And so it ends...

Hey, folks. Happy New Year.

Ana's work in the south officially ended yesterday, when she departed dear old Pass Christian at 8 am and drove home for Kentucky. She is going to be spending a few days there with her family until she leaves to study abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico for the Spring semester.

We'd like to thank everyone for your prayers and encouragements this semester. Ana really appreciated all of the support she got from St. Louis.

If you want to contact her while she's abroad, here's the address:

Ana Plage
Blanca de la Cerda
Nápoles # 2529
Col. Providencia
Guadalajara, Jalisco

Thanks again and God bless you all!

¡Fotografías!

Ruth, Rachael, and Brett went down to Pass Christian over Webster's fall break, and they came across our heroine and took some pictures. Enjoy.


Ana painting signs for The Village


Ana with Rachael and Ruth


Ana and friends hanging out at a sign


Water tower, yo


The Village, these are the tents provided for folks to live in


This is The Village


This is the state of most places

Not my fault

Apparently Ana thinks that this blog is occasionally humorous...for some reason she accuses Brian, Nikki, and myself of explaining some things either out of context or out of proportion...I honestly don't know how this can happen, what with me posting things only days after she tells me about them, and oftentimes Brian posting things heard secondhand through Nikki who sometimes doesn't even really understand what's going on the first place. (I love you, Nikki Lynn!)

Suffice to say, as far as I'm concerned, this blog remains a completely factual, up-to-date account of the life of Ms. Plage.

On to today's post:

Only three days ago Ana rescued a small child and two puppies from a burning building. Firefighters, who showed up to the scene five minutes after the building had been reduced to smouldering ashes, are still looking for the cause of the fire. They are not ruling out arson.

The whole thing started when Ana and her group of AmeriCorps friends were cruising the streets of Mississippi, searching for anyone and everyone in trouble and/or need. They do this very often. Ana says she saw the smoke from two miles away and pointed it out. Within minutes the group arrived at the site.

The building was actually the home of Mr. and Mrs. A. Snogweiller, the A standing for Albert, and it had been miraculously untouched by the hurricane. Unfortunately, what remained of their inhabitance was now horribly ablaze. The poor couple were huddled on their lawn, frantic because their 6 year old son, Thomas, was trapped inside on the second floor. The couple related to the AmeriCorps group that 911 had been called, and firefighters were on their way, but that had been nearly ten minutes ago and the house was getting worse by the minute.

The AmeriCorps group realized there was nothing they could do but watch and pray, except Ana, who on a sudden whim of courage, broke from the group on the lawn and ran into the front door of the house, ignoring the warnings of everyone behind her.

Inside, it felt like a billion degrees and smoke was everyhwere. Ana had to cover her face in her shirt so that she could breathe. She called out for the child but there was no answer. Suddenly, a large piece of the ceiling broke off and fell. Ana tucked and rolled out of the way. She said it missed her head by mere millimeters.

Ana found the cowering Thomas on the second floor, under his bed in his room. As soon as he saw her he stopped crying and climbed onto her back. Ana then attempted to make her way back out of the house, but stopped when she heard the crying of two tiny puppies down the hall.

Now carrying young Thomas on her back and the two puppies in each hand, Ana noticed that the stairs which she had came up were now collapsed, leaving no way out of the house from the first floor. Spotting a large second-story picture window that looked out over the lawn, Ana made a running leap and smashed through the glass, falling ten feet down and landing gracefully on the grass. Everyone was miraculously unhurt.

She was, of course, greeted with raucous applause from everyone gathered, and by the time the fire department finally showed, they commended her on her bravery and gave her an honorary firefighter's badge. Ana is donating the badge to a local orphanage, she says.

One more thing before this fascinating story comes to an end: On hearing that the fire was possibly an arson, Ana took it upon herself to track down the perpatrator. She has already made two citizen's arrests and is now following a third very promising lead. The discovery, she says, might also lead to the uncovering of a three million dollar underground drug ring that has plagued the city for years. Ana says she only hopes that justice will eventually be served.

I think that's pretty much how she told it to me...if there was anything I forgot or didn't get quite right, I ask your apologies. Ana was in the middle of a high-speed car chase when she was relating this to me.

Dreadlocks?!

So Ana asked for my opinion in something the other day.

She asked if she should put her hair in dreadlocks. Apparently there was a tie among some of the people in her camp, so I was asked to be tiebreaker.

I told her that if she wanted to, she should go for it.

As of today, her hair remains undreaded. I really don't see why she bothered to ask me at all, seeing how I also said she shouldn't cut her hair, and look how she heeded my advice. Oh well.

Apparently some guys there were talking about how much hotter girls like with dreads in their hair, but I'm not so sure....

The Landfill that was a Paradise

Ana got in to Pass Christian, MS, (near Biloxi) yesterday (Thursday, 10/06) and is planning on living in an "ocean front property" (tent) for the next couple of months. As you can see demonstrated in the picture, what once was considered a paradise of the Gulf is now little more than a landfill. She said that there are absolutely no houses standing, not even partially, not even framing/cross-beams. She hears that it is worse farther inside the city.

There is a strong military presence there. She says that she had to go through checkpoints to get there, and that it feels like a warzone with all of the destruction and soldiers with guns. They have set a curfew, which is a little bothersome, because as soon as they are done working for the day, they have only enough time for dinner before they are confined by the curfew. Which means, no showers (awkward). She says (a) that she is going to skip the gov't provided meal one day and take a shower, and (b) that she is thinking about taking scissors to her already shortened hair so that she has less reason to worry about [not] showering. It is very intense (a word she used no less than four times over our ten minute conversation).

