Reflections on New Orleans

It has been almost 5 years since hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans...and there is still a lot of work to be done here. It has been an unusual experience to drive through neighborhoods with abandoned and condemned homes standing right next to beautiful, large homes. It is amazing to observe this throughout parts of the city. So many people never returned to their homes, or never had the money to rebuild their homes. We met a woman last week with a Crisis Response team working on her home. She and her husband have been living in a 14 x 22 FEMA trailer for almost five years. She told us she has been going stir crazy and was just waiting for the team to get the plumbing and electric set up in her home so she could move back in. Can you imagine living in a trailer on the front lawn of your actual home for five years waiting for your home to be safe enough to live in? I can't imagine the joy that family will experience when they are able to sleep in their own bedroom again.

On Saturday we drove down to the 9th ward to witness the remaining devastation. The 9th ward is a section of the city hit the hardest by Katrina. The neighborhoods are extremely overgrown and most homes are boarded up and abandoned. It is desolate and yet some people have rebuilt their homes.

The staircase is detatched from the rest of the house

A portion of the neighborhood has brand new homes that were funded by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Seeing these beautiful, unique homes standing in the midst of such devastation is unreal.

We are grateful to be experiencing this in New Orleans. It is easy to forget that this happened, but once you are here you are quickly reminded. These photos are a very small taste of what we have seen this past week. We have met wonderful people who are working hard to help others and we have had plenty of opportunities to meet people in great need and pray with them.

Please keep praying for us. Our days are busy and we are working hard...so we need energy.

April Newsletter

Our April newsletter is ready for you to read (if you haven't already). We are still going strong in New Orleans this week and had a great weekend seeing the city. We will post more pictures soon. But, until then, please click here to read our letter.

Week One in New Orleans

We arrived in New Orleans last Saturday evening and just finished our first week working with a Crisis Response Team. It has been a great week so far. Our days have been full and we have slept hard each night. We have met many new people during this week as well.

Sam was the site supervisor for a team painting a house called the "Yellow House". The Yellow House is where the teams stay during their time in New Orleans and it was in need of a paint job. We both spent the week working with this team and we will do the same thing next week with a new team (we didn't quite get the job done).

We painted and painted during the day and in the afternoon we either took part in an activity with local kids living in the projects or led prayer walks in a neighborhood. The other teams here this week were spread out all over the city at various houses doing different projects. We worked with a great group of people from a church in Pennsylvania who worked hard painting and connecting with people in the community.

Tomorrow we get a day off and are planning to head down to the French Quarter with Aaron and Michelle before we jump into another work week. We'll write more about what we have seen and experienced later on this week.