I rolled in from my trip to New Orleans early Sunday morning. When I talk about the trip the word that keeps coming out is "powerful." God is doing powerful things in New Orleans. And God is doing powerful things in the lives of the 150 or so college students who I went down there with. I would even say God is doing something powerful in my own life as a result of this trip.Being that it is Holy Week and I have three services to prep for I am not going to try and put all my reflections into one single narrative form. I just don't have it in me.
But I do want to share a few key points. I'll do this in a series so as to give us all a break.
First, the devastation. It has been nearly three years since Katrina hit and most of the 9th Ward and St. Bernard's Parish, where we served, still look like they did two or three months after the storm. Most of the debris has been moved and most houses have by now been gutted, but very few have been repaired. It looks like a neutron bomb exploded, leaving something like 50,000 hulled out homes. Those among our group of 150 or so who had been down to help with relief before said it was somewhat disheartening to return for a second or third time and see so little progress. The initial waves of volunteers who responded early on have substantially diminished since 2005. Ergo, so has the rate of progress.
One image from all this was particularly poignant.
Most buildings still have the numbers spray painted on them right after the storm. There is the date and time that the building was searched, along with how many animals were found dead. At the bottom very prominently is the number of dead people found inside. All the buildings I saw had zero as that final number. I suspect most buildings where dead were found have by now been either repainted or completely demolished. So now when you walk by you just see block after block of zeroes. None dead inside; but no one alive.
