So, to fill you in a little bit on what's been going on... group 3 arrived on Sunday. They are a smaller group that feels more like a family. There are a total of 7 of them, 3 of them are a dad and his two kids, 2 of them are brother and sister, and the other two are not related at all, or to anyone else in the group. But let me just tell you that they are working just as hard as our previous groups of 40 and 20. We are at the stage on floor two where we are demolishing walls and stuff. As I previously explained, we are working at Lindy Boggs Medical Center, and it is being remodeled to house residents of a state run nursing home. The stages for each floor go like this: remove all of the debris and trash and stuff, bag it up and throw it into the dumpster, then we remove the floating ceilings- including ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and cutting down the metal framing, then we start removing the duct work and metal conduit attached to the ceiling, then we pull up the carpet, then remove the wallpaper, then start removing the sheet rock and metal studs. The last two weeks of groups started on the cleaning up stages and removing the carpet and stuff in the ceiling. This week's group has had the pleasure of busting out the sheet rock and studs and framing. They started working yesterday, and put in another full day today, and they are rocking the house by removing walls and walls of stuff. The other cool thing is that we've had the privilege of working with a group of guys from "Joyzee" or Jersey, as us Midwestern folk call it. =) They have been doing such a great job of working together and helping each other out despite the fact that they were kind of thrown together on this floor.
Today was also a great day for me, because it was my turn to lead the "evening program" or our evening worship service. We learned from last night's acapella experience that we needed a little help, so David Crowder helped lead worship, as well as another worship group- we're not too proud to use some "CD worship" like they used to in the olden days... =) Alex (my partner in crime for the week) and I decided to take the first two evening programs to share our stories and talk about our favorite scriptures and how they've helped us. Alex did a great job last night, and I really felt like God spoke through her about her life, and how she views her relationship with God. Today I had the opportunity of sharing a little of my story with the group. I talked about my life through college, my call to ministry, and my searching journey right now. I teared up a little when I talked about the difficulties of my high school career, and some of the constant struggles I have regarding my self-worth. I also shared the "song"- Everybody's Free [To Wear Sunscreen], which if you haven't heard it you need to YouTube it... It's a "song" of spoken words of wisdom from a guy named "Baz Luhrmann". After sharing his words of wisdom I shared Romans 12 with the group. I've always associated Romans 12 with the beginning verses that talk about being transformed, and giving our bodies as living sacrifices as our spiritual act of worship, but if you keep reading, God offers (through Paul) some amazing words of wisdom on how to live a life that glorifies God and in some ways, how to make our lives "easier". I read this scripture with new eyes tonight. My favorite part, that is really resonating with me right now is verse 16b and c: "Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!" I love that. It was a friendly, emphatic reminder that I needed to hear.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Good-Bye
Today I said good-bye to some really great people... some of those good-byes might mean I never see them again, and some of those good-byes are more of see ya laters... The leader from my existing group (which was also the leader from last week's group) had to fly out today, with another leader for a wedding. She has been an amazing woman of God who has been a great mentor and leader in the two short weeks I've known her. We couldn't have asked for a better leader for our first two weeks on the job. She helped correct us when needed, she was super flexible when housing didn't work out as planned, and she encouraged us all along the way. I love how God chooses to put people in our lives just when we need them. Like I said, I may never see her again, but I'm priveleged to have been a part of her life, even if only for a couple of weeks.
My "see ya later" good-byes went to my teammates. They are flying off to Montana, while I kick it here in NOLA for one more week. They get to go off on their own adventure that doesn't include me, and I couldn't be more excited for them. They're gonna ROCK IT IN MONTANA!!! =)
I have the privilege of making a new friend to help lead the incoming group that will arrive sometime on Sunday. The existing group is still here with us for one more day so we're finishing up the week at the Lindy Boggs Hospital I mentioned before. And if my memory serves me right I owe you a story about this building.
