"God May Not Come When You Want Him But He Is Always on Time."

An unusual week for me, because instead of destroying houses, I joined a group that was rebuilding one. And the people we were working for were there the whole time, living in a trailer in front of their home-in-progress, walking through the house each day and marveling at the work and thanking us over and over again.

Charles and Winnie were the homeowners. Charles is about 70, Winnie about 63. They'd moved out of the 9th Ward and into this blond brick ranch-style house in eastern New Orleans just a few weeks before the storm. (Both their houses -- old and new -- were flooded.In fact, the one in the 9th Ward was knocked right off its foundation.) A group of volunteers had come and gutted the house more than a year ago, but the couple had been unable to rebuild. Instead, they were living in a trailer in the front yard. I've seen a lot of FEMA trailers, but somehow, theirs seemed even smaller than usual: You couldn't stand side-by-side inside the width of it and the bedroom was basically a bed with no room to move on either side of it. But they'd decorated with prayer cards all around the door and in the bathroom so small that it seemed you'd be unable to lift your arms to wash while in the shower, they had a peach shower curtain and a peach scrubber that matched it.

They could live in the cramped quarters, but they really wanted the house to be complete: Winnie's mother is 97 and needed to come live with them.

The rebuilding crew was a good bunch of folks, about 25 strong, mostly from Pittsburgh. Most were teenagers, but there were couples and even entire families there. (Which led me to imagine what it would be like if the Pompilios went on a similar trip: Lou, out buying everyone food, which would be the best thing as his gifts in the home/gardening realm are limited as evidenced by the time he decided to trim the trees in front of our house and managed to kill them. Trimming. And they were evergreens. Those things never die; Mom, with cigarette. In wheelchair. "Supervising." Loudly. As she does now when we help her prepare a holiday meal; Tricia, single-handedly constructing most of the house, her only challenge being if asked to light a fire as the last time she tried to ignite one in her own fireplace she was puzzled that tossing matches on full logs didn't work; me, well-meaning, but really quite clumsy, living up to the "bull in a china shop" description my mother pressed on me years ago. This lack of grace was evident during this adventure, when, while helping install insulation in the attic, I put my foot through the ceiling. It's hard to look/feel cool when your leg is dangling in the hallway and the rest of you is among the rafters.)(Ironically, I was born on a Tuesday and according to the old rhyme, Tuesday's child is "full of grace." Full of something, friends, but it ain't grace.)

Besides the Pitt crew, there were a few strays like myself, including Mark and Tamara from Washington (Hi, guys!) and Beth from San Francisco, one of Jordo's oldest friends -- and our guest blogger, see above or below or wherever it is if she actually follows through and writes us something -- who made a point of noting that she wanted inclusion in any blog entry about this week. (Does this count? Because really, if I have to start talking about you, Beth, that just takes the focus off of me.) (And by the way, I think I'm done mentioning you now, unless I decide to detail your harrowing day dealing with fractions and mismeasured trim or your age-inappropriate crushes on other members of the work crew.)

(Just kidding, reading public. Don't call the police.)

Now back to me.

I missed the first day of work at the house but I caught up with everyone on the second. It was a painting day. I met Charles right out front. "I have no teeth and a Southern accent so I can be hard to understand," he said. He immediately gave me a tour. He was so proud of everything that had been done, and it was far from done. He also insisted on showing me his back yard. A few weeks earlier, another volunteer group had come through and created a little seating area there for him and his wife. They'd used bricks to make side tables for metal furniture that was mostly missing cushions. They'd brought in some potted plants that already looked like they'd seen better days. "This is our salvation," Charles told me. "After being in that trailer all day, this is just so nice." He kept pointing out the tables made of bricks, and the way the volunteers had used some of the other bricks to line part of the yard. "That just makes it so cozy," he said.

Charles was just so friendly, so willing to talk about anything. (And so loving to talk. He later blamed that on being raised Baptist. Kids today, he said, complain about going to church but they don't know what it was like when he was coming up and church was all day and "you'd fall asleep and they'd wake you up and you'd be hungry and then you'd take a break in the afternoon and go back again at night. Lord...") One morning, he was going on about tv programs and "American Idol," one of his favorites, and how Sanjaya should not still be among the contestants. He said that when the show was on, if the phone would ring, Winnie would say, "Who could be calling us NOW?" He liked Simon, he said, because Simon made the show. Just like JR once made "Dallas" and Alexis made "Dynasty" and had we watched those shows too? "Those were some soap operas," Charles said, shaking his head.

I've worked with religiously-affiliated groups since coming here but this week was the first time we started each day with a prayer circle. (We had another one before lunch, which can be annoying when you're hungry and want to eat but you can't get everyone into a circle. One day, Beth and I were about to start gnawing off our own arms because everyone was so slow.) (Second mention, Beth!) I didn't mind it. It was a good way to start off, all joined together. Roger, who usually led the group, was just so up-beat, even when he was giving out work assignments. "Have you walked through there today?" he'd say, referring to the house. "It looks AMAZING in there and that's all thanks to you and your hard work. I can't believe how far we've come in just a few days. But we've also got a ways to go, so let's see who is going to do what this morning..." (Roger was very nice. When my leg busted through the ceiling, he kinda shrugged and said, "To paraphrase a saying, stuff happens." I felt better.) A morning prayer circle was also the sight of one of the cutest things I've seen in a while: There was this crazy little brown terrier-type dog, Angel, that came running over from across the street when the vans pulled up each day. All of the kids loved Angel, as did we, even when Angel's dirty paws marred our freshly painted doors one day. During one morning prayer, one of the girls was holding Angel in one arm, meaning she couldn't join hands with the 14-year-old boy on one side. So he was holding the dog's paw without even thinking about it, just standing there. (I only wish Beth could have gotten a photo.) (Third.)

