Spring Break 2006 Work Day 4

Work day 4 began with breakfast and a devotional by David Geiger. Then one work crew of five folks went to finish cleaning up Robert’s house and everyone else went to work on the sanctuary of the church.

When we first arrived in New Orleans on Sunday evening, Cliff shared that he was thinking about having his Sunday service in the sanctuary on Easter Sunday, but he was undecided due to the amount of work that still needed to be done. Therefore, we determined to that we would do whatever we had to in order that the sanctuary was ready.

We divided the sanctuary work between three work crews:

One to focus on the chancel – putting down a new sub-floor, replacing the steps and cleaning the pulpit.

FPCNO Chancel gets a new sub-floor and a clean pulpit.

One to the main sanctuary to clean the floor and columns.

Cleaning the floor of the sanctuary was hard work.

One to the Narthex to restoring the wood to its natural color, some painting and cleaning the marble floors.

When we finished around 7 PM on Thursday, there was still work to be done but the sanctuary was looking much, much better and Cliff had definitely decided by then that Easter services would be held there. We had dinner Thursday evening with several members of FPCNO, who told us their Katrina stories. Robert joined us for dinner as well and he was a different person than the man we met on Monday morning. He was smiling and enjoying himself. We presented him with a FPC Marietta T-shirt and told him he didn’t have to become a Presbyterian but we that we wanted him to come to Cliff’s Easter service. After dinner, the church members wanted to see the sanctuary and were very excited about the progress we had made.

That’s when the hand of God reached out and touched the FPC mission team to let us know He was in our midst. Thursday night was Wendy Trippe’s turn to lead the Reflection and she had decided that as a closing to her Reflection, we should all go down to the freshly cleaned up sanctuary and pray as a group for God’s blessing as FPCNO opened its doors to the public on Easter Sunday.

Dr. Nunn and his wife Nieta chose to join us for our final reflection and we all walked down to the sanctuary, formed a circle, joined hands and prayed around the circle, our individual prayers of thankfulness, for Cliff, for our projects and for blessings on their sanctuary. At the conclusion of the prayer, David Griffith, our guitar man for the trip, appropriately began playing, and we began singing, “Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary”.

As we were singing, Cliff’s wife, Nieta, all of a sudden left the group and practically ran through the front door. We weren’t sure what to think, but several seconds later, she appeared in the loft over the chancel and was furiously tugging at a large piece of plastic that was covering…. an organ. As she was rapidly flipping switches, Bill Zercher astutely told Dave to play one more verse of "Sanctuary" and as soon as we finished, Nieta began playing, “Joyful, Joyful, We adore thee”. Never did it sound so good and spontaneous cheers erupted from the group on the floor.

Tears welled up in many team members’ eyes and we knew at that moment that the words Jesus said to Peter – “Upon this rock I will build my church and all the powers of hell will not conquer it” – were never more true.

We knew that Cliff would open the doors of that sanctuary on Easter Sunday morning and the light of the resurrected Christ would shine brightly into the darkened city of New Orleans.

Finally, we knew God was there with us and honoring the work we did in His name.