The Lindy Boggs Memorial Hospital was a working hospital when Hurricane Katrina hit. The hospital itself encompassed two buildings, and then there was a building of doctor's offices also a part of this hospital. It is located on the bayou so when the flood waters rose, much of the hospital was affected by it. The two buildings that were the actual hospital were tested and found to house aesbestos so naturally, we aren't able to work in those buildings. We are working in the doctor's office building to help basically gut it to the studs so it can be remodeled and renovated to house St. Margaret's nursing home residents. St. Margaret's Nursing Home is a state run facility that serves people who have a net worth of $2500 and are on medicaid. But the unique thing about this facility is that the residents receive such an amazing level of quality care that exceeds most privately run facilities. So the fact that we get to be a part of something like this is absolutely amazing. What's more, is some of our students have had the privelege of going to the current, temporary housing site for St. Margaret's to allow them the opportunity to connect the faces with the work they are doing. It's been a great experience and everyone has met some really extraordinary people with some awesome stories to tell.
My "see ya later" good-byes went to my teammates. They are flying off to Montana, while I kick it here in NOLA for one more week. They get to go off on their own adventure that doesn't include me, and I couldn't be more excited for them. They're gonna ROCK IT IN MONTANA!!! =)
I have the privilege of making a new friend to help lead the incoming group that will arrive sometime on Sunday. The existing group is still here with us for one more day so we're finishing up the week at the Lindy Boggs Hospital I mentioned before. And if my memory serves me right I owe you a story about this building.
The Lindy Boggs Memorial Hospital was a working hospital when Hurricane Katrina hit. The hospital itself encompassed two buildings, and then there was a building of doctor's offices also a part of this hospital. It is located on the bayou so when the flood waters rose, much of the hospital was affected by it. The two buildings that were the actual hospital were tested and found to house aesbestos so naturally, we aren't able to work in those buildings. We are working in the doctor's office building to help basically gut it to the studs so it can be remodeled and renovated to house St. Margaret's nursing home residents. St. Margaret's Nursing Home is a state run facility that serves people who have a net worth of $2500 and are on medicaid. But the unique thing about this facility is that the residents receive such an amazing level of quality care that exceeds most privately run facilities. So the fact that we get to be a part of something like this is absolutely amazing. What's more, is some of our students have had the privelege of going to the current, temporary housing site for St. Margaret's to allow them the opportunity to connect the faces with the work they are doing. It's been a great experience and everyone has met some really extraordinary people with some awesome stories to tell.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
It’s Been Awhile…
For those of you who may or may not have thought that I was dead in a ditch somewhere, or had run off and joined a Creole band, let me reassure you that neither of those things are the case. Life here in NOLA has been super busy and this is about one of the first opportunities I’ve had some time to catch my breath. That being said, there’s so much to fill you in on, so prepare yourself, it’s gonna be a long one…
Last week we had our first group, and they were nothing short of awesome. It was a group of high school students from a church in Atlanta- for a few of them, this was their first mission trip, but for most of them, a summer mission trip was just part of their summer routine. The days typically went like this: get up pre-six o’ clock (in the morning), have a quick breakfast, make our lunches, then depart for the worksites, break for lunch, work a few more hours, pack up and head back to our housing site, clean up, eat dinner, have a little bit of time to chill, then we would finish our night with an evening devotion- led by the group. Each night as a part of their evening devotion they debriefed the day by doing something they called “joy, junk, and Jesus”. This gave everyone an opportunity to talk about their joys of the day, the stuff that wasn’t so joyful, and the ways that they saw Jesus and God at work. It was so cool to hear everyone talk through their days in such an interesting and unique way.
Now that I’ve given you the general overview of last week, let’s get into the nitty, gritty, details of it all.
