Pie, Catfish, and Prayer Shawls

I went to a house blessing in Pearlington. Whenever a house is finished, they have a house blessing and everyone is invited. The house belongs to an elderly couple. It had been flooded to the ceiling by the hurricanes, so it had been rebuilt nearly from scratch. It was a beautiful home. They opened with a prayer and then sang a song, read a scripture and prayed again. The volunteers who had worked on the house presented a prayer shawl to the woman. It was very nice.

This is the house blessing song:

Bless this house, O Lord we pray,
Make it safe by night and day...
Bless these walls so firm and stout,
Keeping want and trouble out...
Bless the rood and Chimneys tall,
Let thy peace lie overall...
Bless this door that it may prove,
Ever open to joy and love...
Bless these windows shining bright,
Letting in God's Heavenly light,
Bless the hearth, the painting there,
With smoke ascending like a prayer!
Bless the folk who dwell within,
Keep them pure and free from sin...
Bless us all that we may be,
Fit O Lord to dwell with thee...
Bleus us all that one day we may dwell,
O Lord! With Thee!

And these are a couple pictures from it.
The man on the far right is one of the volunteers that worked on the house. The woman with the cane is the one that led the singing. The other two are the house owners.







This is Heather with the house owners. Heather (the Pearlington village manager) is on the far right.








These are the home owners. I never caught their names.










This is as much of the staff as could make it with the home owners. From left to right is Mary G. (financial manager), Henry (construction manager), Leslie (village coordinator), Jesse (Pearlington worksite manager), me (Orange Grove manager), Mike (the other Pearlington worksite manager), Heather, and Jane (was the Olive Tree manager, but will be going to Texas soon)




Chris and I were late to dinner, but we made it in time for dessert. Since there were only about 10 people here for dinner, the cooks had made it a little fancier. It was a candle (lamp) lit dinner. The made chicken tetrazzini and salad and cherry pie and some sort of custard pie. They brought it out in courses. As I said, we missed dinner, but desert was delicious! While we were there a couple of the volunteers came back and one of them had two pieces of fried catfish from Catfish Charlie's that they gave to Chris, so we shared those. Very good.