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.