The group arrived on Sunday evening, and we started our week at a housing site called Camp Hope- it was a great setup, it was an old school that had been abandoned after the storm so they did some renovations and turned it into a housing site for volunteers. They took all of the classrooms on the second floor and turned one side of the hallway into boys’ rooms, and the other side into girls’ rooms. Then on each side of the hallway they created walkways into each of the rooms so they were all connected. We were able to have all the girls stay in one room, and the guys in one room (each on their respective side of the hallway, of course). What was also great about Camp Hope was the fact that they provided all of our meals, so we didn’t need to worry about cooking- all we had to worry about was making sure we arrived to dinner on time. Things were going really well, until Tuesday afternoon when I get a frantic call from the group leader because she had been informed by Camp Hope that they had to move out immediately. Do what now?!!? Longer story a little shorter- Camp Hope had been bought out by BP to house their clean up crew from the oil spill so now we were being displaced. So, we found another place to stay. It was an old Methodist church that had also been renovated into volunteer housing- called Camp Noah. There was already another group staying there, so they had enough rooms to house either the boys or the girls, but not both. They also had a huge warehouse area that had previously been the sanctuary, that was not occupied. So the girls bit the bullet, and took one for the team and slept in the warehouse on cots, while the boys got to live the high life in rooms of about 8, in bunk beds. We moved in Wednesday afternoon, once we had completed our days work. This also meant that we were now responsible for cooking meals, so we had to make a grocery store run on Wednesday while the group was at the worksite. The rest of the week went off without a hitch. The group took a half day on Friday to take in some of the culture of New Orleans, ride a street car, eat beignets, walk around the French Quarter, and then we went to dinner at Acme Oysterhouse, where I enjoyed a sampler platter of many New Orleans’ delicacies, including: jambalaya, gumbo, and red beans and rice. During the course of the week I also consumed a “snowball”- which is basically an awesome snowcone. I had a tootsie roll flavored snowball with condensed milk on top. What I learned from that experience is in order to fake the taste of a tootsie roll you combine grape and chocolate. It sounds gross, but it definitely tasted like a tootsie roll! =)
Last week included a few little projects and one large project. For the little projects we split the groups up and part of the group went to a gentleman’s house to install windows and help him with some renovations and the other part of the group went to an area of NOLA called “Broadmore” in which they helped to clear out some empty lots that had been overrun by weeds, grass, ivy, and trees. The reason we did this is because lots that are overrun will be cleared out by the state, but the owner of the property will be charged $400 for this service, and if they don’t pay (which many of the people can’t- either because they can’t afford it, or because they were displaced after the storm and haven’t returned home) then a lien is put on the property and after so long the state then takes ownership of the property. By cleaning up these lots we are helping to keep the neighborhood look nice, as well as helping these people who might be in need for whatever reason. The larger project we worked on is at a hospital called the Lindy Boggs Memorial Hospital. There is a really cool story that goes behind this hospital, but due to the length of this blog, already, we’ll save it for another time.
I’ll try to update this blog more than once every couple of weeks, but life has been a lot busier and harder than I thought it would be. I’d appreciate your continued prayers throughout the remainder of the summer. I love you all and I miss you lots!
Last week we had our first group, and they were nothing short of awesome. It was a group of high school students from a church in Atlanta- for a few of them, this was their first mission trip, but for most of them, a summer mission trip was just part of their summer routine. The days typically went like this: get up pre-six o’ clock (in the morning), have a quick breakfast, make our lunches, then depart for the worksites, break for lunch, work a few more hours, pack up and head back to our housing site, clean up, eat dinner, have a little bit of time to chill, then we would finish our night with an evening devotion- led by the group. Each night as a part of their evening devotion they debriefed the day by doing something they called “joy, junk, and Jesus”. This gave everyone an opportunity to talk about their joys of the day, the stuff that wasn’t so joyful, and the ways that they saw Jesus and God at work. It was so cool to hear everyone talk through their days in such an interesting and unique way.
Now that I’ve given you the general overview of last week, let’s get into the nitty, gritty, details of it all.
