people here are so grateful for everything. Someone even asked if we would ever come back. Doing this type of work you definitely have the opportunity to reach out to people, and in most cases, they end up reaching out to you even more. I've learned a lot about myself and my relationship with God during this past project. And I expect to learn even more next project since we will be working and living in the middle of nature. Staying at a Church camp for 7 1/2 weeks I'll have plenty of chances to just get out on my own and be one with God and the nature that He created. I hope these past few posts give you just a glimpse.....maybe a glimmer of what we do. Expect more posts that talks about our next project in Coralville, IA. But this next one may not come for another week or two until we get up and going. Thanks so much for reading and please continue to. Have a blessed week. "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!

A Realization In Lake Charles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abj_-iXrv1k

For this post i'm not going to talk about what we've done the past two weeks, but instead, give a little reminder to you guys (mainly myself) of exactly why i'm here to begin with. The more I’m in this program called AmeriCorps NCCC, the more I am reminded of the reason and purpose of me being here in the first place. I felt God calling me to do this type of work and to go out into the world to help those in need who may not, for some reason or another, be able to help themselves. Being here in Lake Charles, LA was no exception to that feeling. These people here are still in need of help and some here don’t even realize there are those that do. I have a passion for helping others and improving the lives of those around me. God has led me to this point in my life and keeps speaking out to me each and every day and I can’t just ignore that. So for this post I want to share the lyrics to a song that always jerks my heart and helps me stay focused on my mission in life, and that’s to share the love of Christ through service. “Serve Christ by serving others” is what I’ve always said. Also, click on the youtube link above the picture if  you want to hear the song.



God of This City
By: Chris Tomlin

Verse: You’re the God of this city
You’re the King of these people
You’re the Lord of this nation
You are

You’re the Light in this darkness
You’re the Hope to the hopeless
You’re the Peace to the restless
You are

Chorus: There is no one like our God
There is no one like our God
Greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this city
Greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done here

Bridge: There is no one like our God
There is no one like You God
Greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done
We believe, we believe in You God
Greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done here.


This song always touches me and reminds me just how important each and every community that we travel to is. He IS the God, King, Lord, Light, Hope, and Peace of this city, its people, and this nation. He’s just using people like us to show it. "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!

Week 2 In Lake Charles, LA

Well first off I want to give an update on one of my "rep roles" for the team. I am a POL (project outreach liason) for the team along with Shannon McCoy. This round we have to put together a Community Work Day and get the whole community involved in a day of service. So far we have the organization to work with in mind. We've contacted them and now they have to contact us back to let us know whether or not they want to do it. So keep your fingers crossed. This organization is called Friend Ships here in Lake Charles, LA and basicly we would set up a day for the community to come together and spend the day helping them get their ship ready to set sail for Haiti packaging and loading supplies. Shannon & I jumped on this opportunity the moment we heard they need help because our team wants to go to Haiti sooo bad to help out. And since we can't, this is the closest thing we could do to help out. Every little bit helps right? Well we are working hard to make this happen so I just ask for all your prayers that this will come together like we are picturing it.

Alright, now to the work week. Wow, this week has been some gooooood work. Monday was MLK Day and so the organization that we are teamed with had the day off. We, however, did not. "Day on, not a day off" is what we say. Instead, we spent the day working with this thrift store in Sulphur, LA which is about a 30 minute or so drive from Lake Charles. We tagged items, arranged the floor, took items from the back to the floor, and helped unload trucks from people who came to donate items. Half way through the day a few of us guys headed over to a different building owned by the same store and helped move boxes from that location to our original location.

 Patty also found himself a nice vest....cool eh? haha get things done for AMERICA!!

One day we went to this trailer park and went to this one lady's trailor and put a tarp over her roof to keep the water from leaking through.

For the rest of the week we were working on this lady's house. We call her Mrs. Mary.

We did pretty much anything you could think of to this house. We first took everything out of her room. Then we pulled all the walls off.

