MOVING FURNITURE AND DONATIONS
At our morning leadership meeting with Anneli, she told us that there were about 120,000 houses that needed to be gutted in New Orleans after the hurricane. AIM and other Christian organizations have been responsible for gutting about 58,000 of those. Our group didn’t get assigned to gutting during our stay in New Orleans, but several of the teams with us did. It was so awesome seeing the church “being the church” to so many people all week long. If ever there was a time that I saw the gospel being relevant to people, it was this week.
Our morning assignment was with Victory Church. My work team for the day was a five-member team from the Tulsa church: Molly (one of the Tulsa adult leaders), Austin, John, Kristen, and Ashley. They assigned us to two circus-tents which were full of donations that needed to sorted and inventoried. Basically, there was stuff piled to the ceiling (lots of furniture, boxes, appliances, etc.) and they wanted us to make it look as much like Wal-mart as we could. The goods were going to be used as give-aways at a big community-wide outreach that Victory Church was helping with on July 4th (the same event that our girls were handing out flyers for most of the work-week). It was definitely a HUGE job!
By the end of the day, we basically had all of the furniture and appliances in place, but a lot of boxes left to unpack. Nothing had been inventoried yet either. We were surprised at the amount that we got done, though, and were satisfied with what we had accomplished. We were asked to come and finish the task the next day, which is exactly what all of us wanted to do. It was hard, heavy, and very sweaty work moving around all of that furniture and other heavy items, but it did feel a bit like old times when I worked at the now non-existent furniture store in Pierre. I felt very much “in my element”.
While we were coming back from lunch break, I ran into a guy that has been in New Orleans trying to help out in the relief efforts. He had stopped by in his van, which he said he was living out of, to use one of the church’s porta-potties. He was limping rather badly, so I stopped and asked him if he needed any help. He said no. He then told me that he had just “all of a sudden” lost the use of a whole side of his body (an arm and a leg included) and he had just left the hospital after taking some tests to find out what may be the cause. I offered to pray with him before he left and so we did. He thought his problem might stem from his drinking contaminated water.
When we got back to camp and I took off my shoes, my sock was blood-red from my toe injury. They tell me that is a good thing because it is releasing tension and cleaning out the wound as it flushes out. Karen, a nurse from the Connecticut group, helped me clean it and dress it for the next day’s work.
Our morning assignment was with Victory Church. My work team for the day was a five-member team from the Tulsa church: Molly (one of the Tulsa adult leaders), Austin, John, Kristen, and Ashley. They assigned us to two circus-tents which were full of donations that needed to sorted and inventoried. Basically, there was stuff piled to the ceiling (lots of furniture, boxes, appliances, etc.) and they wanted us to make it look as much like Wal-mart as we could. The goods were going to be used as give-aways at a big community-wide outreach that Victory Church was helping with on July 4th (the same event that our girls were handing out flyers for most of the work-week). It was definitely a HUGE job!
By the end of the day, we basically had all of the furniture and appliances in place, but a lot of boxes left to unpack. Nothing had been inventoried yet either. We were surprised at the amount that we got done, though, and were satisfied with what we had accomplished. We were asked to come and finish the task the next day, which is exactly what all of us wanted to do. It was hard, heavy, and very sweaty work moving around all of that furniture and other heavy items, but it did feel a bit like old times when I worked at the now non-existent furniture store in Pierre. I felt very much “in my element”.
While we were coming back from lunch break, I ran into a guy that has been in New Orleans trying to help out in the relief efforts. He had stopped by in his van, which he said he was living out of, to use one of the church’s porta-potties. He was limping rather badly, so I stopped and asked him if he needed any help. He said no. He then told me that he had just “all of a sudden” lost the use of a whole side of his body (an arm and a leg included) and he had just left the hospital after taking some tests to find out what may be the cause. I offered to pray with him before he left and so we did. He thought his problem might stem from his drinking contaminated water.
When we got back to camp and I took off my shoes, my sock was blood-red from my toe injury. They tell me that is a good thing because it is releasing tension and cleaning out the wound as it flushes out. Karen, a nurse from the Connecticut group, helped me clean it and dress it for the next day’s work.
posted by Elevate Student Ministries @ 11:03 PM
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