strange stories

An elderly couple was helped by one of our crews this week. They had stayed in their home through the storms. Their home was damaged, but luckily, they were not. A tree punched through the ceiling and roof of the back of their home. Most of the time when this happens, much water comes in. In their case, the place where the limb made a hole was directly over the bathtub... all the water that came in the house went straight down the drain.

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That sounded like smart luck, huh? Well there's always a counter-story...

Down in the southwestern most Parrish near Holly Beach, all but about two homes were left standing. One was a trailer that not even FEMA could explain why it wasn't destroyed. One other house actually survived outright. One habitable house out of 500! But when the cold snap came through a few days ago, the owner lit a fire in the fireplace... he didn't know that the chimney had shifted during the high winds and some of the fire jumped out from the chimney onto the roof and set the whole house afire so much that it burned the whole thing to the ground.

Dumb luck, that.

Thanksgiving picture post

In the feed line

At the banqueting table

In the praise session

A thank you note from the volunteers

Happy Thanksgiving

The first thing I did today was called my people in Valdosta. The family is gathered at the White House. I stayed stowed up in my little pop up trailer as much as possible. I stayed in my jammies until almost five o’clock in the p.m. Read two chapters from Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Played many songs on the guitar. Went running around the block beside the church building. Many people from the church supplied the volunteers a great Thanksgiving meal. We had a wonderful chapel service. I’m amazed at the intensity of spiritual highs that people get here.

My buddy and brother Nick Diamantides was published in the Word Net Daily, an article on the work here. Click here for a link to it.

Community of Jean Lafitte

More things have been happening that have never happened before:

Every volunteer in at Camp Tammany went to Barataria BC for mass food distribution. We've been working with their preacher Wayne since the beginning. They are the only church helping people in the area. The barriers of religion can come down as long as people are doing things in the name of Christ. I haven't posted pictures in a while, but there will be some great ones from today.

We drove two trucks down into an area 8 miles from Texas to a church able to distribute. (again, pictures later). It was Holly Beach... used to be 500 homes-- reduced to rubble. And all this from RITA, not Katrina. It didn't look like a place houses used to be. It looked like someone had been dumping their trash on the beach; including partial slabs of concrete, truck axles, telephone poles, tanker ship trash.

I was putting bread in the meals today across from Brenda-- she's from here. She was telling me about the people down in the bayou. Her description was something like this:

We were talking about the heels of bread and I was asking why they weren't using what I thought was one of the best parts.

It's Winn Dixie bread... the middle parts aren't even too good. But these
people will be thankful... they are used to hard times. They are
resilient. They are always eager to help other people but they don't ever
want to ask for help. They will refuse help if they know someone out there
who needs it more than they do. Yes, they're used to hard times.
This area is used to being flooded ever so many years. They're tough, but
they just go on.

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Bruce was wearing this shirt that "didn't look like him" today. When I asked, he introduced a term I haven't heard before: "This is hurricane clothing. I was up in Atlanta, didn't have any clothes, and I got a good deal on this one."

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When Kally Wyatt and the boys were in town this weekend, I was looking for a Bible to do some daily reading on. THE MESSAGE was sitting there, a version that I haven't had much experience with. After Kally giving me a good sell on it, ensuring me that it would enhance my faith and understanding (much like I experienced when I read the LIVING BIble one time... understood nuances like never before). Read it and love it! It's a good reading version for "story" and poetry.

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I've been visiting a lot of homes lately. Checking out applicants for appliance give-aways. It's been such a blessing being able to visit. Every time my job description shifts, it seems like I always end up with the best job around.

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Still living, just not writing as much

Ya'll who read this blog, sorry for the long gaps.

Tired and busy.

Dad has given me speeches about what to look for with depression.

I've had some tough battles with relationships that have broken our hearts.

God continues to draw me nearer to Him, and that's often through trials.

I've learned of people talking about me and criticizing without going through proper Biblical channels (offendor first, then with witnesses, then before church). But God teaches me to love and forgive.

I think I'm supposed to be resting more and taking more time with The Lord more. It's so easily justified to figure that there's so much of the Lord's work going on all about that "quiet time" is not an option. But that's a lie. It's actually a requirement-- not in a legalistic type way, but just for the path to peace that God is plowing in our hearts.

