New Orleans - Thursday, July 12

Our devotion theme for the day was “I will sweat. I will toil. I will care.” and our scripture for today was 1 John 3:16-20.

Today we all went to City Park together to work on cleaning up Popp’s Fountain and the area around it. City Park is twice the size of Central Park in New York City. Before Katrina there were 24 park employees, now there are 5. The park is pretty much grown over and neglected except for a few areas. Our goal was to clean up the area around Popp's Fountain and get it filled with water and running. We weeded, swept, mowed, weed whacked and painted. The highlight of the day was when the fountain was turned on for the 1st time since Katrina at the end of the day and it actually worked! (They had tried to turn it on once since Katrina, but it was clogged up.) Partway through our day a group (Mike P, Laura, Lauren L, Andrew, Nate P) went with Natalie to a different site in the park to clean up around a playground area. They weeded, weed whacked and took out a bamboo tree that was blocking a walkway. The rest of the group finished their day at the same house some had been at yesterday and finished taking out the ceiling tiles and grid throughout the upstairs. Nate C and Debbie stayed back with Carol (instead of doing the ceiling tile thing) and helped make the dough for tomorrow morning’s cinnamon buns.

It was hot today, but bearable. It was cloudy in the afternoon and by the evening we had a thunderstorm. Everyone was filthy dirty (especially the ceiling group) by the time they hit the showers late this afternoon.

Our evening debrief went really well tonight. A number of students were able to share God moments from the past few days. An early week disappointment for many of the team was that we were not building homes for people...as we had expected to do. Instead, we are rebuilding New Orleans by painting in a school and cleaning up a park, helping individuals move on with their lives by doing demolition work both inside and out, and helping to rebuild the church by promoting an upcoming dance camp for kids. We are all beginning to see that rebuilding in New Orleans isn't just about building houses. God's spirit has worked through each one of us to help us see the significance of what we are doing. We are humbled by God transforming the desires of our hearts to be more in line with what He has called us to do this week.

Our evening ended with what I will loosely refer to as a "Talent Show". There wasn't a lot of talent, but there were a lot of laughs! A highlight of the evening was Lauren S, Sarah A, Debbie and Lauren L singing a "paint chip song" they had made up on Monday while they were scraping paint at the school. Another highlight was Sarah A and Dave...kind of hard to describe their act, but the basic idea is that Sarah had on a large green sweatshirt upside down with her legs through the arm holes, her hands behind her back in the sweatshirt and her head in the hood. She hopped around on stage in somewhat of a squatting position as Dave sang "Five Green and Speckled Frogs." Definitely one of those things you had to see to appreciate!