Team 7 Thursday Report

There is no shortage of work down here folks. No kidding. This emptying the bathtub a drop at a time business takes a lot of work and a lot of people willing to be servants in this work. This team we have down here this week is incredible. Not just the Ohio people in my group, but everyone else here as well. This sounds trite and disingenuous because it is overused, but I am truly so impressed with these people.

Most of the Servants Unite group worked in Chalmette today rebuilding the Chalmette Church of Christ and demucking a church member's home. Thanks to the Delaware crew who cleaned out the church the week after Christmas it is actually under reconstruction. Framing is nearly complete in the auditorium for new classrooms. Walls have been put up and we spend the day finishing the framing and wrapping the auditorium portion of their building with tar paper to keep the weather out. Eventually, they plan to brick up the auditorium, tear out the rest of the building and rebuild it new.
It's inspiring to get to build some and not just finish the destruction. This church had been under water for weeks. The bricks were ripped out of the walls from the wave of water that breached the industrial canal levy where the barge landed in the lower 9th ward neighborhood. (see the reference and pics below)
Elder Charles Whitley who lives across the river in a neighborhood that was not flooded has been working diligently with the other elders to get the church rebuilt and get support for relief in their area in St. Bernard Parish. He reports that they have accounted for all of their 85 members, but one family, but that they believed them to be living in California with family.
One senior couple in their congregation was in their house during the storm. Spent several days under a highway overpass, several more in a school, a couple months in a shelter, and are now living on a cruise ship, which is much better.
25 people from the congregation met Sunday in the "Blue Room" in the front of the building where the studs were walled in with tarps.



The muckrakers left the church shortly after we arrived to work on a church member's house that they said was the worst they had seen. That's experience talking. Debris and mud was chest deep in some places. It took a heavily supplemented crew to complete the house by the end of the day. We'll miss that South Dayton Church of Christ crew who are heading home tomorrow.

Ella's house was back under reconstruction again today. Four of the New Life guys, Phil from Huntington, WV and Anthony from the DC area went back and put up almost all the rest of the drywall with one coat of spackling. They'll be going back to finish up tomorrow.

We have a group of kids here tonight from Branson Missouri. They are amazing. For devotional I asked them to do a skit they have put together. It's a mimed bit to a song about sharing the gospel with someone met on an airplane. They are REALLY good. Very inspiring to see kids who don't like the image some have of them and wish to be the next Christian leaders. They're a kewl bunch.

I wanted to tell you about them because they really made a disturbing day more inspiring than discouraging.

Since this is my second time here, I thought I'd seen everything and the shock was over. Unfortunately, I still hadn't seen the worst till today and it brings men to tears. Charles, the elder at the church where we worked today, took us down Perez Drive into the Lower 9th Ward where the levy broke in the Industrial canal inundating that neighborhood instantly and sending a wave down Perez drive that was still so powerful several miles away at the church. The first three blocks from the levy or so were completely wiped away, washed into neighboring streets.

This link leads to the pictures I took there today. The break in the levy isn't any wider than the length of the barge sitting on the school bus, but when it broke it was like when you push down on the side of an inflatable swimming pool; a sudden surge of water that wiped foundations clean and spread debris and whole houses miles away. One house near another levy break was dropped in the middle of a different street...It was a brick house....and the cement slab is still attached to the bottom of the house...in the middle of the wrong street. The power of the forces at work in this disaster is unfathomable.

I felt guilty touring "ground zero" with my camera snapping pictures and asking Charles lots of questions. This place where so many people died and lost everything they had and held dear isn't a tourist attraction. We see crass reporters on the TV all the time and I don't want to be one of those or sensationalize such an incredible tragedy. Those of us who have been here, though, are obligated to show, tell, and share what we know with those of you who read this so that you can get an inkling of the deapth and breadth of this as well as the personal nature of this disaster for each effected person who we speak to and do work for.

Brendan hung devo on me tonight which I kinda passed off to the kids with their skit, but the lesson of today, overall, is like Nehemia's experience restoring Jerusalem. This is a daunting task, but I'm happy to report progress is being made. People are starting to get their lives back and there is a positive tone that was only despair when I was here 3 months ago.

We can do so much for the people hurt by this disaster. We have been able to touch thousands of lives and been Christ to all those people. They tell us how grateful we are to come help and we can't know what it means to them. I suspect they are right. I keep reiterating, I wouldn't do any of this for a living, but this labor of love is a light yoke and working in the Kingdom of Christ is an amazing experience.

He Reigns!

John McGuire
Servants Unite!