New Orleans: August 5-12

I’m so excited to be able to post blogs on here now! I think for my first post I will tell about the mission trip to New Orleans I just returned from, so here goes…

Almost a year ago Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. In New Orleans, the levies broke which led to devastating flooding throughout the city. Homes, buildings, stores, street lights and signs, along with trees, bushes, and everything else that came in contact with the storm’s fury still show signs of being damaged by hurricane Katrina. It was astonishing to see what work was still left to do after a year had passed.

Driving through the ninth ward, one of the hardest hit places in New Orleans by the flood waters, our team saw homes caved in, street lights not functioning, stores vacant, and parking lots filled with FEMA trailers where people are still living. Our team’s focus during the day was to gut homes. I heard many stories on the news of how people lost everything…but it never really hit me how much “everything” meant until I was picking it up piece by piece. Furniture, clothes, toiletry items, towels, photos, televisions, shoes, birthday cards, the latest purchases from Wal-mart, ceiling fans, tile, carpet, and sheet rock. After gutting everything out of the home, the studs of the house would be inspected. If the studs had too much water damage, the entire framework of the person’s home would be lost; the house would have to be demolished. Our group was able to finish two and a half partly gutted homes; it was a lot of hard and humbling work, but well worth it when doing it in the name of the Lord!

In the evenings, our team would return to the church we were staying at to get cleaned up. After eating dinner we filled our backpacks with Ziplock bags that were stuffed with toothbrushes, toothpaste, socks, deodorant, and other toiletry items. We headed out to Jackson Square, which is in the French Quarter, and passed these bags out to the homeless who were sitting out on the park benches. The time in the evening was amazing, we had the privilege of talking with the homeless for hours every night; the relationships built during this time were precious and made it very difficult to say goodbye on our final night out.

Homeless people may often be viewed as the lazy or crazy people living on the streets, however, our team met several who were working hard to get off the street. One man called “Shorty” said he knew he did not need to be on the streets anymore. Shorty had just gotten a job and hopes to find an apartment to move into soon. The homeless people we met were all precious, and I have too many stories to share right now about people like Momma Rose, DeAngelo, Carl, David, Stephen, Popi, Barbados, and many others.

This week in New Orleans was very challenging, and our group witnessed the Lord move in peoples’ lives and our own lives in some mighty ways. For now I’ll just leave you with this recap…but rest assured I will follow up with more specific stories and lessons from the trip in the future! :)