Topsy Turvy

So being from New England and being Memorial Day and all, Amy and I found ourselves with the sudden urge to plant a garden, even though summer has been in full swing down here for weeks now. As we were wandering through the aisles of the Dollar Store, we came across the "Topsy Turvy" and couldn't resist. The deal with the Topsy Turvy, if you haven't seen the info-mercial three dozen times by now, is that you plant your tomatoes upside down and they grow as hanging plants rather than the normal way. I must admit that I never realized that tomato plants could grow upside down and I oddly am a bit intrigued by it... Anyway - so the day after we plant our topsy turvey garden, the owner of the home we have been working on, Eddie, gets a visit from FEMA and they inform him that they will be taking his trailer from him on June 1st, regardless of whether or not his home is ready to move into. If you have read our previous posts, Mr. King is 76, diabetic, has a broken rib and has been taken advantage of by just about every contractor that has worked for him to get back into his home. Any of you who are on Facebook saw our pleas to write to your Congressmen and Congresswomen to ask FEMA to extend the deadline to take back the trailers, because many of the people down here are just now getting settlements from the government of from their insurance companies. Many still haven't even received them yet, so a HUGE thank you to all of you who wrote on Eddie's behalf and on behalf of the people of New Orleans. Anything that you can do helps the people down here who have truly had their lives turned upside down - topsy turvy - for the past 4 years. Amy and I have been working down here as well to see if we can get his deadline extended through local channels, and hopefully we will be able to buy him a couple of weeks until his home is ready to be moved into.
In the meantime, God has been providing just the right people at just the right time to take Eddie's home just about to the point where he and his wife will be able to move in. Rich, the gentleman that we wrote about a number of weeks ago, came back and worked with us for a day during this past week, even though he was volunteering with a different organization this time that he was in town. Today, we were able to move to the upstairs of his home and start the cleanout and move-in, so the whole house is really starting to take shape. The downstairs is basically finished except for finishing a few cabinets in the kitchen and hooking up the gas for his kitchen stove. The upstairs has less work to do since he only had 2 feet of water... in the upstairs of his home... so most of the work is cleanup, painting and some plumbing and electrical issues. We had a crew from Missouri join us today and we were blessed with - wait for it... an electrician and a plumber! Just the right people at just the right time. We are praying that by Friday, we will be able to move Eddie and his wife in - just in time for us to leave on Saturday morning and just incase FEMA decides to take his trailer on Monday. Eddie's wife was in the house looking around this morning and for the first time said, "This is really starting to look like home again!" What a heartwarming thing to hear... We are finding it so hard to believe that our time here is already up and we are beginning to grieve the fact that we will be leaving. I have a feeling we will be back...
After work and on the weekends, we have been doing our best to take in the city while we have been here. Last night, we found ourselves listening to Eddie play with his band in Preservation Hall which is in the French Quarter and one of the most storied jazz halls in the city. It is about the size of our old living room and has been graced by the biggest names in jazz music for years and years. Amy and I were in the Standing Room Only section, which really means that we were about the 20th person in the door, but the people were lined up on the street for a full block waiting for a chance to get in. On Saturday, we went down to St. Martinsville which is in the heart of Cajun country and is the site where the Acadians were sent when they were exiled from Canada back in the 1800's. It is such an interesting part of the country and the people and their stories are really amazing. Last weekend, we went to see the Natchez, which is an old paddleboat that takes you up and down the Mississippi River, and the video below is part of the trip that you can see from shore... pretty cool.
So as we are into our last week here, thank you SO much for your support, prayers, thoughts, messages, calls, texts and everything that you have done to help us begin our journey. You will never know how much it has meant to us.... and please keep it up! Next week will be a travel week for us and then we begin Chapter 2! Love to you all!
~Amy and Dave

"There Are No Levees On The Other Side"

Last Sunday, Amy and I felt led to worship at a congregation in the neighborhood that we have been working in, so we went to worship at the Franklin Street Baptist Church in the 8th Ward, right around the corner from Eddie's home. They were flooded with upwards of 10 feet of water which destroyed much of the church building. As the majority of its members were displaced to other cities due to the storm, rather than disband as so many of the churches have done, this congregation decided that its ministry and outreach would continue, so they started worshipping in a temporary facility in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Houston, which is where most of their members were relocated to immediately after the storm. They also simulcast their services on the internet so that all of their members could still worship wherever they had moved. It wasn't until April of 2008 that the renovations were completed and the building was reopended in New Orleans. Today, there are nearly 4000 people that worship every Sunday, and last Sunday, we were blessed to be two of them.

The worship experience was awesome! It was a Southern Baptist service complete with a huge choir, dynamic preacher, and Wurlitzer organ to back up the pastor as he spoke. As we went on through the service, there were two things that really started to stand out that definitely left an impression on us. The first was the simplicity of the worship. There were no hymnals or songbooks. There weren't even words on the overhead screen. The entire group of believers were singing songs from their heart with hands in the air that they either knew by heart, or occasionaly, someone would call out the words, but it was worship like we have never experienced before. The Pastor gave a great sermon on Gods' Grace, and it was during his message that the second thing really started to stand out... the difference in the physical and spiritual needs of the people of New Orleans. The service started with the Pastor saying "Are you happy that the Lord put breath in your lungs this morning"? "Do you feel blessed that the Lord woke you up today?" Not a word about the economy or the job market or the Swine Flu... Simply, are you happy that you are alive and breathing today? As he was wrapping up his sermon, the pastor started talking about the "other side". He said, "On the other side, there will be no hurricanes" (which was met with a chorus of Amen's) ... "On the other side, there will be no levees (which was met with another chorus of Amen's) ... "On the other side there will be no FEMA trailers"... The needs down here are so immediate... so basic... We stood there with our mouths open (literally) and exchanged a glance with each other and experienced a faith in God that we hadn't experienced before. Not a faith of excess or comfort, but a faith of true trust for provision and daily necessities... a faith of life and death that they had all been experiencing since August of 2005. It was humbling and I truly thank God that we were allowed to be a part of it.

