Disaster Relief Day 5: Church Camp for Adults

I've decided disaster relief is like camp for adults. The past 4 nights I slept on an air mattress in a church.  I shared a room with ladies from North Carolina and Virgina. My roomie from Virgina was a new college graduate who had all the entusiasm of a young adult ready to conquer the world.  She came in each day smiling and smelling of a combination of mold and a hard days work. Two of the ladies in my room looked to be in their seventies and spent all day doing laundry.  They were up before anyone else and came back to the room after everyone else. Th 5th lady in my room was probably I her 50's and was an Assessor. She spent all day driving from house to house looking at what needs to be done and reporting back to her crew.

A typical day started around 6 Am when we got up and got dressed and ready for the day. We had a morning meeting at 6:45 with brief instructions for the day followed by breakfast. (There was an entire other crew cooking for the volunteers.) Lunch options were spread out on the table and each person was in charge of packing his/her own brown bag lunch including snacks. We headed out around 7:45 AM. The rest of the day was spent working until around 4PM. There were coolers full of water and Gatorade available all the time. We took a break around 9:30 AM and then lunch was around 11:30. 

When we got back to the church it was a race to the shower.  This was one time I glad to be a girl because the female showers did not have as long a line as the male showers. The "shower trailer" was a hoarse trailer divided into 6-9 shower stalls each with their own changing area. 

We had dinner at 6 and devotion at 7. By 9:15 most nights we had the lights out. I got about 2 hours more sleep each night than I do at home.  I guess that's the way this was not like camp. Once the lights were out so were we.

One of the cool things about disaster relief is that they send you a state pin from whatever state you have worked in to put on your hat. So all the old guys that have been doing this for years sit around and talk about all the disasters they have worked and compare pins.  

So if you are nostalgic for church camp days but don't want to spend a week keeping up with teenagers volunteer for disaster relief.  It's a lot of work but a load of fun.