I realize that my journaling has become somewhat reflectional, but that's just where I am right now. I know pictures are "funner"

I'm starting to do more visiting with the people and that's been a huge blessing. I think maybe God may be drawing me back into "full time ministry" despite my aversion to the system. Life's just too short not to be living the way God gifted us to thrive most. Still a ginormous gap exists between the way people feel when they know they are ministered to by volunteers and by "paid ministers"

I met two men today both of whom lost family in the hurricane's aftermath. One just got his mother's body from the Feds Tuesday. There are still over 300 unclaimed bodies.

I've been learning a lot about FEMA and the whole process. Did you know that unless impoverished before the storm, everyone is required to fill out an application through the Small Business Administration? It's part of the "system" of getting help from FEMA. And you can't get anything until you make that application process happen. People are afraid of getting the loan, so they don't fill it out. But they can't get help unless they do fill it out. The gist is that the uneducated are the ones who lose because the system must be explained in the funked up way that it is, which doesn't make sense to most people.

Had an amazing presentation at a staff meeting:

I want to tell you of a group of people who were thrust into a ministry together. They were all different backgrounds, of all diverse talents, diverse strengths and weaknesses, there were some who were better at some things than others. They had a leader who would quietly pray for them and pray that they would simply just get along and do well.

Everybody knew the story was about us. We have been living together like church camp that has lasted 12 weeks. Tensions have run high. Janet prays for us and tries to hold us together. We all do different jobs. Some people click with others and some people clash with others. So then Becky flips the page on the chart to reveal the group she was talking about.

Peter
Andrew
James
John
Phillip
Bartholemew
Thomas
Matthew
James
Thaddeus
Simon
Judas

Their leader tried to hold them together. Tried to get them together on the things that mattered most: Loving one another. Sometimes they just didn't get it. There was always a power struggle as to who would be the greatest among them. But he stuck with them and stayed faithful to his own call that he had given them, not because they were deemed worthy to fulfill the task.

Simple Beauty

We call it a disaster because of how it's affected us men.

But how do you explain all the beauty in the world?

Why do we always start questioning God when the things happen that we consider bad, thing that affect us adversely?

Look at the wind blowing through the trees.
Feel the warmth of a sunbeam.
Smell a soft flower.
Hear a coo of a baby with their mom

Where are the people who question God those wonderful things happen?

It's ridiculous to think of someone demanding an explanation for joy and beauty. Because when it's there, it's not questioned, but often taken for granted.

But maybe we should demand an explanation.

After being down here in Lousiana for Katrina Recovery, I have not yet gotten into even one of those conversations of WHY? with anyone-- they're just too busy trying to get back to a new normal.

And babies still coo.
Flowers are still pretty (and even growing out of MUCK!!)
A lot of trees have fallen, but most of them still stand and those that do
still wave majestically in the wind.

Instead of complaining when any event disturbs my life on a scale of inconvenience to tragedy, I pray for the wisdom to ask whether or not I NEEDed to be disturbed? or Interrupted?

Why?

Had I stopped noticing the beauty?

Or maybe I started thinking beauty is all there was and needed to be reminded of the realness of suffering?

Actually, I believe this wonderful, miserable world is a balance of both beauty and pain (example: childbirth). It's wonderful because God made it, it's miserable because it's just temporary and God has bent us to need something more than things of this earth.

I know it's too easy to let life happen as it goes, just to be satisfied...

Sometimes I don't pay enough attention to the suffering

And too often, I don't remember to notice the beauty, the things that are too good to be normal.

Normal. That's just where the middle of life is-- beauty on one side and suffering on the other.

I think God invites disiples to visit suffering often and lofty things will result:

1. we get the appreciation of beauty in greater intensity than before. Joy and suffering are a package deal
2. we get to meet people where God is-- in the face of suffering.

He wants there to be a family reunion in places of suffering...

some are doing the suffering

and some relieve suffering, share the burden

Remember Deuteronomy 15:11 "There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land."

