N.E. in New Orleans - January 2006

Check out these amazing pictures!

Read about Tonya's experience.

Read about the Havens' experience. 

Read about Jarrod's experience. 

Check out Andrea's blog. 

Get a feel for what took place in, through, and around us by reading Psalm 107.

Read students' responses on how this trip impacted their personal ministry. 

While in New Orleans, we did many things during our week-long trip. Half the time was spent at people's homes: moving furniture out, cleaning, and gutting (i.e. ripping up the baseboards and carpets, tearing down the dry wall). These homes were in 6 feet of water for weeks, so they're basically uninhabitable. The other half of the time was spent at the camp site (big tents in the parking lot of a stadium in City Park). While at the camp site, we'd help cook lunch/dinner for 300-600 people (we'd eat with them too!). We also helped run the distribution store, where there were clothes, canned foods, dry goods, and toiletries. All of this (the food, the store, the service) was free of charge.

Additionally, every night we visited a half-way house in downtown for drug addicts. We also spent an afternoon at the "projects", playing and hanging out with the dozens of children (4-16 years old)--who were starving for attention, to say the least--as they arrived home from school.

The other volunteers came from all over the country. There are a few full-time volunteers, but most of the volunteers are like us--young people wanting to help out in any way we can. We met students from Illinois, Wisconsin, Okalahoma, Nevada, and Florida, just to name a few.

Although this brief summary covers most of what we "did", there's so much more that took place, which even the pictures can't fully describe. Everyday we heard new stories of people from all walks of life: people who just got out of prison, who just got off drugs (or were trying to), people with no homes, no work, no hope, people who lost their houses, their family, their children. There's so much more I could say, not to mention what our other team members could say, but suffice it to say that as much we came to serve and minister to other people, we were served and ministered to by those very people.