Louisiana Mission Trip Day 1

It is actually day three, but the first two days were spent in getting to Louisiana and having some fun. But even in the midst of the fun, there were constant reminders of the different world we had entered when we came to Louisiana. It started in church on Sunday morning when an integral part of the service was a time of remembering those who had violently died in New Orleans during the previous week---there were 14, all under age 40 and the youngest was age 2. In my little corner of the world, 14 violent deaths in a year would cause great consternation in the community, but they say the number will reach 200 in New Orleans. That makes me sad.

We then visited the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It is still a zone of destruction. Many houses are still empty and abandoned; many still bear the paint marks which identified them as check by the authorities in 2005. While there are signs of life and renewal, there is still so much destruction. That too makes me sad.

We drove to Dulac on Sunday afternoon, and this morning's sun revealed a still different place. The people here are water people; shrimpers, oystermen, and crabbers. The land is low, mostly swamp, and the people know no other life. They live from hurricane to hurricane, trying to scratch out a living. But here is no where for them to go, and they hang on.

Today we put up sheet rock in a house and are building a ramp so the elderly members of the family can get in and out. Our crew of five did what it would have taken the homeowner months to do, and it was paid for in full by a hug. Today three young people helped a man from Salinas UMC put roof number 50 in a house---fifty roofs in six years in the gulf coast area. While the living conditions do make me sad, there is hope, and I am so darned proud to be a United Methodist working to make the lives of these people just a little bit better.