#Orleans09

(All New Orleans 2009 posts can be found here)

Today was the most frustrating day. I was moved to a new jobsite so that Anne Marie and I could work together. Well, that didn’t work out since everyone went onto the roof and I only lasted for 5 minutes there before I was so terrified I had to get down. Yep, still afraid of heights. So Anne Marie spent the day 20 feet in the air and I spent the day on the ground and we only saw each other at breaks and lunch. Everyone else was fine on the roof. I hadn’t been that high in a while so I figured I’d give it a try. I froze; my heart rate accelerated. It took a few minutes for my heart rate to come down. (If you are a roofer, continue laughing)

I was given an air nailer and put to work. It was a job I was not good at and had no desire to do – and it was cold today. It must have been below zero. This is not what we expected in New Orleans. We under packed a bit… ok, a lot.

I really missed my crew from the rest of the week (Brad, Jordon, Kitty, Trudy, and Anna).

We ended the day (and the week) with a worship service with all of the AEMMCers plus two friends we met here that now feel like family. Jordon, with whom I worked for the majority of the week, and Dan, who was the one that almost got me expelled for singing “Folsom Prison Blues”.

This was a good week. We never could have gotten to know each other the way we did if we hadn’t been working with and relying on each other and isolated together in the evenings.

So tired… time to play a game of Scrabble with Billy “The River” and then hit the hay. We fly home tomorrow morning.

(All New Orleans 2009 posts can be found here)

This week has been about getting to know people and about building relationships. Everyone works so hard and has a great attitude. Trudy Fehr has been amazing as our crew leader – not because she has a commanding presence, but because she works harder than anyone and doesn’t stop unless we have a question to ask. She answers as quickly as she can and gets right back to work.

Kitty has been our on-site spark-plug, providing conversation, energy, and a constant chipper attitude. We’ve laughed a lot, we’ve talked a lot, we’ve teased each other plenty, but we’ve all become better friends.

Brad has been an encouraging workhorse. He and Trudy have become a formidable dry-walling team: Trudy cuts them, Brad puts them up. At this point, at the end of the day, Brad’s hands remain in the shape of the drill handle.

Anna hurt herself today – a large bruise, scrape, and blood spot on her shin. She landed pretty hard, but got right back up and continued to work… until we insisted she sit down and rest. Kitty administered First Aid. We’ve learned so much about Anna this week: she’d like to be a fighter pilot; she loves watching America’s Most Wanted; she’s never been to a movie theatre – and she knows how to use manly power tools.
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Something dawned on me today: we are here doing knuckle-scraping, sweat-inducing work and enjoying it, but why do we only do it here? There is plenty of relief work to do in our own community, for people in our own church even. It’s unfortunate we’ll leave here and get back to life and forget that we could do this at any time. The relationship building and conversational opportunities alone have been worth the trip, not to mention the physical results of the work itself.

It is my turn to lead the devotional tomorrow and I’ve come up with this theme: “The Unspectacular Work of the Spiritual Life”.  I’ve posted my notes here (it only needs to be 5 minutes. 5 minutes?!?!?! Is it possible to say anything in 5 minutes?!?!)

Another day of hard work, but for some reason we got to a lot of conversation today… about church, Jesus, relationships, and church planting. I think we might have planted two new churches today. More details to follow.

Jordon is a young man from Winnipeg who we’ve been working with every day. What a fantastic example of how well a 19-year-old can turn out. He’s polite, responsible, works hard, and engages with everyone. He’s been a pleasure to work with.

The Lower 9th

We finally got to see the lower 9th ward (a bit of history here) today. It was sobering to see the devastation of entire neighborhoods washed away. Can you imagine a levy failing and all that water rushing into your street, filling up your house? This levy you’ve lived beside your entire life and trusted for your safety is suddenly giving way, betraying your trust, abandoning you. One of the more poignant things I saw in the lower 9th today was this:

Nothing left but the front porch. This scene is repeated over and over.

Here is a video of the lower 9th – five months after the storm. Imagine your neighborhood still leveled, looking like a trash dump five months after a storm. And much of the devastation is still untended, 4 YEARS after the storm. There are abandoned houses everywhere, and people living in houses that should be abandoned.

Here’s a video of the area we saw today. (Ignore the conspiracy theory… or don’t. Your choice.)

We had a guest speaker today. Dwight Webster is a Pastor in New Orleans. It was great to hear the personal story of a New Orleans native.

Going Home

We spoke with Madeleine on the phone tonight. She was brave – we could hear her fighting back tears – but we also heard those tears flow after she said goodbye. She misses us, and we miss her. Its going to be great for the 5 of us to be back together again.

We are having such a good time here, even though we are dead tired every night. The food is unbelievable! I’m in a room with Pedro Dyck, Brad Mantyka, and Billy Froese (a.k.a. Guillermo “The River” Froesen). It has been like a week-long junior high sleep over. Other than our deep voices, there is no evidence of adulthood in our room.