Her current work bring her back to the world of distribution, where she is now taking packages (some of which she labeled back in Jackson) and distributing them locally to the people who need them. They can't get them out fast enough. Two other jobs loom in the near future. The hurricane winds blew the road away, as well as the street signs and... anything that was above ground (side note: the camp she is staying in is placed where it is because it is by the only landmark left in the town, a sign for a Family Dollar/Dollar General/something like that). So, one job will be working with the city to replace signs in order to allow for navigation. Secondly, they are going to start sending out work crews to help salvage people houses. Many people have decided that it isn't worth it to rebuild, but for those who want to return, they are stripping the property of the wreckage, filling dump trucks (she says that there are constantly dump trucks taking wreckage somewhere) and looking for anything salvageable in the ruins.

One fun fact is that Pass Christian was the town "adopted" by Good Morning America, and so has received both lots of donations and PR attention. She says she'll let us know if she's going to be on the tele'.

She's being well taken care of, considering the circumstances. She's lodging next to the medical center, and is provided by the gov't with an Air Conditioned tent full of hot food when she gets off of work.

She's glad to be in a new place. It was getting tiring at the Jackson distribution center, doing work for people that she had no connection with. She is now in a place where she is directly helping real, tangible people. As she left, she had a couple of cool experiences, affirmations of what she's doing and where she's going. One of her Americorps friends in Jackson is struggling with knowing what to do after he is done working with Americorps. He doesn't know when he will finish, and that dictates which vocational choice he will have to pursue. This has been troubling him, but he told Ana that because she up and left without knowing where she was going or what she was doing, he now has faith that God will lead him where he needs to be. The second was that a guy told her, before she knew that she was leaving, that she needed to make sure to tell the people in the next place that she went that God was the reason that she is down there. He said that it had really made an important impact on himself and others in Jackson. Ana felt very blessed to be able to receive Godly encouragement from someone who was face-to-face, she hasn't found much sine she left our company. Praise be to God for providing her with such wonderful mates along her journey.

These last couple of bits are from Nikki's turn at the conversation, so they'll probably be shorter and less accurate. Hang in there with me, we're almost through with this update. Firstly, she says that if you're trying to call her, don't stop trying. Even though you'll probably receive a message that the connection cannot be made, you just have to keep trying and eventually you'll reach at least the voicemail. Secondly, she said that she had to turn the music off in the car as she entered the town because the destruction was so intense that she had difficulty just taking it all in. She said that to get someplace you just walk where there used to be houses, because now there is absolutely nothing. She says that it is awesome, in that it inspires awe. She said that people are "troopers" and that they are all just struggling to regain a sense of normalcy. She said that they all get excited when they get normal things like kleenex and toilet paper, because everything else is just in such disarray.

We ask, as always, that you pray.

Upstaged by Matt

Got a phone call from Ana this morning, and I was going to write an entry, but Matt beat me to the punch. Shucks, golly gee.

Just a couple things we wanted to add to the report.

• She is feeling unwell to some degree because she is having trouble staying vegetrian, not to mention vegan. Apparently, everything in the south is made with meat.
• Her phone and computer aren't working flawlessly, such that she hasn't been able to talk to her mom on the phone in four days, or so. This makes her sad.
• She's trying to figure out where to go next, and is asking for your prayers in that. Her options include:
  

  
  -working for Red Cross once they figure out where to put her
  -going to help the AmeriCorps people
  -taking charge over the warehouse she is currently working in as in charge people leave
  -not helping with the shelters in Baton Rouge where she had planned, since they are evacuated
  -not helping Habitat for Humanity until the hurricane season is over

  
  She is planning on staying at the warehouse for another week, and then making a decision of where to move next. Pray for her guidance on that.
• And, finally, she's received the e-mails that folks have sent, and she is encouraged by them. If you don't know, we have a list of folks which are sending prayers to her daily (one person a day), so, if you want to get on the list, let us know.

We love Ana. Please pray for her.

Random Things

There have been some new developments in not only Ana's living style, but her personal appearance as well...

She cut off all of her hair. Well, not all of it, but a significant amount. Like seven inches. She claims that she was "forced into it," but this has been something she's been wanting to try for a while, so can we really believe her all that much? Anyway, less hair is keeping her cooler and allowing her to work harder.

She mentioned that she might be receiving her forklift driving license soon. Not sure how we can use this to our advantage yet, but it's gotta come in handy sometime, having a friend that can drive a forklift. She'll probably just want to show off next time we go to Lowe's or something.

Pray for her rest...she explained that she and several other volunteers that work with her have been sleepwalking...apparently they work so much that they even dream about moving boxes in a giant warehouse. Ana said that the other night she started sleepwalking and only woke up when she ran into a lamp and "busted her lip open." Not sure exactly what that means, but it sounds pretty funny. Her lip is fine.

But it won't be an issue anymore, because as of last night, she has moved out of the lake home she was so generously offered and is living amidst her AmeriCorps friends. She says that the room they stay in is just like a giant warehouse...she can't get away from this thing at all. Anyway, some of her good friends are leaving her today, and going to Baton Rouge to put tarps on houses that have lost their roofs. Her friend Jessie is going to call Ana in the next few days to let her know whether or not they will need her there, too...

Further reports as events develop.

Hurricane Rita

Ana and everyone else down south really need our prayers.

They say that Rita, which is only a Category 1 storm right now, is likely to upgrade to Category 3 (major hurricane status, Katrina was a four) and hit the Gulf Coast within a matter of mere days, possibly burying New Orleans in 15 more inches of rain.

I can't even fathom the implications of this on the Coast. It's bad enough already there, and another hurricane can only worsen the situation.

Specifically, pray that Ana remains safe wherever she is and that the storm misses her. If she is forced to evacuate, pray that she has somewhere else to go where she is needed. We can only trust that God still has many good things in store...