The trip to Kansas was both fun and frustrating, hopeful and depressing, and vacation and work. Cheryl Mast ended up not being able to join us for the trip, so Penny Yarman and I made the trip out to Kansas on Saturday AM December 8. After 14+ hours of driving through clear roads in IL, snow in IA, freezing rain in Missouri, and more freezing rain in Kansas, we arrived at Tom & Lois Harder's house in Wichita. We enjoyed some time with their family before leaving for Greensburg on Sunday afternoon.
Greensburg was nearly wiped off the map by a tornado in May. Now, seven months later, I was surprised by how little has been rebuilt. I heard many stories and ideas about what should happen to rebuild the town, but I sense that the townpeople are building up energy to determine what is next for each of them. The high school, post office, hospital, city hall, and bank are all still in modulars. The gas station still has its awning, but it's "convenience store" is a storage shed like many of us have in our back yards. There is a separate community of 200+ FEMA trailers (single wide mobile homes) south of town that is currently housing most of the town. Before the tornado, Greensburg was a dying town of 1,400 people, with over 1/2 of those being elderly. I heard stories of residents who work in neighboring towns choosing to just buy property in the neighboring town instead of making the effort to come back to Greensburg. I think they spent most of the summer cleaning up the town, and there is now talk of things really beginning to happen "after the first of the year." I sense that the businesses are waiting for the residents to come back, and the residents are waiting for the businesses to come back.
Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) has been involved pretty much since the beginning. There were 8 longer-term staff and 3 short-term there last week. The LT people were from Alberta, Ontario, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The short-termers were Penny and I and a guy from Arkansas.
Penny and I started out the week working on a house that had survived the tornado. It was bought by members of Greensburg Mennonite whose house was destroyed, so they are renovating this house for their new home. We spent Monday-Wednesday sanding drywall that had been mudded and taped the week before, and putting a coat of primer paint on all the walls. On Thursday we worked hanging drywall in another house that had survived the tornado, but everything else is a 2 block area has now been removed. On Friday I helped collect MDS tools at the various sites as the unit was getting ready to close down for the holidays. I also got to spend some time organizing the tool trailer - that was fun!
It was a good week. The need seems so overwhelming and I hope we were able to make some small steps of progress forward and spread some smiles and hope. Everyone was very thankful for us being there. It made me realize what a middle-class lifestyle I live. I am rarely surrounded by people who are in real need. It was eye-opening to see what was really important to these people after losing nearly all their worldly possessions.
We spent last weekend in Wichita, hanging out with Tom & Lois and their kids Hillary, Madeline, and Anna and going to church and their various concerts. We also spent a morning in Newton so Penny could visit a friend. Then it was the long drive back again on Monday. We had heard about the 10 inches of snow that had been received at home over the weekend, but thankfully we drove home on dry roads.
I will only post one picture now. This is the house that Penny and I worked on early in the week. (I stole the picture from the MDS website). I did not have the camera along, but Penny did. However, we seemed to have very little time for picture taking. By the time we were done working it was nearly dark, and Greensburg got an ice storm on Monday evening that made driving around fairly difficult until Thursday. We took some pictures on our way out of town on Friday afternoon, but it was snowing really hard. I will post some of Penny's pictures when I get them.
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