|
2009 Young Adult Servant Event
Monday, June 1, 2009 Hey, its Mike and Lauren chiming in from the young sdult servant event 2009 in New Orleans! So far it has been a great experience and we have been fortunate to meet some really awesome people. The facilities at Camp Restore are luxurious compared to the previous trips Mike has made. They have warm showers and comfy bunks! Today we were on a non-construction site helping replant a lake to restore wet lands that have become sparce since the '30s. We also did some maintenance around the camp. Although its been almost 4 years since Katrina there is still so much work to be done and the people of the community are very appreciative of the volunteer work. Thus far its been a great experience and its only the end of the day1! We're excited for tomorrow to work construction on a victim's house. We're really looking forward to seeing some more of the city and the opportunities for service that lay ahead. Hope all is well at home! God Bless, -Lauren and Mike
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 Greetings from NOLA! We have now completed two days of serving and I sense a TOTAL MUD theme going on. As Mike and Lauren already mentioned:
Thursday, June 4, 2009 Checking in again from New Orleans! Yesterday we were fortunate enough to get a tour of the Lower Ninth Ward from Kathy, a born and raised New Orleanian. We were able to stop at the Lower Ninth Ward Village where Irene visited "Mack" a friend she was able to serve with during her last trip. Kathy also was able to show us her home church which has been fully restored and her congregation is worshiping again although most of their congregation's members have a long commute. After the tour we headed back to camp to work because our trip to the cemetary had been rained out. After a few hours work around camp we began our LINC training which is a progam of self analysis designed to determine "Who Am I" and taught the concept that it is impossible to be a leader without knowing yourself. Today we finished the leadership training. Although we were initially upset we had to spend a day and a half inside with leadership training rather than working it ended up being extremely beneficial and a great experience. Last night we were able to go into the French Quarter. We went to a great restaurant where we ate an authentic New Orleans cajun/creole meal. It was great! We wandered around for the rest of the night and ended with a begnet from Cafe Du Monde. After the LINC training today we headed into the Garden District of New Orleans which Irene and I were particularly excited about! Tonight we are having a worship service with communion on Camp Restore's grounds. Tomorrow we head home shortly after breakfast from a week that has certainly flown by! -Lauren, Irene, and Mike
Friday June 5, 2009 Greetings one more time from New Orleans! This evening the 11 people in our group gathered together for an intimate time of worship in Prince of Peace's sanctuary, adjacent to the school which is now the home of Camp Restore. Both buildings have been restored and are now used for housing those who come to serve the people of this area. There probably will not be a school in this place for a long time, if ever, since so few people have returned to this area.
In addition to celebrating the Lord's Supper we washed each other's feet and wrote a note of affirmation a book for each other. These were incredibly moving experiences and all 11 of us could not leave that place dry-eyed. What we experienced was truly a moving of the Spirit. I sensed that the Lord, in Jeremiah 29:11 fashion, knew what skills we'd need to accomplish our tasks this week. On Tuesday when we were sent to "MUD" a house there was no skilled person available to work with us. But God had already handled this need: Lauren had been taught by her dad Mike how to apply mud (spackle) to dry wall and she had the touch, helping others learn how to apply a fine coat in one direction, then scrape off the excess in the opposite direction. Mike, who had worked with his dad Steve on numerous sites, was able to tackle the problem of mudding and sponging where the ceiling met the wall- thus repairing what had been a poor edge on most of one room. He also got some expert advice from Steve on the phone on how to fix another problem-applying a thinned down coat of mud to an entire area where someone had sanded the wallboard by mistake, which had actually "raised the nap." Irene was able to help others cut out badly taped areas and fill them in properly because Dave Reynders had taught her this technique shortly before this trip. Thus the Lord helped 3 semi-skilled servants from PA to help 8 somewhat less skilled servants make some walls rather smooth for a woman who is eagerly waiting to return home from Atlanta with her 2 elderly parents. How cool is that! God is good all the time All the time God is good. Soli Deo Gloria!!  |
