LAST DAY AT "GOOD NEWS"

Friday was our last full day at the camp. We went to Victory Church to get our assignments. They had us join the girl’s team in handing out flyers. Steve and I split off into a mini-group of our own to walk the streets and staple posters. We walked for about an hour and a half doing just that. Then we had to go fill up our van with gas and headed for camp for our daily choice of peanut-butter-and-jelly or ham-and-cheese sandwiches (those varieties never tasted as good as they did this week). Even after I got back from Louisiana, I started having cravings for PB-and-J.

That reminds me of another daily occurrence… the once-a-day shower that we were so graciously offered. It was like a little slice of heaven each day! The temperatures were so consistently hot and the humidity so consistently high that there was hardly ever a time that we weren’t all just covered in sweat. Even right after one stepped out of the showers, no matter what time of day, one would start a new layer of sweat just minutes after drying off. But, as I overhead many say this week, “At least it’s a clean layer of sweat!” True ‘dat.

Yet another daily occurrence was frequent small group prayer, which I really liked. We sought God’s direction (and protection) before almost any endeavor.

In the afternoon, we got together for our team’s first ATL (“Ask the Lord”). This exercise had us praying, seeking direction, and then going out and doing whatever we felt we were being led to do. Part of our team ended up painting fence at the New Orlean’s park, a couple of the girls went back to some people they met while they were “flyering”, and Deanna, Steve, Herb, and I did some “prayer-driving” (smile) in the French Quarter district. It was really intense and focused.

Debriefing time, which (oh yeah) was another daily occurrence, was always a really cool experience, too. Everybody got together at the end of every work day and shared their stories.

Our Tulsa friends were planning a party for the Good News camp staff that evening. We were invited but didn’t stay for long as we were planning on getting up very early the next morning to hit the road. We said our good-byes to everyone and headed for the sleeping quarters one last time.

NO COMPROMISE

On Thursday, we basically woke up and went to go finish our job over at Victory Church, moving furniture and doing inventory. Because my toe was throbbing so bad and I was limping, Molly assigned me to doing inventory for most of the day. I went around with a legal pad writing down and categorizing everything that we were organizing into different areas of the tents. We had a bedroom furniture section, a bed and bedding section, a living room section, an appliance section, a small-prize give-away section, a toilet-paper and hand-towel section, a kitchen section, a bathroom section, and several other smaller areas. Needless to say, I had written down a whole lot of items within each of those categories by the end of the day.

Victoria and Rachel, our Victory Church correspondents, came and checked our work and gave us the “thumbs up”. We finished at 2:30 pm, an hour and a half ahead of schedule. Steve, Sara, and I decided that it would be fun to drive over to the other side of the Mississippi with our unexpected free time. We saw lots of huge boats, barges, a ferry, a railroad drawbridge, and a train crossing the just-lowered drawbridge.

That evening we had a special run over to a community worship service with several other area missions groups – about 500 or more in all. The amazing, lively worship time, the speaker’s message, and the air conditioning was all just what we needed! I will not soon forget the speaker’s message that evening on not compromising in what we’ve been called out to do. Afterwards, we took our team and treated them to desserts at Sonics, a treat that we don’t see much of farther north.

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.

AMAZING PEOPLE

Today was our first work day. Breakfast was at 6:30 pm (as it was for the rest of the week). Sharkey, the camp coordinator, asked me to put together a team to lead worship. I found one other singer and led a short fifteen-minute set. It was such a fun thing for me and something that I definitely wasn’t expecting.

That morning, Sharkey assigned my team to unload several semi-trailers worth of donated camp items. I also helped clean up and rearrange the Good News Store tent. The store is available for locals needing grocery, clothing, cooking, toy items, and more. Unfortunately, one of the guys that was working with me in the store that morning ran over my big toe with a loaded palette jack. The same toe that I lost a toenail with just a couple years ago (in a scary “ride cymbal” accident).

Herb and Seth tried to take me to an emergency medical clinic, but they didn’t want to work with my health insurance. The alternative was a guy named Buddy Shipp, founder of the non-profit agency American Samaritan. This guy was a real influence on me this week. For starters, he heated up a paper clip with his cigarette lighter and poked through my toenail to release the pressure that was already building up beneath my nail. There was an audience of about fifteen to twenty onlookers cheering me on through the whole process. I was “hugging” a paper towel roll when the paper clip poked through. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, to say the least, but it did an incredible job of making the pain go away. And I was also able to work with the rest of them for the rest of the week; that was what I was most concerned about. I didn’t want to miss out.

Buddy filmed the whole procedure but I didn’t get a hold of a copy before I left. I’m gonna try and contact him soon and see if there is a way that I can get it.

Buddy also influenced me with his stories about sharing the gospel with beef brisket, about his encounters in urban ministry, and with his young mentor-friend, Brian. He is quite an amazing person.

Back to Sharkey, the Good News Camp manager… Herb and I got to hang out with him a little on this evening. He is quite the talker. It turns out that he has been working at the camp since just weeks after Katrina hit. He seemed pretty uncomfortable with “the church”, like he had some bad experiences in the past. He kept on saying things like, “I’m not a preacher” and then commenced to “preach”. He was just one of many other unforgettable people that I would meet on this trip. He told us that he wanted to show us his biggest problem; then he took off his sandals and showed us his rather contrasting “sandal lines”.

