The Big Easy

The Big Easy wasn't so easy.

I took 9 interns and 2 employees to New Orleans to help with the relief efforts last week. We took off on Wednesday Oct. 19th on the red eye (what was I thinking). We got to New Orleans about 11:30am and drove straight to Victory Fellowship Church where we would be working all week. When we pulled in to the church I thought we would be directed to our sleeping quarters where we could rest up for a while. Instead they quickly directed us to the warehouse where we received our first assignment. We had to make 500 boxes of food to give out over the next 4 hours. We were immediately overwhelmed with the amount people that drove through the line to receive food that day. Finally at about 9pm after being awake for over 24 (minus a few cat naps on the plane)hours we arrived at the place we would be sleeping.

I really had no room to complain about our sleeping quarters seeing as over half the city had just lost their homes, but deep inside I was complaining just a little bit. We stayed in an upstairs open loft which had a tarp over half of it for a roof because the Hurricane had torn it off. That was not really the bad part though. The bad part was that there were about 30 other guys sleeping in there with us. Well actually that was not so bad either it was the fact that about 3 of them snored really loud. One night I took a shoe and chucked it at some guy I did not even know just to get him to shut up so I could go to sleep. The other crazy thing was is you could only shower at night because we had to shower outside in the open (at least we had showers) and if you did it in the morning the pre-schoolers could see you.

Once we got rolling with the trip non of this stuff really mattered. We were just happy to be able to contribute to the rebuilding of peoples lives. On the news people have said that they will rebuild the city in 24 months but after seeing the devastation first hand I think it is going to take more like 5 years. We went to one neighborhood to help an elderly lady begin to clear her house out. The whole street was covered with trash in front of each house about 15 feet long and about 8 feet hight. All the other houses had already been cleared out on her block but she lived alone and had no one to help her out. She is retired and lost everything she owned, she had also lost her husband a little while back and could not afford to pay for flood insurance. It was sad to see everything she owned out on the street by the time we got done (you can see pictures in a few days at www.themovementlv.com). The other projects we did besides cleaning up houses was the food distribution to thousands of people daily. People would sit in their cars for hours waiting for some food and many of those coming through the line had 3 to 5 families living with them because they had lost their homes. It was tragic to hear their stories which there are many to tell.

I could go on and on and on but unless you were there to see what we saw (the news does not do it justice) it will probably just bore you. I will put some more on the web site so go and check it out along with the pictures - they really do speak a 1000 words.

Thanks for listening.
Dream Big and Stay in Motion
PB