The group arrived on Sunday evening, and we started our week at a housing site called Camp Hope- it was a great setup, it was an old school that had been abandoned after the storm so they did some renovations and turned it into a housing site for volunteers. They took all of the classrooms on the second floor and turned one side of the hallway into boys’ rooms, and the other side into girls’ rooms. Then on each side of the hallway they created walkways into each of the rooms so they were all connected. We were able to have all the girls stay in one room, and the guys in one room (each on their respective side of the hallway, of course). What was also great about Camp Hope was the fact that they provided all of our meals, so we didn’t need to worry about cooking- all we had to worry about was making sure we arrived to dinner on time. Things were going really well, until Tuesday afternoon when I get a frantic call from the group leader because she had been informed by Camp Hope that they had to move out immediately. Do what now?!!? Longer story a little shorter- Camp Hope had been bought out by BP to house their clean up crew from the oil spill so now we were being displaced. So, we found another place to stay. It was an old Methodist church that had also been renovated into volunteer housing- called Camp Noah. There was already another group staying there, so they had enough rooms to house either the boys or the girls, but not both. They also had a huge warehouse area that had previously been the sanctuary, that was not occupied. So the girls bit the bullet, and took one for the team and slept in the warehouse on cots, while the boys got to live the high life in rooms of about 8, in bunk beds. We moved in Wednesday afternoon, once we had completed our days work. This also meant that we were now responsible for cooking meals, so we had to make a grocery store run on Wednesday while the group was at the worksite. The rest of the week went off without a hitch. The group took a half day on Friday to take in some of the culture of New Orleans, ride a street car, eat beignets, walk around the French Quarter, and then we went to dinner at Acme Oysterhouse, where I enjoyed a sampler platter of many New Orleans’ delicacies, including: jambalaya, gumbo, and red beans and rice. During the course of the week I also consumed a “snowball”- which is basically an awesome snowcone. I had a tootsie roll flavored snowball with condensed milk on top. What I learned from that experience is in order to fake the taste of a tootsie roll you combine grape and chocolate. It sounds gross, but it definitely tasted like a tootsie roll! =)
Last week included a few little projects and one large project. For the little projects we split the groups up and part of the group went to a gentleman’s house to install windows and help him with some renovations and the other part of the group went to an area of NOLA called “Broadmore” in which they helped to clear out some empty lots that had been overrun by weeds, grass, ivy, and trees. The reason we did this is because lots that are overrun will be cleared out by the state, but the owner of the property will be charged $400 for this service, and if they don’t pay (which many of the people can’t- either because they can’t afford it, or because they were displaced after the storm and haven’t returned home) then a lien is put on the property and after so long the state then takes ownership of the property. By cleaning up these lots we are helping to keep the neighborhood look nice, as well as helping these people who might be in need for whatever reason. The larger project we worked on is at a hospital called the Lindy Boggs Memorial Hospital. There is a really cool story that goes behind this hospital, but due to the length of this blog, already, we’ll save it for another time.
I’ll try to update this blog more than once every couple of weeks, but life has been a lot busier and harder than I thought it would be. I’d appreciate your continued prayers throughout the remainder of the summer. I love you all and I miss you lots!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
It's Almost Just Begun
Hello, hello, and welcome back to a peek into the life of a cross country traveler. Okay, not exactly, but kind of. Yesterday was an interesting day. We headed back to Slidell to pick up our old buddy "Silver Bullet", when much to our dismay we found out that the brakes are about shot on our dear friend. So, it's almost safe to say that he will be condemned or shipped off to an old truck farm somewhere to spend his last days. Unfortunately for me, I did not get any pictures of it before our departure so I may not be able to share the monstrosity with my friends. After loading up our little Kia with miscellaneous supplies from the bullet- did I mention that EM rented a car, and I'm the one driving around NOLA... eep! Look out drivers and pedestrians... =) Then, we ate lunch and then made our way back to the French Quarter for a little more site seeing before our group arrives later tonight. We were able to consume a "world famous" snowball- mine was chocolate and coconut, and take a ride on the St. Charles streetcar before needing to call it a night. I know it may seem like a lot of fun, what with Vanna White, snowballs, and streetcar rides and all, but don't be fooled, we're working our little tails off. And every little bit of work we do feels like 10 times as much because of the heat and humidity. Indiana's got nothin on Louisiana as far as that goes. Before 10AM the heat and humidity has reached the mid to high 80's and it just keeps on rising until about 4PM when it finally starts to cool down. Fortunately our "roughing it" Camp Hope has air conditioning on the 2nd floor, where are rooms are located, so we aren't smothered by the suffocating humidity.
