Pastor Willie Walker, a local hero who rescued hundreds of people during the Katrina devastation, and his congregation were currently using a dilapidated house to continue church services at Noah's Ark Missionary Baptist Church, which has been serving New Orleans for over 60 years. Though Pastor Walker had helped countless people, he had never been able to rebuild his own church - fast forward to last Sunday, the day we were set to sheetrock, finish, and texture the building that would be the new Noah's Ark Missionary Baptist Church.

We arrived on site at 7 am "hat in hand" but other trades had fallen behind overnight about 4 hours off schedule. As we were already onsite we gave a hand to the framing crews, as well as manned bobcats to haul off trash. We even went as far as helping the roofers get caught back up. We literally had our hands on just about every phase out there, sans electrical and plumbing. Not wanting to tire ourselves out we decided it would be best to go back to the ITEC office in downtown New Orleans to take a rest until it was our time to shine.

At the office myself and the 30 other men chowed down on 10 of Dominos finest supreme pizzas - maybe we were just really hungry I don't know. What I do know is that all the food was gone in about 10 minutes.

3 pm rolled around and we received a call that they were ready for us so we loaded up and headed back to the site, sadly we were not able to start hanging sheetrock until 5 pm due to inspector delays. Here is where the fun began. We finished hanging the drywall in the first of the 3 rooms in less than 45 minutes, a great accomplishment, as we were working towards beating a record of all drywall hung in 5 hours. Finishing early meant more than a record - finishing early meant more waiting as we now had to allow the insulators to complete their jobs before we could step in.

In the meantime our finishers used a special formulated quick drying mud which turned out to be not so quick after all - luckily there was a crew onsite that was able to dehumidify the room thus quickly drying the mud. It was pretty amazing how everyone worked together.

As we were texturing the first room, we were able to start hanging and taping the second room, a circular area that would be used as the main hall. By midnight we had completely hung out all of the rooms, which put us right at 5 hours - but by that time no one was thinking of records, only getting finished!

The mudwork itself was a slow drag, even with the dehumidifiers it was taking long to dry in the cold night air. Still though, this is what we do, we do drywall and we squash problems on the fly. After some adjustments we were spraying our orangepeel texture (which turned out to be beautiful).

By the end of the night tension was high, and you really start to see what you are made of. None of us had eaten since 11 that morning, and the thought of going back to the hotel to our families was a hard one to shake, but ultimately you have to think of the bigger picture - a picture of a man and his church and the good deeds that would come of it. We pushed on, and by 3 am we were finished texturing the main entry hall, completing the drywall, mud and texture for the entire church. With sore eyes, throats, backs and limbs we loaded up our tools and headed home - proud of what we had accomplished and of the story we have to tell.

Comments

Thanks for all you did. I was there for the reveal. A lady dressed in African garb was outside the church with her hand on her mouth. I asked her if she liked it and she nodded her head with what looked like tears in her eyes. I had to hug her. That right there made the trip for me. I can't thank you enough for her joy!

- Kim H.

The program about this church aired tonight, on the day that New Orleans was again evacuated for another terrible storm. Please keep us informed about this wonderful church. Praying that your work and the church will stand firm.

Thank you,
Jan B