Weekly Report for Cameron

Cameron Parish is a place of distances. The flat terrain encourages people to look into the distance. On a clear night from our MDS camp, we can see the red marker lights on the storage tanks of the LNG terminal north of Hackberry, about 20 miles away. In the daytime, when driving back to Cameron from either Hackberry, around the western edge of Calcasieu Lake, or Lake Charles, over the Gibbstown bridge, you can easily pick out the 150 foot tall legs of the jack-up rigs at the port and the four-legged water tower more than ten miles away.

In addition to seeing into the distance, we can also hear sounds across a distance. This week the full moon night was decorated with the sounds of coyotes howling and yapping out in the marsh. On more rare occasions the screech of an owl punctures the dark of the night. The hearer wonders where the did the owls and coyotes go when the waters came up during Hurricane Ike, and what did they feed on for the two weeks that it took for the waters to recede?

There are also sounds from a much larger distance. There are a lots of supply boats entering and leaving the port in Cameron. They load-up pipe, drilling fluids, food, tools and other supplies to take out to the drilling and production rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. These range in size from 100 to 200 feet long, and many of them are powered by room-sized 12 cylinder diesel engines whose exhaust notes are unique. From our MDS camp, we can often hear those big diesels, three to five miles out, winding up to cruising RPM as they leave the mouth of the Calcasieu River channel and head out into the waters of the Gulf. The hearer wonders what it would be like on one of those supply boats heading out across the waters.

When we lived on an island in the Caribbean, my work took me out on similar boats. Whether the waves were a gentle three foot chop or the mighty ten foot rolling swells from a storm in the North Atlantic, being on those boats was a time for realizing the grandeur of God's creation. Weather that was over 1,000 miles away could affect the surface of the ocean around that small island. Forces that can reach out to that distance are simply amazing.

With another week of work in Cameron Parish behind us, we can look into the not-to-distant future and see the completion of the three new houses. Final touches were being completed on the house in Hackberry... windows, floors and every other surface were cleaned, wiped and polished in preparation for the dedication next Tuesday. The other two houses are just about neck-and-neck heading into our last two weeks... painting is complete, flooring is going down, cabinets, lights and counter-tops are being installed.

The short-term volunteer groups this week were from Delaware and Illinois. They each came from churches that have sent groups of volunteers across the more than 1,000 miles to Cameron before. These faithful people have made the commitment to organize the resources and volunteers, sending them to Cameron to be God's hands and feet for this week. Churches and people who respond like that in obedience to God's leading are an amazing force. Those actions allow the work to go on in this distant place called Cameron Parish. It happens every week, but is still an amazing thing to behold.

When looking across the marsh to something in the distance, the image is not always clear. For us right now the exact sequence of getting the houses completed is not always clear. Material delivery delays and back-orders are like the waves out in the Gulf that impede the progress of those supply boats. We strive to keep the helm pointed in the right direction and wait for the weather and waves to change. Like those supply boats, we have a powerful engine driving our progress and trust it to get us to the destination.

From Cameron Parish
Carl, Laura, Lowell, Shirley, Martha, Ren, Melford and Verla