dateline New Orleans

March 30, 2007

Since our last posting, we’ve been busy; trying to accomplish as much as we can in one short week, while staying awake and open to the unplanned opportunities to meet and connect with the people here. On Wednesday, the majority of our crew headed to a site in St. Bernard’s Parish to help a congregant at Carolyn Park Presbyterian. A new law goes into effect on April 1, which carries a fine of $100/day for sites that have not yet cleared their yards of debris and plant overgrowth. Once we had the cleared a lot of the undergrowth and were ready to remove the two large trees, we discovered that the chainsaws we had for the work (and were grateful for…) were really not up to the job. In a moment of pure grace, a crew of professional tree trimmers working on the same street saw our struggle and came back to help. In literally less than a minute one of the crew made a perfect notch in the truck of the tree left standing, stepped back while it fell, and then cut the stump of the tree we had already cut in a single, perfect ground-level swath. Our story (and we’re sticking to it) is that the difference in result was all about the quality of the tools he had at his disposal. We also gutted the storage shed,

As we were working we met the neighbors, Rae and Lucy. Rae’s house, directly next door, was razed, but she also needed to clear her yard to avoid the fine. Lucy, one house over, needed to have a one-car garage demolished.

Lucy is a diabetic who has been living in a FEMA trailer in her front yard since she returned to New Orleans. The neighborhood finally has electricity, but she doesn’t have the funds to hire a contractor to rewire her house; same with the drywall and floors. She’s filed the paperwork and now she waits. She doesn’t know how much money she will receive to rebuild or when she will receive it. She says that life in the FEMA trailer has been challenging. The walls sweat in the cold weather and have to be continually wiped down with Clorox to avoid mold. The trailer is small and certainly was never meant to be a long-term dwelling. She says this factually, without an ounce of self-pity or whining. She refuses to vent her frustration at the clear inefficiencies of the governmental agencies. She immigrated to America from Guatemala when she was six and says that coming to this country was the dream of her parents and the greatest thing that ever happened to her. She says in Guatemala, no one would have even the expectation of help. So it’s hard for her to understand sometimes, the impatience of American’s or our tendency to treat everything like it is disposable and replaceable.

The destruction of the garage was like a barn raising in reverse. After gutting the structure of all the debris, we attached a short tow line to our coordinators vehicle and pulled the building down on its side. Then we removed the roof shingles, the roof felts, the roof beams and then the skeleton of the building. Given the number of people swarming over the garage, the work went amazingly quickly. God was faithful to protect us from loose nails, flying debris and the occasionally flying hammer (J).

The evening meal took place across the street from our lovely home at the Woodland Pres. Church. They host a community and church meal every Wednesday night. It was a great chance to interact with our host church members and meet new and old friends.

Thursday

On Thursday we had 2 new worksites. Four people went to the home of a man named Matt, who is partially paralyzed. Matt has been refinishing his home, and has lots of skills. He needed extra assistance for the drywall that is above his head. The majority of the team went to New Genesis Bible church and began to paint a home that is now the church building. The former church building was ruined in the flood, both from below and also from above, as the roof leaked heavily. The ruined building awaits demolition, but we toured through to see the damage. Mold is everywhere, and the only things intact are on the walls – banners from the construction themed VBS that was going on before the storm. These banners say things like “Built to Come Down”, “Built to Last” and “You must tear down before you build up”. Pastor Charles Garrison met us for lunch and challenged us to think of New Orleans in a different light. He likened the city to a young girl who has been prostituted out for many years. His hope is that she will be reclaimed to be the beautiful place that God intended.