Transforming New Orleans | Caring to Share and Being Willing to Receive

From December 28, 2007 to January 6, 2008, nine people from Fourth Church traveled to New Orleans to participate in the ongoing rebuilding efforts there. Below, two of those participants share excerpts from their mission trip reflections. To read the reflections of Associate Pastor John Vest, one of the trip leaders, please click here. —The reflection below was written by Rebecca Nilsson. Happy Holidays! Hearing that phrase sounds kind of odd now that the traditional holiday season is behind us. Thanksgiving has passed, Christmas has passed, and New Years Eve and Day have passed. Most people have returned from Christmas vacations, shared stories of air travel chaos, worn, shown or told others about the gifts they received, and resumed everyday lives. I want to share my best holiday gifts with you, tell you about an air travel miracle and pray I don’t just resume my everyday life. For the second year in a row, I spent part of my Holiday Season “vacationing” in New Orleans, Louisiana with other members and friends of Fourth Presbyterian Church. I went there to help rebuild and renew. I went there to serve. The afternoon before our first day of work, our group of eight went to meet Mildred and Tony, the owners of the home to be blessed with our special talent for mudding and sanding. Mildred was happy to meet us and said she would work along side us. One simply in the construction business might have thought, “great, an extra set of hands”. I knew we were getting much more than an extra set of hands. However I had no idea of the gifts we were about to receive. I went there to help rebuild and renew. I went there to serve. The first day of work Mildred welcomed us and was ready to work. On the second day of work, I noticed Mildred was missing and hoped she did not over do it the day before. As lunch time drew near, Mildred emerged from her FEMA trailer and said she prepared a traditional southern New Year’s Day meal for us. To my delight! I am from Texas and lived in Louisiana for a year and a half. I know what a traditional southern New Year’s Day meal is. Mildred set up a table on the porch and assembled her spread of homemade black-eyed peas with ham, cabbage and cornbread. I have eaten those foods all my life and never have they tasted so good. All this fabulous food prepared for us in a FEMA trailer by someone I was there to serve. I went there to help rebuild and renew. I went there to serve. As we ate our lunch on the front yard lawn, we asked Mildred to share her Katrina stories with us. The airplane story is one of the most touching that I want to share with you. Before Katrina hit New Orleans, Mildred’s work called her out of town. Mildred’s husband, Tony, was rescued from their home and made his was to the New Orleans airport. Tony was at the front of a line preparing to board a plane to San Antonio, TX. Tony looked back and to his surprise, saw members of his family at the end of the same line. Tony began shouting, “There’s my family! There’s my family!” The gate attendant asked Tony how many were in his family. Tony looked back again, asked one of the family members to count off how many were there, turned back to the gate attendant, and replied, “Thirteen.” What you might expect to hear next is that Tony was invited to step to the back of the line to join his family. But that is not what happened. Tony’s family of thirteen was invited to join him at the front of the line and board the plane together. People had to leave before we were there to help build and renew. The time to serve was coming. After lunch, we worked a while longer. I spent some time with Mildred working on a room in the back of her house. She and I talked about the progress that had been made on her house and her hopes of timing when she would be out of the FEMA trailer and back into her home. I said to Mildred, “A lot of hands have touched these walls.” Mildred said back to me, “A lot of hearts have touched these walls.” I went there to help rebuild and renew. I went there to serve. Yet it is I who received. Yet it is I who was served. Thanks be to God. —The reflection below was written by Doug Pond. It was my third time to the Gulf Coast States and the second time back to NOLA.  This time felt a little better than the last two times.  Many street signs are now back up – making it much easier to find the homes that we are assigned to work on.  We visited Ms. Ethel and it was nice to see her house now finished and the FEMA trailer gone from her front yard.  And, a few more neighbors have moved back into their houses on the street.  It was also good to see many other faces of volunteers that have now become all too familiar to us.  However, the long term and substantial needs of this community are reflected in the former school that we stayed in while in NOLA.  The school didn’t have any students after the storm and now Habitat has converted the classrooms into dorms that house over 500 volunteers and the gymnasium is now a commissary that nourishes all the hard working hands that are doing Christ’s work to rebuild lives.  But, the need is still greater than you can imagine.  As hope begins to emerge out of chaos in NOLA, we begin to see the bigger picture of humanity in all this chaos.  This was captured well in the headline of an article in the local paper, “IT IS BIGGER THAN OURSELVES”.  Many of the volunteers realize when they arrive that their perceptions of what they thought they were going to see and what they actually see are usually very different.  Many agree that the word was that NOLA was doing pretty well and storm damage projects are over or very much under control.  All the volunteers leave with the same conclusion – it’s not even close to being over, the individual life struggles are still many for most people of NOLA and we are really much closer to the beginning than we are to any sort of end. Certainly, those whose lives we have helped because we cared to share as volunteers have been changed, but our lives have been changed too because they were willing to receive.  And, isn’t that the real lesson we can all take away from this experience?  The gentle reminder that we can change lives, we can make a difference – if we care to share and are willing to receive.  It is the great balancing act of our human condition and it is what connects us to each other and stitches a community’s fabric back together.  As volunteers, we are mindful of the fact that our task is greater than the help that we are offering at that moment and then when that help is humbly received, it closes a circle that moves us into a position of caring and sharing ourselves with someone else.  I’ve heard many people say, “oh, I wanted to help”, “I’ve thought about going to lend a hand”, “maybe next year I’ll get there” or “I think it’s too late for me to make a difference”.  I hope that everyone realizes that it is not too late to help and join the circle of hands doing Christ’s work in this devastated area.  The real work is just beginning and all of God’s transforming hands are warmly welcomed!