Always poor

Always naked

Always hungry

Always imprisoned (big ups to Kairos LSP)

Always disaster

Always beauty

Always believe

Always hope

Always love

Joshua 1:9 . . .Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."

More blessings

Sunday:

• Almost like a day off... good church Sunday. Carrolton Avenue Church visited with us enmasse because their building isn't fit to worship in now.
• Ate at Copelands which is fine New Orleans Cuisine
• Visited the Robinsons, which you may remember from an earlier post. Only Jackie Robinson was home. He reported that everyone was doing well. We dropped off some backpacks for the kids.
• Cafe Dumonde. Must I say more?

Monday:

I'm sitting here in the office a lot getting things like press packages and power point presentations put together.

Tuesday:

Same thing.

Still loving it though. I really look forward to chapel. We have a small group, but singing is still good-- because we love doing it. Don McMillon is a good song leader. He and Kathy are sojourners from Rochester, MN.

I'm in the market for a laptop. Would like one of those tablet PC's because of their flexibility of use. I will be more productive on it because I can jot things down and file it away.

Gotta get back to it. It's late, but wanted to report.

Here's something fun:

Stacey Hooper is here and she named and color coded our fleet of Penske trucks as follows:

(you know, to distinguish which yellow truck is which)

1. The green one is Claremore
2. The red one is Rosenkranz
3. The yellow one is Clifford
4. The blue one is Buelah
5. The White one is Whitfield

thankfulness

I'm sitting here having been blessed. My prayer tonight is for the people out there who don't know the sheer joy of sitting in an assembley of saints who aren't thinking of or doing anything but praising God.

Our group here this weekend is larger, about 67 people (about 9 earlier this week)-- a group led by an old friend of mine Bobby Crews who also led a youth group to the church when I was preaching in Key West; another good size group from Harding all traveled down in their cars, about 27 of them. We have a group from Indiana, Columbus OH, Haiti & Illinois, Tennessee ladies who've been here many times, and a hand full of long-termers.

Went to an Solis Elementary school as agents of Nickelodeon, passing out bookbags and blessing the children while they were blessing us with their smiles and thankfulness.

Enjoyed lunch with Mike Fox, good buddy of the family, preacher at Hickory Knoll. One of our fun missions today was buying and delivering food for a blind sister from the congregation. He toured me of their building, which was insured for the damages, but they will be out of sorts for at least a year, their auditorium uninhabitable due to wind damage on the roof.

I'm reminded of the need to be thankful... so many people have blessed my life and I more often than not fail to send a card or some token of appreciation. I really hurt today for the people who don't know God's love. I pray he can make that pain grow until I'm bothered so much I'll speak up more for Christ, my Lord. He'll work a good work within me, He is faithful.

Chicken drop Belle Chasse and good family time

Blue Roofs.

From the sky it looks like everyone has a swimming pool on top of their homes.













Paul and I drove a truck over to Belle Chasse today, dropped off frozen chickens to the school system. They appreciated it, they are going to feed the children with it. The lady on the right is Donna, she's in charge of the parish's school food services.

After that, we visited the church of Christ in Belle Chasse (pronounced Bell Chase) . They have an operation going on there, as well. They are doing some unique things: when someone comes in and gets assistance of any kind, they make them write out a thank you card. They have had some really sweet things written down. They also have a set of grocery carts in the building for people shopping for food and supplies. They just carry them out to their car with them down the handicapped ramp at the building.

This is Barbara. She's lived down here her whole life. All her friends are from here. She worked in the food service industry (restaurants-- waiting tables, cooking) her whole life. She finally moved on up and started her own restaurant: Barbara's. Then Katrina, now Barbara d0esn't have a way to make a living anymore.

Supplies for Hialeah Church of Christ

Brett and Paul with members of Christ from Hialeah

Working hard to unload family boxes which give all supplies needed for a family of four for five days.

An hermano from the church carrying a family box for a lady from the community.

Johnathan Hines from Mandeville and Mark Herrera of Hialeah

First Response Aid to Wilma's Miami-- Sunrise Community Christian

We left a generator and some food. They were having services in the parking lot the next morning and were handing out the food to the congregation. Paul and Carla Behrenberg hosted us for a break in their home.