SERVICE #1

SERVICE:

For my service project, I went to New Orleans, Louisiana for a mission trip during Spring Break.  During my time there, I worked for about nine hours a day for 5 days.  I left for LA on Saturday morning at four am and arrived back on campus the next Saturday at around 10pm.  My service papers will be an overview of the whole week there.

            On the way down to Louisiana, I had some great food and made friends with the people I would be working with.  We had some good laughs and expressed our excitement for the work week ahead of us, and we explored the ideas we had about what the week would consist of and who we would meet and possibly bring to God.  We got to Louisiana, met our crew, and moved into our bunks.  The next morning, Sunday, we attended church on the property that our warehouse (where we kept our tools and also lived in for the week) was on.  We had a great service and met some great people who had helped make all of this possible.

            On work day one, Monday, our day started at 6:30 am and we worked until about 5.  We showed up at the house we were supposed to work at—the whole inside was gutted with some rotten termite-infested boards holding the roof up.  We were put to work cleaning up woods/sticks in the front yard that were from the demolished house into the dump truck.  After that Cheris (a girl that attended the trip with me) and I went around to the back of the house and started tearing out some concrete that needed to be removed.  It was very thick concrete and hitting it with a sledgehammer just does not work the way you would like it to.  It was very hard work so we took a break and went on a prayer walk. 

During our prayer walk, we walked around town, got brushed off by a gentleman begging for money, but were quickly blessed by two lovely ladies who worked at a school in New Orleans.  They were taking a break so we stopped and talked to them and prayed with them. 

After having a conversation about their jobs, life, and God, we started back to our work site. After lunch, we got to meet the owner of the house we were working on, Miss Shirley and her relatives.  She told us her story about the day Hurricane Katrina hit and how God has been working in her life.  We went back to tearing up concrete, throwing wood into a dump truck, and worked until it was time to head back to dinner.

            It was a very exciting day for us, getting to start working at our job site and meeting the lady of the house we were working on, and getting to show ourselves in town and bringing God into peoples’ lives.  I was blessed by God to get to work in a state that is near and dear to my heart and to make an impact on the people of New Orleans.