Spring Break 2006 Work Day 3

Wednesday, April 5th, was a little different schedule-wise. We started our day with a devotional by Susan Merrick where she shared that, just as we find God in the rebirth of Spring, we can also find God in the rebirth of New Orleans. Then we all went down to cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter for some of their world-famous beignets and coffee.

Waiting for Beignets at Cafe Du Monde

Afterward, we set out for a day committed to completing most of the projects we were working on because we had decided as a team that we wanted to devote Thursday to insuring that the sanctuary of FPCNO was in good enough shape to for Cliff to conduct his service there on Easter Sunday. So that morning we completed our work on Elaine's house, the yard at FPCNO, and Peace Presbyterian Church and all returned to FPCNO for lunch and showers since Cliff was taking us on a tour of the damage done to New Orleans that afternoon. We were all encouraged to see that Robert was starting to loosen up and become attached to us. He joined us on the tour.

Dr. Cliff Nunn provides us with an in-depth tour of what happened in New Orleans

The tour impacted all of us. The amount of damage done to New Orleans cannot be adequately told by CNN. We took a tour around the entire city of New Orleans making stops at four different Presbyterians churches - each in different states of repair and clean up, and the Ninth Ward. While many areas of town sustained significant damage, nothing else compared to the utter destruction we witnessed in the Ninth Ward. It is lowland with many houses that were already aging near where a couple of the levee breaks occurred. Virtually every structure in the area is irreparable, dozens of cars were turned over, debris is everywhere and the area is desolate. It is hard to believe that lots of people lived here less than a year ago.

The extent of the devastation in the 9th Ward was unbelievable

Once we completed this very sobering tour, we returned to the church. Immediately after eating our pizza dinner Wednesday evening, we started working on preparing the FPCNO sanctuary for Easter Sunday service.

Realizing the extent of the damage to this great city, many of us wondered how the little bit that our group would accomplish in one week could make any difference at all. However, our evening ended with David Griffith leading our reflection by singing a number of songs that reminded us that God is greater than all the devastation we had seen and that He uses all of our work in His name - however little it might be - to serve His purposes.