Olive Tree

There was a village manager/worksite manager meeting today in Olive Tree (which is another volunteer village right outside New Orleans). It was mostly a chaotic vent session. I asked about my truck. It is now officially a Pearlington truck, so I won't be getting it back. : ( Leslie said the one I'd been borrowing could be mine, so I will still have a truck.

I rode to and from the meeting with Don and Buddy. Don regaled us with stories of things he's done. And let me say, he is quite a character. For instance, he was once a bouncer type person and two guys at the pool table got into and one of them hit the other in the throat with the stick, which crushed the other guy's windpipe. So Don cut his throat and put a straw in and was breathing for the guy. When the police showed up, she didn't know what was going on, so she tried to handcuff Don. He took her down, and put her own handcuffs on her, told the other bouncer to put her in the backseat of her cruiser, and continued to breath for the guy. When the EMS guys got there, they took over the guy with the crushed windpipe. The back up police arrested Don for assaulting an officer. The charges were dropped when the parents of the guy told how Don had saved their kid's life and the policewoman explained she had misjudged the situation. He got to keep the handcuffs. Ironically, Don ended up teaching that policewoman and many others on the force self defense. Anyway, it made for an interesting trip.

Once we got back to camp, I was pretty much in the office until the dinner bell. I had to make copies of and file a bunch of papers. It wouldn't have been so hard if someone had told me earlier that I would need to do this. But since no one did, I not only have a huge stack of papers to go through (many of which I will need to complete information on), but I have to round up papers that neither Buddy nor I saved because we didn't know we should. Some of the things I will have to go get from the main office.

The groups were not very communicative, so we thought there were going to be 40 for dinner, but most of them went out to eat. So there were 14 counting all the staff. But man, was it good! They cooked chicken that had been marinated in yogurt and dry salad dressing mix (which sounds weird, but was very yummy), mashed sweet potatoes (a favorite of mine), grilled vegetables, rice, dinner rolls, and salad. And there was fruit salad for dessert. We have quite a lot of leftovers, but these are yummy leftovers!

For devotionals, they sang several of the older hymns, so I didn't know them, but they were simple and we had sheet music, so I was able to sing along. I did know two of the songs, but they sang them waaaaaay too slow. And because the guy who started every song was a bass, they were all in too low a key also. But we managed and I think most people enjoyed it.