We had a great week at Eddie's home. There were no other volunteers in camp at the beginning of the week, but Amy and I were able to put up a bunch of baseboard, do some painting, hang some cabinets in the bathrooms. On Friday, we were joined by Skyler, a 22 year old from Nebraska and we were able to clean piles of debris from the outside of the house and mow the lawn for the first time in years. Inside and out, his house is starting to look like a home! He and his wife are visibly starting to get excited and are starting to pick out furniture locations rather than picking up lumber and windows from Lowe's.

Now - I realize that was kind of a heavy entry, so just so you don't think that life is all serious and that we aren't having any "fun" down here, take a look at the video clip below. This was part of a Mother's Day song that we wrote. On Friday after work, Amy and I went around to different spots in New Orleans and filmed each of the verses and made a bit of a spectacle of ourselves in the process, but we had a lot of fun doing it. This was verse 4 that was filmed in the middle of Jackson Square which is the heart of the French Quarter. ...and yes... I'm playing the harmonica!

So once again, thanks for all of your prayers and support! Please keep the prayers coming... We really can feel them. We miss all of you more than you can imagine... especially our Mothers this week. Love you all. ~Dave and Amy

Being Rich...

This was an interesting week for Amy and me as God continued to work on our hearts and minds (and bodies!) like the potter and the clay written about in Isaiah 64:8. On Sunday, Amy developed some pain in her abdomen that we didn't think too much about until Monday morning when it got pretty severe. Just another indication of how disrupted life still is down here, we had to search for a doctor and finally were able to find one in downtown New Orleans. Many, if not most of the clinics and hospitals were wiped out in the storm and have not returned yet. The closest hospital with 24 hour emergency care that we could find is almost 40 minutes from Camp Restore!
So we spent much of Monday at the doctor's office waiting for someone to look at Amy. (Note picture of "sad Amy" to the left...) Our biggest concern was that she had something like appendicitis or a hernia, but after the doctor (also a Christian!) was able to poke and prod a little bit, he felt that it was most likely a muscular pull or something like that, so we had to monitor her temperature, etc. just to make sure. She was on "light duty" for much of the week, although she definitely did alot more than she probably should have... Her heart wouldn't let her body slow down and she continued laying tile and grouting at Eddie's house when she probably should have been taking it easy... One of the things that kept her going this week was actually one the guys we were working with - a guy named Rich from Illinios. In 2005, Rich was in an industrial accident at his workplace and was burned on over 60% of his body. He was in a coma for 3 months after the accident and is still having skin grafts done nearly 4 years after his accident. The first morning Rich joined our crew, we noticed that he had lost a couple of fingers in his accident, had difficulty walking, had lost some mobility in his wrists and ankles, and was visibly burned on his face, arms and legs, and had a bandage on his arm from a skin graft that he had received just before he came down to volunteer.

Rich is a pipefitter by trade and the house we were working on needed to have some sinks and tubs connected so we could get running water to the kitchen and bathrooms, and praise the Lord, Rich volunteered at just the right time so the work could be done. When we started talking with Rich, he told us that he spends most of his time volunteering at different camps like Camp Restore, and that this was his 4th or 5th trip down to New Orleans in the last few years. He gives more of his time to volunteer at burn camps to work with children who have been burned and to help them deal with the trauma that comes from being a burn victim....... So just when Amy and I are feeling pretty good about what we are doing, God sends someone into our lives to (rightfully) knock us down a few pegs and put things back in perspective once more. Here is a guy that had every right to give up and focus on himself and his own problems, and he has chosen to put all of his energy into volunteering and making the lives of other people better. God doesn't need our tile laying abilitities... He wants our hearts. The Potter and the clay...

On a lighter note, over the course of the past week and a half, we have made a neat bond with Eddie (the homeowner that we have been working with mentioned in last week's post). Eddie is 76 years old and is a jazz musician here in the city. On Monday, he invited us to come and hear him and his brass band play at the Candlelight Lounge in the 6th Ward (also known as Tremme). Tremme is the oldest free settlement of African Americans in the United States and has a long and storied history. Amy and I so were honored (and excited!) to go hear him play. He was AWESOME! (See attached video clip of him soloing on the trombone). It has been such an inspiration to us to see how the people of New Orleans have continued to live their lives in the face of such adversity and are slowly putting things back together, and how important their relationships with their neighbors and friends have become to them. I know that Amy and I will treasure the relationships that we are making already.
As we ask every week, please continue to keep us in your prayers. As we are both rediscovering muscles in our 35 and 40 year old bodies that we forgot existed (yikes!), please pray for strength and endurance for our bodies as well as for wisdom and safety as we continue on our trip. We love you all! ~Dave and Amy

Don't forget to listen to Eddie below!!