New Jersey - Meaningful vs "Fun"

I hadn't lived in NYC long before a hurricane Irene made it's way up the coast and dumped some nasty weather on us and the surrounding area. New Jersey saw more of the after effects of the hurricane than we did in the Manhattan, and a group of us joined with other Mormon Helping Hands to help put some houses back in order.

My grandmother had sent me money for my birthday shortly before this expedition, so I used it to buy myself some breakfast from a street cart (and felt like a real New Yorker :) and piled onto a bus for the drive across the river.

What we saw was at first daunting and heart breaking. See the brown line on that yellow house? 

That's where the water settled and sat for over a week. 

See all those lines on the house below? 

They are not stripes in the concrete, they are water marks from the water receding over 17+ days after the two rivers flooded this neighborhood.

Those clothes may look like laundry out to dry - but they came from a closet that had standing water

As we started to work, and to meet the courageous and hope filled people of this neighborhood things shifted from being only heart breaking to also being heart warming. People who were making the best of their less than ideal situation. People who were all helping each other and checking in on progress. Shows of patriotism and a determination to look forward.

People like Willy were very inspiring. Willy doesn't live in the house we worked on most of that day, but he did just remodel it. 

He spent the day tearing out all his work with us. His attitude was inspiring to me - when the family commented on his work being ruined, he told them "Nah, it was just a practice round, I'll do it all again for you." A good man.

That is mold growing on the bottom or newly installed counter top. 

I've helped build homes with Habitat for Humanity before. Tearing one apart was crazy. I'm glad I was able to help, but so sorry it needed to happen.

We found all sorts of things as we tore out sheetrock, insulation, ruined furniture, carpet...

Throughout the day the pile outside just kept growing:

I put holes in a section of sheet rock so I could tear it apart. I put my fingers in to make the holes bigger as we did with all the other walls (wet and moldy = easy to pull apart). Instead of breaking apart as expected, the whole wall came out and I just carried it outside

This was one of the craziest thing I saw. Sure, car with tree on it in a flooded neighborhood isn't that crazy. But the windshield isn't actually "broken" - just kinda concaved . . . how is that possible?? Was it filled with water? blows my mind!

While I have been back to New Jersey a number of times for what could be labeled as more "fun" experiences, this one sticks out in my mind as one of my most memorable.