THE NINTH WARD
We got up for a 7:30 AM breakfast. Then Anneli took our groups on a tour of the neighborhoods that we would most closely be associated with for the week. She took us to Victory Church, the church that we would be working with for the week. We then went to the Holly Grove district for a forty-five minute prayer-walk. This neighborhood is historically known as the “rough neighborhood” in New Orleans, with the highest crime, murder, and drug rates in town. New Orleans has, in the past, been a community where 30% practiced the craft of voodoo; 70% reportedly practiced in the Holly Grove district.
After we were done there, our group connected with the Tulsa, OK group that we would be closely working with for most of the week. They were an awesome group of students and leaders from a Nazarene church that had some vehicle problems on their way to the base. They ended up getting to sleep at about 3:00 am that morning and weren’t able to catch up with us until we were heading over to the 9th Ward. The 9th Ward district was the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. We parked our vehicles and walked around speechless for twenty minutes. The devastation was mind boggling. There were foundations without houses, houses on top of cars, a lone baby doll in the street, a pristine church sign next to a barely-standing church, and small handmade crosses on street corners.
The afternoon was full of orientation meetings and building relationships with the locals at camp. That evening, we had our first big service with an emotional re-enactment of the Katrina disaster by Seth Barne’s daughter, Emily. In the night hours we experienced a pretty nasty rain storm; the tent flaps were flying and the national guards were running all over the place. It turned out that there was a sexual perpetrator in an area pretty near to our camp and the military was searching for the predator – helicopters searchlights and all. There were several guards keeping watch with extra security all over our tent area. Thank God for His protection.
I love AIM’s theme verse, Isaiah 58:12: “Those who shall be of you shall build the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.”
After we were done there, our group connected with the Tulsa, OK group that we would be closely working with for most of the week. They were an awesome group of students and leaders from a Nazarene church that had some vehicle problems on their way to the base. They ended up getting to sleep at about 3:00 am that morning and weren’t able to catch up with us until we were heading over to the 9th Ward. The 9th Ward district was the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. We parked our vehicles and walked around speechless for twenty minutes. The devastation was mind boggling. There were foundations without houses, houses on top of cars, a lone baby doll in the street, a pristine church sign next to a barely-standing church, and small handmade crosses on street corners.
The afternoon was full of orientation meetings and building relationships with the locals at camp. That evening, we had our first big service with an emotional re-enactment of the Katrina disaster by Seth Barne’s daughter, Emily. In the night hours we experienced a pretty nasty rain storm; the tent flaps were flying and the national guards were running all over the place. It turned out that there was a sexual perpetrator in an area pretty near to our camp and the military was searching for the predator – helicopters searchlights and all. There were several guards keeping watch with extra security all over our tent area. Thank God for His protection.
I love AIM’s theme verse, Isaiah 58:12: “Those who shall be of you shall build the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.”
posted by Elevate Student Ministries @ 11:13 PM
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