Friday/Saturday

Well this is extremely late but this is the newsletter for Friday/Saturday and also just a recap of the entire week as a whole.

So as I sit here in the airport around 3PM in the airport waiting for the plane, running on less than two hours of sleep, trying to think of something to write for this newsletter, the only thought on my mind is about how incredible of a trip this has been for every single one of us here.

Friday started off with some fun. In retaliation of Crew B’s silly string prank on Thursday, Crew A saran wrapped their car. But not just the outside of the car, the inside too. Imagine walking up to your car getting ready to leave for the work-site and realizing that your car is covered in saran wrap. As soon as everything is cleaned off the outside of the car, you open the door and there’s about another roll and a half worth of stuff to clean up. The look on their face was well worth staying up late and the 13 dollars worth of saran wrap.

There are two sides to Fridays. On the one hand, it is our final workday and each crew wants to make sure that their job is completed, and completed well, but it comes at a cost because we only have a half-day of work. Everybody wants to finish their jobs, however it doesn’t always really work out as perfectly as we would like. We might not finish everything we wanted to accomplish. The thing that we have to remember is that there is always going to be more work to be done. The work is never going to be finished. And we will come back.

But on the other hand, we take a half-day in order to spend time in the city that we are here to rebuild. New Orleans has such a vibrant culture that having a few hours to walk around and enjoy the area is truly something to appreciate. Whether it is shopping for a few souvenirs to bring back home, eating beignets and drinking coffee at Cafe du Monde, seeing the bright neon lights coming from Bourbon Street, or randomly bumping into each other just in time for dinner at the Market Cafe, the city is an experience to say the least.

We ended up not even leaving the city until 9 o’clock.

By the time that we got back to the church and everyone got ready, we started the Thanksgiving circle a little after 10. I think we finished up around 12:30AM. That is the latest that the Thanksgiving circle has ever gone, but it is well worth every minute of it. Each and every person on the trip shares what he or she was thankful for during the week. There was quite a lot to be thankful for; rekindled friendships, along with new faces, new experiences, pranks (well maybe not thankful for the prank itself, but the people involved), inside jokes, crew leaders, one liners having everybody laughing hysterically, and of course the occasional sentimental tear. These are the kind of things that really make the trip special and connect everyone. No matter how long it takes, it is well worth it listening to how the trip has impacted everyone’s life.

As per tradition after the thanksgiving circle everyone is allowed to stay up, as late at they want. Some people go to bed, mostly adults, but a majority of the youth stay up…until 5AM…when we have to be up at 7.

Around lunch time we left to tour the Ninth Ward, the area impacted the most by the storm, in New Orleans. I can’t even begin to describe how powerful of a sight it is to see all of the devastation that was still there after 5 and half years. Seeing how much of the city has already been rebuilt is a true testament to how much progress has been made. But the most shocking thing was seeing a house completely redone, rebuilt, and lived in when right next door there was a house that had yet to be touched since the storm. It’s a very sobering sight.

In conclusion to our Ninth Ward tour, we visit the levy that was damaged. Some of the area around the levy has been rebuilt, a lot of them Brad Pitt houses (he teamed up with the architecture and engineering program at LSU to design and create eco-friendly homes). A lot of the area was just overgrown with weeds and trees, covering up the old foundations that were once homes. Walking around looking at the scenery everyone has their own reaction, but one thing is common, it is a reminder of exactly why we go down to New Orleans, to help serve the community after such a devastating storm.

YOAM was an amazing trip. What happened on the trip has impacted every single person that went down there. On the worksite or off, in the French Quarter or the Ninth Ward, with the homeowner or with crewmembers, YOAM was quite a memorable experience

Speaking for everyone I say that I can’t wait until I get to go on YOAM again.

Ephesians 2:8-10
For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith- and this if not from yourself, but a gift from God- not by works, so that no one may boast. For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepares in advance

This entry was posted on January 10, 2012 at 11:16 pm and is filed under 2012 Winter Slidell Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.