The San Francisco crew arrived in Boston Sunday morning, July 8, just as the New Orleans crew was meeting at the church garage to begin their weeklong mission experience. This week we have a team of 18 teens and 7 adults working in New Orleans to help rebuild the city. The group arrived safely and on-time yesterday afternoon at the New Orleans airport. After renting vehicles we headed over to Canal Street Presbyterian Church, which will be our home for the week.
The church has window air-conditioners in our sleeping rooms, so sleep is bearable...but not as cool as some would like. We each have a blow-up twin sized mattress on which to sleep and there are nice, new shower facilities available to our group.
Sunday night we had pizza for supper, then had an opportunity to worship and pray together before going to bed at 11:00 p.m. Our devotion theme for the day was "I am a servant first and last" and our scripture for the day was 1 Timothy 1:12-17. We spent most of our debrief time talking about what it means to be a servant first and last.
Monday morning we were up for breakfast at 7:00 a.m. After devotions we met with the Canal Street interns - college students who will be guiding us this week, then we headed out to our work site. Today we are all together at Sarah T. Reed High School in New Orleans East painting classrooms. This school did open last year with minimal clean up and housed a mixture of students from Pre-K up through high school. This coming school year it will go back to being a high school. We are here with about 100 other volunteers putting a fresh coat of paint on everything to make the building ready for the fall.
We are working with a guy named Troy who is coordinating all the volunteers who are working to get the schools ready for the fall. His goal is to open 25 existing schools after cleaning them up and renovating them this summer. When I talked with him, he talked about the students who have been away from the city for two years going to other schools in other communities who had the opportunity to experience things such as nice facilities, teachers who truly love their students, and computers in every classroom. When the students come back to their new Orleans schools, not only are they trashed from 2 years of neglect and looting, but they were never as nice as what the kids experienced in their temporary homes for the past 2 years. There is now a sense of people wanting better from their schoools than what they had before. As Troy said, the kids are stuck because no one is asking them where they want to live...they just have to follow their parents (typically just a mother) back to something that isn't as nice as where they've been for the past 2 years.
As we drove to the school this morning it was amazing to see vast numbers of homes, apartments and businesses still closed and boarded up. According to Troy, approximately 40% of the population has moved back and he doesn't anticipate the remaining 60% will return. The painted "X" markings are still on the front of homes (to show the number of casualties and other info from when the national guard was going door-to-door) and in some places you can see the water lines from the blooding. Golf courses are abandoned and affluent neighborhoods are as empty as other neighborhoods.
Today is Nate Pomeroy's birthday! We are celebrating with cake tonight at supper. Happy Birthday, Nate!
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Hi Suzan! Thank you for sharing how you are all serving the Lord in New Orleans. It is interesting to hear about not only the physical effects of Hurricane Katrina - but also the emotional and spiritual ... and how they are longlasting. I'll continue to pray that the Holy Spirit fill you all to overflowing as you continue to serve Him. I am looking forward to hearing about the God moments the kids share from the week's experience. Blessings, Terri Lodge
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