A new posting at last!

Several of you have emailed us to say, we've been checking your blog but there hasn't been anything new for a while. And many have perceptively said, you must be busy. And we sure have.

We spent a week at home in early February, attending some CRWRC meetings, and fitting in as much social time with family and friends as we could. What a great week! We even caught a couple of Calvin basketball games.

When we got back to Columbia, MS (thankfully much, much warmer than Michigan), our work shifted from the construction team to managing and working on a case management team. There were 5 other team members--including our friends Morris and Alice Greidanus who volunteered to come down on less than a week's notice.

This was a pioneering effort for CRWRC, so we--and the local organization--were guinea pigs. When we've worked on Needs Assessment teams, the work is wonderfully organized and directed. The Case Management didn't have much precedent though, so there was a lot of fumbling around by the Blauws before we felt like we were operating smoothly. But we had a great team who were supportive and flexible and who worked really hard, and we sure learned a lot. So all-in-all a good experience. Some of the things our team did were to set up a filing and tracking system for all the cases; used the Needs Assessment Database to identify elderly or disabled clients who had priority needs; and visited about 65 clients and completed the documentation needed to present them to the Long-Term Recovery Org. for reconstruction help (ranging from almost total rebuilds to new roofs or handicapped-access ramps).

We had planned to stay in Columbia for another week, but there are some meetings in Florida that are going to be helpful for us as we try to learn what it means to be regional managers. We'll be meeting with recovery groups for the area where the tornadoes went through a few weeks ago. We'll be able to see how to start helping a community with recovery starting much sooner than we've involved before, so more new things to learn. But the pace this week will be much slower and we expect to find some time for birding and biking and beaching.