Spring Break 2006 Katrina Mission

On Sunday, April 2nd, 32 men, women and teen-age missionaries departed from First Presbyterian Church Marietta and traveled to New Orleans to continue this church’s effort to support those whose lives were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The team was made up of:

Andrew Nelson, Beth Bailey, Bill Zercher, Celine Thomas, Dan Valentine, David Geiger, David Griffith, David Hartin, David McPherson, Debbie Peterson, Doug Allen, Jeff Hartin, Karen Humphrey, Keith Thomas, Kelly Lohman, Matthew Geiger, Melanie Valentine, Melissa Merrick, Michelle Goodman, Mike Beasley, Mikhail Thomas, Natalie Thomas, Nate Shelton, Nathan Boatwright, Perry Beasley, Richard Blake, Salli Beasley, Susan Merrick, Tami Martin, Wendy Trippe, Will Goodman, Will Goodman Jr.

We arrived at First Presbyterian Church New Orleans where we would be staying until April 7th at 7 PM Sunday and were greeted by Dr. Cliff Nunn, FPCNO’s pastor. He gave us a tour of the church which is still undergoing repairs from damage sustained during Hurricane Katrina. The sanctuary is without its pews which were out being refurbished but they are intent upon conducting an Easter service here in 2 weeks. After the tour, we enjoyed a lasagna dinner and were in-briefed on the current situation in New Orleans and the projects that we would be working on. After that we all got situated in our respective sleeping areas and rested for our first day of work.

Monday morning, April 3rd started with breakfast and a devotional by Dan Valentine sharing that our lives are not intended to be our own but rather surrendered to God in order to that we can serve Him by serving others. After that we broke into four teams to take on our different assignments.

Teams 1 and 2 were each assigned a house about 2 blocks from the church that had sustained serious damage and were in need of cleaning out and gutting for two people – Robert and Elaine - who, while owning the houses, did not have the ability to get them repaired.

Team 3 went back to Peace Presbyterian Church and continued the process that a prior mission team from FPC Marietta began last Thanksgiving. The team began the process of tearing down the drywall which had flood damage.

Team 4 stayed at the church and did several things to help prepare the church for Easter Sunday including landscaping work and cleaning the handbells tarnished by the flooding.

It was a hot day and most of the work was dirty but an amazing amount of work was done. The teams will all be returning tomorrow to continue their respective projects.

After enjoying a dinner at New Orleans Hamburger & Seafood, a restaurant that featured some of the local flavor, we had a Reflection that was lead by Mike Beasley. Mike asked us to reflect on the funny events of the day and some of the things we felt were more serious. A lot of our discussion centered on Robert, whose house we are cleaning out. We talked about how Robert – who is currently living in a FEMA trailer - had such a hard time letting go of things that were damaged and how depressed he was. We prayed that God would help Robert - and the many others in his situation - through this tough time and that we might shine some light into his life. With this, David Griffith led us in a song and we went to get a good night’s sleep so that we could continue God’s work tomorrow.