Charles led us in the prayer on a few of the days. His sentences were often punctuated by the words, "Oh Heavenly Father" and "Thank you." He always remembered to give thanks for the U.S. troops overseas and the fathers and mothers who let their children go so he could have his life in New Orleans. In part, it would go something like this, "Thank you, oh Heavenly Father, for another day you have given us, oh Heavenly Father and for bringing these wonderful people here from far and near here to help us, oh Heavenly Father, because you are so good and loving, oh Heavenly Father. And thank you for your sons and daughters overseas, oh Heavenly Father, who are risking their lives so that we may live these blessed lives, oh Heavenly Father. Keep them safe, oh Heavenly Father, and give them shelter, oh Heavenly Father, so that they can come home again, oh Heavenly Father Father. And thank you for their parents, oh Heavenly Father, because they have let them go so we can be free, oh Heavenly Father." Despite his lack of teeth and his Southern accent, Charles wasn't hard to understand when he prayed aloud.

So the work we did: Painting and windows and doors and trim and closets and floors and sanding and spackling and plumbing and insulating. We were volunteers, working for free, but you never got that idea. It was a professional work site, and everyone was trying to do the best job they could. (Thank God we had some professionals among us.) It wasn't just, "These people are lucky to get help at all. Let's just slap something together." It was careful, detailed. Beth (And here's number four.) and I devoted ourselves to caulking one afternoon and we took our job very seriously. There was something so satisfying about going into a room and making it look right and neat, and then having Charles come in behind us and say, "Oh, beautiful, just beautiful. Oh, Lord, thank you."

Charles and Winnie were often asked what they wanted and their wishes were granted, even the ones that seemed, well, odd, like her request for bright yellow pillars and front door with dark gray trim. (Basically, Saints colors, but I don't think that was intentional.) Charles wasn't shy about saying he wanted the original lanterns that had hung from the porch redone and replaced, so he joined a group sanding them for painting. (It was great to see this 70-year-old man surrounded by teenagers, all intent on the same task, chatting away.) Winnie wanted the group to pick a name for the house and they chose "Amazing Grace," inspired by an earlier evening when one of the church members had led them in the song, with some modified lyrics. One of the volunteers, an artist, painted the name in yellow on the gray trim around the front door, surrounded it with yellow flowers and vines. She painted a small gray cross in the middle of the yellow door.

On Good Friday, we gathered in the front room for a sort of dedication - almost all of the major work was done and the group would be returning to their homes in the next few days. We were joined by others who had been volunteering but working on another home. People sat on benches made from planks of wood and oversized plastic containers or on the floor or they leaned against the walls. One of the Pittsburgh pastors led the services, strumming a guitar and leading the group in song. Winnie and Charles sat next to him, with Winnie singing harmony each time, her voice always distinct from the others.

The pastor pointed out how appropriate it was we were gathering that day. Like so many New Orleanians after the storm, Jesus had felt forgotten and forsaken when he died. It was a dark day, he said, but the best part about that was knowing that things were going to get better: New Orleans, like Jesus, would rise again.

He asked the question, "When have you felt that God has forsaken you?" And Winnie, through tears, began telling their tale: How'd they just moved into the house when the storm hit, and they'd moved so they could have a place to bring her parents. The 11-hours they spent on a bus to Baker, La. The realization that they'd lost everything "and it's not the material things but why did this have to happen?" She talked about losing her father after the storm and how it had felt to be homeless, crammed into a shelter with dozens of others -- "I know what it's like to be hungry. I know what it's like to go to bed at night listening to the crying and moaning of the people around you. I know what it's like to be in pain and to think God has abandoned you."

Her soft sobs sparked tears around the room. Both men and women dabbed their eyes with coarse paper towels. I saw one woman lean into her husband, and it struck me because I hadn't even known they were married before, they'd seemed to disconnected.

Charles, who rubbed his wife's neck with one hand, while she spoke, took over for his wife at some point. He said he knew they suffered some, but he considered them blessed. He may have had arthritis pain in his shoulder but at least he could lift it and there were so many people who were unable to walk when "Uncle Arthur" visited. So many people had lost loved ones in the storm but he hadn't had to bury any of his children or grandchildren. He may have lost everything, but people came forward to give. "Everything I've got on, someone gave me," he said, tugging at his baseball cap and looking over his pants and shirt. (He actually made the comparison that if he were a man without shoes, at least he wasn't a man without feet. This is also one of my dad's favorite expressions. Like when I complained about losing my job, he said, "Remember, 'I felt bad because I had no shoes and then I saw a man with no feet.'" I replied, "Are there a lot of people with no feet around? Because I haven't seen any.")

God was good, God was good, Charles said repeatedly. He knew this because God had sent so many wonderful strangers to New Orleans to help his family get their lives back together.

"God may not come when you want him," Charles said, "but he is always on time."