The 9 of us had a meaningful New Orleans experience last week. As far as the physical stuff... We finished framing and placed the plywood sheathing around an entire house. We also did some caulking and touch up paint on a nearly completed house.
Here are what the completed homes look like in Musicians Village.
Habitat for Humanity has about 40 of these completed and hopes to have about 40 more by the end of the year. And all the work is carried out by people just like us who come down to volunteer.
Of course, there are still plenty of images like this to see and the common X on the houses which identify when it was checked and what was found inside are actually being left there as a sort of symbol of home town pride. It was interesting to watch the heaviness on the faces of the 1st timers who gradually took hold of the reality of the devastation which is hard to understand unless you witness with your own eyes.
This is a picture of our local contact and CRM staff guy, Mike Brantley (on the left and on the right is The Vic). We were privleged to have Mike give us an overview on Thursday night and take us on a tour after both work days Friday and Saturday.
My personal take aways from this trip include two things...And both have to deal with what the New Orleans folks taught me. 1) The people have an incredible resilience to rebuild and turn an ongoing ugly scene into some redemptive. 2) Those resilient people possess an amazing sense of community. I didn't take a picture of it for obvious reasons, but the one picture from this trip that sticks out is of this two story house of which the adults are hanging out on the balcony and the kids are wading in the kiddie pool below them. Around that entire city and especially in the poorer neighborhoods (which is much of the city) are families and neighbors keeping cool and enjoying one another on front porches. Sometimes 8-10 people on these porches. Just cool to see and a great model of community and perhaps a picture of the way things used to be elsewhere in America before air conditioning and cable tv.
All in all a good trip and my sincere thanks for your prayer and support.
Grace, Peace, Cheers.
(Superdome)
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