Today we went to church at Victory Fellowship, which much to our intrigue was a charismatic/pentecostal church. It was so neat to look around and see people my parent's age, and grandparent's age dancing and raising their hands and worshiping God in such a unique way. I'm not saying the way I would worship God on a typical Sunday morning back home is wrong, but there was something so freeing about the way they worshiped. We were singing a song where the words repeated, "set me free", and I realized in that moment, that I'm not free. Or at least I don't feel that way when I worship. I feel stifled and trapped by feelings of fear, and looking around at the people around me, instead of focusing on the reason for my worship. I couldn't help but weep at the sight around me of people who were genuinely worshiping a God who frees them from the worries or cares of other's thoughts and allows them to praise their creator with everything they are. Hallelujah, that I may one day feel that free.
Today we went to church at Victory Fellowship, which much to our intrigue was a charismatic/pentecostal church. It was so neat to look around and see people my parent's age, and grandparent's age dancing and raising their hands and worshiping God in such a unique way. I'm not saying the way I would worship God on a typical Sunday morning back home is wrong, but there was something so freeing about the way they worshiped. We were singing a song where the words repeated, "set me free", and I realized in that moment, that I'm not free. Or at least I don't feel that way when I worship. I feel stifled and trapped by feelings of fear, and looking around at the people around me, instead of focusing on the reason for my worship. I couldn't help but weep at the sight around me of people who were genuinely worshiping a God who frees them from the worries or cares of other's thoughts and allows them to praise their creator with everything they are. Hallelujah, that I may one day feel that free.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Day One
Hello, Friends! I'm back, and on a new adventure... I am currently located in New Orleans, Louisiana, or as the locals call it: "Nawlins". Today began fairly early with breakfast then we jetted off to find the location of the infamous "Silver Bullet". This "vehicle" is a monstrous beast of a truck that is two years older than I am, and just straight ridiculous (pictures to follow). In fact- I could hear the "dueling banjos" playing as we approached this monstrosity. We had every intention of driving it from Slidell, LA, back to Camp Hope- which is where I'm calling home with my two partners in crime. We, with crossed fingers and many a silent prayer, attempted to start the Bullet (which has been sitting in a grassy lot of a storage facility for about 9 months), and much to our surprise and excitement, it started!!!! It wasn't until we realized the plates expired in May of 2009 that our trek back to NOLA would have to be postponed.
From this excursion we made our way back to Camp Hope to meet with the "powers that be" regarding our housing situation for Group 1, which is set to arrive on Sunday. Following this meeting, we went to another with Operation Nehemiah, which is the organization that we'll be working with for our construction projects during our duration in NOLA. Many a laugh and story was shared with the gentlemen who are in charge of helping us organize the work projects for our groups. Remind me, and I'll tell you some of them later.
Once we completed the work portion of our day we decided to see some of the sites. I found myself at Café Du Monde having beignets- which are French doughnuts. After consuming two of these delicacies, I am able to die happy and we decided to walk around the French Quarter to work off our treasures from heaven... =) Before concluding our time in the French Quarter we were walking along the boardwalk when all of a sudden, we saw a "hollywood" truck and cameras and several people with official looking lanyards blocking off a gazebo portion of the boardwalk. Upon further investigation we discover they are shooting a commercial for Wheel of Fortune and Miss Vanna White herself is on location for this. So, she does the commercial, and is walking away when my NOLA group and I ask her if we can take our picture with her. And we did. It was a good day. =)
From this excursion we made our way back to Camp Hope to meet with the "powers that be" regarding our housing situation for Group 1, which is set to arrive on Sunday. Following this meeting, we went to another with Operation Nehemiah, which is the organization that we'll be working with for our construction projects during our duration in NOLA. Many a laugh and story was shared with the gentlemen who are in charge of helping us organize the work projects for our groups. Remind me, and I'll tell you some of them later.
Once we completed the work portion of our day we decided to see some of the sites. I found myself at Café Du Monde having beignets- which are French doughnuts. After consuming two of these delicacies, I am able to die happy and we decided to walk around the French Quarter to work off our treasures from heaven... =) Before concluding our time in the French Quarter we were walking along the boardwalk when all of a sudden, we saw a "hollywood" truck and cameras and several people with official looking lanyards blocking off a gazebo portion of the boardwalk. Upon further investigation we discover they are shooting a commercial for Wheel of Fortune and Miss Vanna White herself is on location for this. So, she does the commercial, and is walking away when my NOLA group and I ask her if we can take our picture with her. And we did. It was a good day. =)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
