Katrina Mission Adult Team Day 5 with photos
To all our faithful readers, we send our love, and our gratitude for your prayers which have strengthened us through our journey, and it has been quite a journey. While the weather was quite cool in the morning, it warmed up, and we were able to eat our lunch outside in the sunshine, so I have included some photos of cleaning up before lunch, and eating our lunch.
Yesterday’s work was difficult, but we met the challenges joyfully, and finished early enough to shower before going to our host church for supper with those of their congregation who chose to come.
Here are some of our workers doing what God has set them to doing.
Patrick and I had to go to the Recovery Office in New Orleans, and as he was driving I quickly shot a few photos of the area. Please remember as you look at these pictures that this is 2 ½ years after the hurricane!
As we were preparing to leave, a car drove up to the church, and two men walked in to look around. One had a sister who had stayed here while working for Habitat for Humanity, and as he was in town for a conference and she had persuaded him to look around, he came to see where she stayed. He commented that he thought that it wasn’t as bad as he had been led to believe, and we were stunned by his reaction. I realized, however, that at a glance, along the main streets, it looks OK until you really look, and you realize that all those storefronts are empty, even the WalMarts are closed although there are two Dollar Generals and one Family Dollar within three miles of where we are. There are also lots of apartment buildings with big signs “For Rent”, but that is commercial money. The real story is behind the scenes, where the single family homes are, and you can see that only if you drive around on the back streets. At any rate, while there, they took a group shot of us which came out pretty well, so here we are!
When we arrived at the church for dinner, we clearly outnumbered the members of the congregation who were there, though at the end it was about even. The lasagna was superb, but the stories we heard broke our hearts. We are frank in admitting that we cannot conceive of what it must have been like to walk in these people’s shoes. One family of three generations, had three homes destroyed as well as two cars, and when they were finally allowed to return (their home was one filled with hazardous waste) it was to be allowed in their homes only in hazmat gear, to deal with 18 inches of mud, debris, and oil without running water, electricity, or toilets. They were able to work on their home only on weekends, and had their daughter’s home and the wife’s mother’s home to deal with as well. All they were able to salvage was their china, everything else was destroyed.
Last year I showed you photos of a FEMA trailer designed to sleep 8 people. To show you how ignorant we are of what it was like for these people, I asked one person where they kept their things, since there was so little storage in those trailers. She looked at me like I was from another planet. “I didn’t have any things!” she said. “Everything I owned was in the trunk of my car.” I suddenly realized (as much as one who hasn’t been through it can) that the devastation was total!
One man is living in his truck, periodically staying at his mother’s and periodically at friends. It took two years for one couple to be able to move back into their house, and it still isn’t “done”. Their daughter didn’t even want to go inside her house after having seen her mother’s house. She told them to just tear it down, and she replaced it with a modular home raised on stilts.
One woman had just lost her husband five months before, and her son had to drag her out of her house to evacuate. One woman was put on a bus by her husband who had to stay to help in rescue efforts. It took him a very long time to find her, going from shelter to shelter, finally finding her four hours away.
There is only sporadically accurate mail service, since the infrastructure has been destroyed, so virtually all the things that we take for granted are either “iffy” or non-existant.
One family, a grandmother and two grandsons, are living in the same mobile home that was flooded, with very little rehabilitation efforts because they were not able to qualify for the grants offered. She has had a stroke and is wheel chair bound, and they were without hot water for more than a year.
While there are a lot of words that are used to describe our feelings at the beginning and the end of each day, one word is paramount, gratitude. We are so grateful for all that we have, for NOT having had to go through anything even close to what these people have had to suffer through, and we just pray that our efforts can help. Here are some photos of us with our dinner partners. Keep us, and them in your prayers!
As a final note, this scripture verse is on the wall of the fellowship
hall, and has amazing meaning for us all! “Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins, and will raise up the age old foundations. You will be called repairers of broken walls, restorer of streets with dwellings.” Isaiah 58:11-12.
In Jesus’ Love, in God’s Service, on your mission,
Your Katrina Team