Feeling Small & Feeling Good

NOLA2010

Thursday, July 21, 2010

The Facts:
Fact: Our teams are the hardest-working crews to ever work with Crisis Response.
Fact: I am biased.

Our days are long here. The guys begin their day around 5:45am to wake up, pack up all of our belonging, and move our gear into another building before driving 10 minutes to Trinity Church for breakfast. After breakfast and devotions at 6:30am, we load our vans with lunches, water, and tools for the day. Two of the crews drive along a 24-mile bridge across Lake Ponchatrain into New Orleans. We all work until around 4:30pm and return to Covington to shower and get dinner at 6:30pm. After dinner, we attend an evening program and finish with our own team meeting. After an hour or so of free time, the guys return to their church around 10. The days are long. Please continue to pray for our endurance.

The Details:
Tonight broke the mold of the traditional schedule. Instead of traveling back to the north shore after work, we stayed in the city. New Orleans East is a rather rough part of town according to most locals we speak with, and in it’s heart there is a church called House of Hope. As a ministry, Crisis Response send out teams on prayer walks. A team walks through the neighborhood blocks and prays for God to pour out blessing on houses, parks, and homeowners. The teams also invite everyone they meet to a block party. It’s a really fun way to relax and listen to people. There are hotdogs and drinks for everyone and lots of balls and games for kids. I love block parties.

The Story:
All of our foremen have been super pleased with everyone’s desire to pitch in and do really good work. I like seeing the youth learn a skill and teach other people how to do it. I really think we raise the bar when it comes to making progress in the construction realm; not just in work accomplished but in quality. I noticed though that our prayers down here centered around safety and “getting stuff done”. It bothered me that none of our youth prayed about interactions with people, at least not often. Personally, I made it my prayer that the focus of the trip would be on speaking with people. This is why tonight’s block party moved me toward worship in a new way.

Block parties can be intimidating arenas for youth. It’s a lot of strangers in a scary part of town where you’re expected to engage people in conversation. What I saw at tonight’s block party moved me to tears. After playing soccer with a few young kids, I looked up and saw little pockets of Keystone Youth huddled around multiple neighbors. There must have been almost a dozen little pods; some conversing, some entertaining kids. This was truly a God thing. When I surveyed the block party, I was overwhelmed by my insignificance. I could have preached a whole series on why we should love our neighbor. I could have taught a training module on how to love through listening and dialoguing. I might have even come up with a cool step-by-step acronym for how to do it in the field. But there is no way I could have gotten youth to do it. I can take no credit for how awesome our group was at the block party. Praise God for moving my heart to pray and answering it in a really awesome way. God is doing a million things underneath all of my best intentions and subconscious reactions. It felt really good to feel so small.