Put up some new insulation

We then started pulling up alll of the floor

And in the midst of all this "destruction" that we are doing......God still seems to find a way to remind me exactly why i'm doing this program and why i'm dedicating my life to service in the first place.....remind you, I didn't touch or tamper with this at all...I found it this way:

I just couldn't help but smile and take a picture. Isn't He amazing?? :) I think for a moment there I got soo caught up in the day to day work aspect of this program that I lost focus of the big picture and the real reason why i'm here. God decided to toss in a little reminder for me there. I think many of us do the same thing I did in our everyday lives. We get so caught up in our daily routines and schedules that we lose focus of the bigger picture and the plans that God has for our lives. Who knows, maybe God is trying to throw in "little reminders" to help you get back on track. So just keep your eyes open and be willing to listen. Maybe you'll get your own "cross reminder" :) .....well, I have to get going. Thanks for reading and i'll try my hardest to post again next weekend. "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!!! :)

First Week In Lake Charles, LA

Well, we left campus in Iowa on Monday and drove to Memphis, TN where we stayed in a hotel for the night. Once we got there we got our rooms and headed out to Beale Street for dinner. It was nice. We found this really cool place that had a live band and had a great time!

The next day, Tuesday, we drove the rest of the way to Lake Charles, LA. We are staying at University Methodist Church. It's pretty nice. We have an upstairs place where we are staying and it has one room for beds and one room for living room (tv, couches, etc.) Its pretty cool. Our showers, however, are a different story. The Church was suppose to have an outdoor trailor-ish shower thing but its not working. So we've been going to Trinity Baptist Church to work out at their gym everyday after work and then we get our showers there. It's kinda frustrating but at the same time the showers at Trinity are better and it gives us that push to work out everyday. So it's nice.

So far this week from Wednesday-Friday we have raked leaves, fixed a broken shower trailor at a DIFFERENT Church, painted and hung shutters, mudded, sanded, and hung dry wall. The weather here is CRAAAAZY....one day its cold, the next day it's raining and storming, and then the next it's nice and sunny. It was fun the other day when Griff and I had to hang shutters up in the pouring rain haha.

Today we went to the lake and walked around. One of the really cool things we found was this memorial thing from the WTC of 9-11

And a piece that came straight from the Pentagon

Overall so far its been an ok week. We haven't done too much work yet, but it's only been 3 work days. Tomorrow (Monday) is MLK day and the organization we work with is closed. So we are working with a different organization in Sulfur, LA which is about a 20 minute drive from here. They are feeding us pizza for lunch...and then that night for dinner our site supervisor here in Lake Charles invited us to his house for gator gumbo!! mmmmm!! haha. That will be an adventure all in itself. Well guys, until next week, "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!!!

My Mailing Address

Hey guys! Just thought I would post my mailing address just in case there were anyone who wanted to send me anything. Mail, package, postcard....whatever floats your boat! Hope all is well! "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!

Tim Hubbard
AmeriCorps NCCC Cedar 7
1004 G Ave.
Vinton, Iowa 52349

Day Of Service With Completely New Team

Well, this weeks blog will be the last blog about NCCC until after Christmas break. I may or may not post a blog about my Christmas break i'm not sure yet...we'll just have to see. But anyway, this past week was transition week here in Vinton and all the other teams returned home from their first spike. During that week we had different training classes and community meeting which the 2nd and final one my team had to conduct. Which was fun b/c we made a video titled "The Real World Vinton" haha. It was fun to make and we had good feedback from it. On Thursday the 17th it was "all corps service day", so everybody was sent out to different projects. The difference, though, was that we were all placed on different teams. Everybody on my team for this day was somebody that I haven't been with before. And the ATL's (assistant team leaders) were the TL's for the day and the TL's were just regular corps members. Anyway, my team had an assigment in Cedar Rapids working at 4 Oaks painting rooms. It was pretty cool because we got to paint but also got to know each other quite a bit. And especially for me, it was cool getting to socialize with new faces and get to bond a little bit with them. I had a blast and made some new friends, which I enjoyed a lot. I'll post a few of the pics down below.

A lot of taping was involved in this project and several coats of paint. The ladies that were in charge there were super nice and fed us cookies, drinks etc. And even let us sort through baskets of free Adidas shirts they received and let us pick some that we wanted. I ended up getting three shirts. Pretty sweet.

A few days before the all corps day, on Monday night, my team Cedar 7 was invited to our Spike 1 supervisor's place for a pancake dinner. Well after we ate we played this card game which I can't remember the name of, but it was pretty sweet. She also introduced us to the magic animal in her house. Apparently if you squeeze it, you receive the magic. So we passed it around and started da squeezin'.

Well, i'm home in Alabama as I type this out. Here for 2 weeks and then go back to Vinton, IA for the remainder of my service with NCCC which will be about 7 months, up until July 29th or so. I hope you all have a great Christmas and you stay safe. I'll post again soon. Maybe during break, maybe not...but we'll see! But until then , "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!