Back to work again tomorrow.

Not a whole lot to report today.

Having some breakfast

Ready to go

We are not on vacation after all; we are working. And we really are: Billy is roofing, Anne Marie painting, I’m hanging drywall, Kitty and Anna are mudding and taping, and Trudy is doing whatever needs to be done, whenever it needs to be done. But everyone is working hard. We’re beat when we get back to home base each night but in good spirits and enjoying each other’s company.

We didn’t meet any homeowners today, which is unfortunate.

We Do Dishes too!

One more pic, a little humor. I took this photo of Jacob Bartsch relaxing after supper. I didn’t notice at the time how much leg he was showing:

Jacob Bartsch

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I took a break from writing this post to respond to a request (which was more like blackmail) by one of the Crew Leaders to play “Folsom Prison Blues”. I got halfway through when one of the MDS Directors interrupted and tore a strip off of me. Interesting scenario. It killed the mood in the room pretty quickly. Usually I get in trouble on purpose; this was completely unintentional.

One of my favorite things so far is being in close proximity to some older members of our congregation. Something I appreciate about my heritage is the strong work ethic, and that ethic is on display here this week. But not only do they work hard, they laugh hard and play hard too. Every night there are a few spirited rounds of crokinole.

My experience here has already reinforced my belief that inter-generational ministry is the way to go. During the work day today, my team was doing drywall work. We did well enough that they’re sending us back to the same site tomorrow, but without an MDS Crew Leader. But that’s OK, because Trudy Fehr emerged as our leader.  This was spontaneous and unanimous when the MDS Director asked: “If I take Jake (our current Crew Leader) away tomorrow, who should be you new Crew Leader?” Trudy worked hard today, gave direction, and taught us what to do when we needed help.

“Heeeeeeeere’s Trudy!”

Another fun part of trips like these is that you finally get to see the personalities of people that are usually quiet. This was the case with Anna Kauenhofen today. She’s been the quietest one on the trip so far today but sometime after lunch a personality emerged that we haven’t seen before.

We got to meet the owner of the home we’re working on today. Her name is Virgey (Ver-gee) Holloway. She told us her story; how she’s been out of her home for almost 4 years now; how her family was moved to a small town in Texas; how her family is now scattered across the country because there is nothing to come back to in New Orleans. The story of families being separated by Katrina is very common. Some of these families have generations of history in these New Orleans neighborhoods; in many cases, that history has now ended.

Virgey’s house is a style called “Shotgun House“. As the story goes, they are called this because they are narrow and you could look through the back door and shoot someone at the front door with a shotgun with an unobstructed view. There is additional terminology that I think you’ll find amusing:

Single Shotgun House – a long, narrow, single story house

Double Shotgun – two shotgun houses attached

Single Shotgun Camel (This is what Virgey’s house is – click on the image t see a larger version) – a long, narrow, single story house with a second floor toward the back – a “camel hump” if you will

Double Shotgun Camel – two shotgun houses attached with a second floor toward the back

Virgey had a bit of her terminology mixed up too. There is a Mr. Penner that works for MDS; she knows him as “Mr. Pennerd who works with the Midianites.” Oh well, we didn’t correct her.

New Orleans is a city of paradox: there are decrepit houses everywhere, but there are $80,000 Mercedes and other expensive cars in front of many of them.

I notice that more care and time and attention was put into the older houses. There is an ornateness in the detail. When we refinish them, everything is square and flat and “efficient”.

It was a good day of work… time to go to bed and rest up for another full day tomorrow.

New Orleans 2009

Well we made it here; we’re in New Orleans ready to get to work with MDS (Mennonite Disaster Services).

It was quite a trip: left at 11:00pm, spent over an hour at the Sarnia border, stayed up all night, flew out of Detroit at 6:00am, landed in Houston and hopped onto another plane to New Orleans. About 12 hours total travel time, and we finally got some rest after lunch.

Before supper we headed out for a tour of the city, visiting the French Quarter and the Mississippi. After all that travel, it was nice to find the distraction of attractions.

Here are some of the sights of the city (click on the images to see larger versions):

The origins of the city

A tunnel section of the New Orleans airport

Me in front of an old building

Very nice street art

This was definitely my favorite shot of the day. I call it “Moon Over Mississippi”

Tomorrow, the work begins: drywalling, plumbing, framing, flooring, roofing.

Next week I will be leading a team of 13 to New Orleans to do disaster relief work through Mennonite Disaster Services.

How to follow along:

Blog – I will try to post at least once per day here at the blog and  include pictures. All of the posts related to New Orleans will be at the page you’ll find by clicking here. (If you keep that window open and refresh it periodically, you’ll get all the posts I make from New Orleans.)

Twitter – I will tag my tweets with the hashtag #Orleans09 if you want to follow along on Twitter. If you are not a Twitter user, you can still follow along at by clicking here.