Day Three: "A Day of Service - A Life of Service"

Our third day in New Orleans began with a simple breakfast and a Devotional led by Dan Valentine. Today’s subject was serving God and being a willing servant in times of need but with humility – a perfect message for our long day ahead of us back at Peace Presbyterian.

After a drive through light rush hour traffic we arrived at Peace Presbyterian ready to continue the process we began yesterday of clearing out the debris in the church. With a full team of 14 today we were able to accomplish a lot. While the task at hand seemed tremendous we were all eager to see how much we could accomplish in one morning with this large team.

Unfortunately, 4 of our team members (John Chen and Will Howard from LaJolla and Claire Dunaway and David Mahan from Marietta) needed to return home after lunch because of other commitments.

With this energetic team so much was accomplished today including:

• All pews and linolium removed from the Sanctuary


• All furniture, books, and other destroyed materials as well as linoleum removed from Fellowship hall, Offices, Narthex, and Supply room


• Moving of very heavy objects like a refrigerator full of contaminated food, Coke Machine and fire proof file cabinet - all requiring not only muscle; but quite a bit of creative and sometimes conflicting opinions on the best methods of moving them from point A to point B.


• General clean up of a massive amount of clutter and trash caused by the flood

Before

• 

After

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment today was not the work done at the Church building, but a by-product of that work. The team saw a clear uplift in the attitudes and energy levels of those associated with Peace Presbyterian Church who were impacted by Hurricane Katrina and the flood - and this meant more to us than all the work we accomplished so far.

Fortunately the only accident incident so far has been with Alex Ball our youngest team member. With a small cut to his head from a door he had to visit a local clinic to be patched up.



After lunch we saw the departure of our four key hard working team members. One other highlight was the visit of a displaced member of the Peace Presbyterian who happened to stop by. Mini was her name and she was in the neighborhood visiting her destroyed home. She initially though the church was being gutted to be torn down. Then we saw her light up when we explained that we were there to help re-open this church and smile when she was told that her minister, Jim McLain, was in the church. This was a clear example to us, that we were indeed making a difference.


The rest of the team worked several more hours after lunch and then we stopped work in order to get cleaned up for a Wednesday night Church dinner of delicious Louisiana-style Turkey Gumbo back at our base camp, John Calvin Presbyterian. The dinner lived up to our expectations (Gumbo, Potato Salad, Pecan and Pumpkin Pies) and all we had excellent fellowship with families in the area and members of the church as we all sat at separate tables to get to know more folks and exchange stories. As we tried to express our gratitude to them for sharing their facilities (so we had a place to stay), they instead thanked us for spending our Thanksgiving week helping out in New Orleans.

The evening ended with a Reflection by Earl Stine where he commented that today was not as emotional as yesterday; but he echoed the excitement felt by all the team by seeing the impact our efforts are having on those close to Peace Presbyterian Church.

``…I will build my church, and all the power of hell will not conquer it,`` Matthew 16:18