Monday Night

Wow! We made it to Covington, LA last night about 5:00. Covington is where Touchglobal has it's headquarters and the Trinity E Free Church hosts teams to do Katrina reconstruction. After a crazy drive from Nashville, TN (where we stayed the night) into Alabama where we hit lots of blowing snow and freezing road conditions we were relieved to finally reach Mississippi with dry roads and NO snow. Alabama was insane because of the freezing road conditions and the fact that people in that state do not expect snow so they do not salt the roads AT ALL and usually never drive in wintry conditions so they slide all over the road. Thank you for the prayers of safety, the Lord heard you and we arrived safely in Covington.

After breakfast at 6:30am we had devotions, a great piece from John Horst about expectations and then descriptions of what to do and not do at a work site. "If you don't take a tool with you I can garantee you won't have it when you need it." We also saw a great photo of a man who nailed two of his fingers together with a nail gun. Cool.

We were then sent off to our sites. Ralph is team leader for a site that is caulking siding. John is team leader for a site that is tearing out a kitchen and Jason, Haley and I went with one of the Touch global people to tear off siding and put up plywood to get ready for new siding.

After working we met at Castle Rock EFC in downtown New Orleans for Jumbalaya dinner and a great worship service and testimony from a young man who grew up in one of the projects down here that has since become an intern with the church.

There are so many stories about people still not in their homes. Some people are still working each day to get things fixed either by themselves or with help from others such as the church here. Others have given up and there are still many homes that look just like they looked when we were here in July and Dec 06. The neighborhoods are slowly coming back but still spotty with "blighted" (unusable/unsavable) homes.

Many of us did prayer walks, prayed with others or prayed on sites. God is good and still working miracles here.

I'm exhausted and heading to bed, lights out at 10.