New Orleans...or should I say Nawlins?

This past week I had the privilege to go on a missions trip with my church to New Orleans. See, even though Hurricane Katrina hit three years ago, the city is still in really bad shape. We stayed at the Desire Street Ministries campus with Crossroads Missions and worked together with CM to help put the finishing touches on four houses they had built. Inside the gym they had painted a line all around the room to represent the water level that covered New Orleans. This line was about 12-15 feet high up. Can you imagine a city being under 12-15 feet of water?
We went to where the levy broke and saw the neighborhoods that once were. Except for those who chose to rebuild, all you saw were plots of land where houses once stood. You could tell a house was there because you saw the foundation and sometimes a driveway. Some plots of land had piles of rubble. And you could tell that the houses in this neighborhood were packed close together just like the neighborhood we were working in all week. And yet it was all swept away by the water the levy could no longer hold.
One day when we were heading back from our work site we took a wrong turn and in finding our way back to where we should be we drove next to an overpass and saw tents underneath the bridge. And I don't mean the large family size tents. I mean the small, one to two person tents that you buy because they're really cheap. These people had everything they own stuffed in these little tents, and most of them were sitting outside their tents. I'd say there were a minimum of 50 tents, each with one to two or more people living out of them.
One of our students came up with the idea to bring cold water to them during the heat of the day, so on Wednesday, we bought 150 water bottles and ice and walked around what we called "Tent City" in groups of 4-5 people handing out water bottles. Most of the people we saw under the bridge were African American. I saw one Caucasian couple sitting outside their tent. The husband looked on as his wife, who was sitting next to him, had her head in her hands. I could only imagine what she was thinking. Is this what my life's come to? Is this it? Are we ever going to get out of this? How did we go from having a house to living in a tent under a bridge? I could sense her despair, and my heart broke for her.
In the houses that we helped finish up, we did all sorts of things from trim, to molding, to installing kitchen cabinets, to wiring electricity, etc.... I, myself, became an expert caulker. For those of you who don't know, caulk is what you use to fill in cracks in doorways, window frames, trim, bathtubs, etc. And caulking was the one job no one wanted to do this week. Whenever I asked what they needed done, a representative from CM would say, "Well, we need some people to do more caulking...." So, except for one or two rare occasions where I got to paint or assist in cutting trim, I caulked ALL WEEK LONG! So much so that I dreamt about it at least two nights in a row!
At first I was a bit frustrated about it because I wanted something else to do, but then I realized that it was probably one of the most important jobs because there was so much of it and the workers at CM were under a time crunch. So, instead of getting fed up with it, I decided to do my job with excellence because I realized it was so important. On the last day, one of the guys from another church told me that I had inspired him to work harder because I just kept on trucking to get the work done. It made me feel really good to hear him say that.
This week was exhausting, but it was well worth the trip! The heat, the humidity, the zero ventilation in our dorm rooms....seriously, it was all worth it. I even found myself wishing that I could stay for a few days longer, but I knew that I had to get back. Hopefully I'll be back soon.
I almost forgot to tell you, on Wednesday evening we went to the French Quarter for a night on the town, and it was a lot of fun! We went to a restaurant that had a road on either side of it, and I had jambalaya for the first time. It was absolutely delicious! And as we were leaving a live jazz band was playing. It was sweet! Then we walked around the streets a little bit and went down Bourbon, the good part, not the riske part...and then we made our way to the original French Quarter, which was by the water, and we saw a church group of junior high and high school students who were doing a stomp, dance, rhythm, and singing routine. We came in on the last two minutes of it, so we begged them to do a number for us, and they ended up doing two songs for us. It was great! I didn't buy any souvenirs, but I have a lot of great pictures and a lot of great memories! If you get the chance to go to New Orleans to help with relief work, take it!