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.”

ARRIVAL @ THE GOOD NEWS CAMP

On Sunday morning, we lounged around a bit as we knew it would be our last time in an air conditioned environment for a while. Steve offered to wash the guys’ clothes and we all graciously accepted his offer (thanks again, Steve)! We hit the road, made a few stops for food and last minute supplies along the way, and finally got to New Orleans at about 3:00 pm that afternoon. It was a surreal experience driving into town as there were about twenty four miles of driving on highways suspended over marshy waters before you reach the city limits. We had until 5:00 pm for registration, so we drove around a bit in the French Quarter and a few other areas. We thought that the devastation was bad in the neighborhoods that we were touring. Little did we know that there was much more that we would see throughout the week. It was like a never-ending bad dream.

We arrived at the Good News Camp, our home and mission base for week, and checked in with our AIM leader, Anneli. Anneli was an incredibly good fit for our team; she was a very humble, but very passionate leader. She told us that she felt called to the mission field since she was about eight-years-old and that this was her first big missions endeavor. She will continue to serve at the Good News Camp through August. We hope to get in touch with Anneli and keep up-to-date with her travels.

That evening seemed to go pretty fast. Anneli gave us a tour of the camp, we sang a few songs with our other project teams (from Connecticut, Oklahoma, California, New York, and more), settled in our sleeping quarters, and went to Wal-mart to purchase some box fans and extension cables (smile). We spent over an hour in the line because they were so understaffed. Our “home” was a humongous “circus / missionary tent” and we slept on cots with a thin mattress and a few sheets. I splurged a bit and bought myself a small personal fan; it was well worth it!

SOME FUN STOPS

Today was another day of driving (all day). There have been lots of accidents along the way (other people -- not us) slowing the progress. We ended up in Saint Louis, MO around lunch time. We stopped at a mall that Deanna and I had been to several times before with intentions of visiting the food court that had previously had a large selection of restaurants and food. This time, when we got there, the "mall" was hardly a mall anymore. None of the stores were open and only one food place was still operating. Thankfully, it was my favorite place, serving teriyaki chicken. Yay! Otherwise, it was like a ghost-town up there. We found out that the mall was being demolished and being replaced by condos and a multi-level parking garage. Go figure.

After lunch we went over and toured the Gateway Arch museum and visitor’s center. We were probably there hanging out for about an hour.

We kept on driving all day and decided to make our dinner stop in Memphis, TN. We ended up eating at a pizzeria in the mall there – not bad. Afterwards, we took a stroll down Beale Street. There was a security checkpoint that we had to get through, but nobody had their ID except me. I showed them mine and told them we were a “church group”. They let it slide and let us through. What an amazing place! The streets were packed with people and there was live jazz and blues music everywhere you turned. A few of the students shopped in the Hard Rock Café and we turned around and drove the rest of the way to spend the night at our hotel in Clinton, MS.

A DAY @ IHOP

We spent the whole day Friday at the International House of Prayer (IHOP). IHOP is a 24-hour non-stop intercessory prayer and worship center. You can read the whole story here. We encouraged the team to start journaling their trip experience and start reading through the provided book “The Art of Listening Prayer” by Adventures in Missions (AIM) founder, Seth Barnes. AIM is the missions agency that we are going to be working with in New Orleans. It is the first time that we have hooked up with them. So far, in our training and our correspondence with our AIM contacts, Melisa and Anelli (pronounced “Anna-lee”), the experience has been a good one.

Anyhow, I spent most of Friday at IHOP, soaking in the amazing worship and journaling. Really, there are no words to describe the IHOP experience. The atmosphere is quite amazing and it was the perfect place for all of us to prepare for the trip ahead.

A few notes from my journal (from Psalm 132):

“I will not sleep until I find MY PLACE for You… I vow to be unashamed… I am called to be uncomfortable… here I am… there will be no rest for me until I become the place for You to dwell…”

One pretty amazing experience was when the worship leader started singing out the following:

“I give My honor to you and the people that are with you… I give My presence… My nearness… I am pleased by the way that you have labored…”

We finished the day together with a small group time discussing what had happened that day and sharing what our personal expectations were for the trip. You can watch the video of this conversation here.

MISSION: LOUISIANA DEPARTURE

Thanks for stopping by my Mission: Louisiana trip blog. There were ten of us along for the trip; four adults (Herb, Steve, Melissa, and Amy), four teenagers (Seth, Alecia, Faith, and Sara), and Deanna and myself. I didn’t really take time to journal for the travel days (there were four days alone of just “drive-time”). It sounds a bit weird, but it was really a great time. I really enjoyed getting to know the guys (we were split up male and female in our two Avis rental vans).

Steve is like having along a personal “walking-encyclopedia”; the information and facts never stopped! Herb added a special element of fun (and wisdom) to the trip, too. Seth was our “in-van” entertainment. We rocked out to David Crowder and friends, made light of Michael Jordan’s DVD (50+ hours of footage – we didn’t watch it all), and had hours of great personal conversation. I feel like we developed some pretty strong relationships just on the drive down.