Available…for His glory.

Awesome.  Amazing people.  Servant hearts.  

Friday we headed back to Ms. Patricia's to work on finishing sheetrocking the back room and mudding, taping, or sanding pretty much 2/3rds of her home.  Shout out to Donny, Seleena, and Patrick for working for 2 days in the laundry room on the sheet rock.  Lisa and John got the back room sheetrocked on the ceiling and Lisa moved on to mudding.  Sheetrocking a ceiling for a day is work enough for anyone.  Cindy, Lucy and Sarah were the mudding and taping queens who then became sanding queens.  Sarah found that she could sit in a chair and sand a good bit (she is pregnant with child number 3 so she has a reason to want to sit).  We put in a good day of work then headed home for showers.  

After cleaning up and getting sheetrock dust out of our ears, eyes and noses we headed out for touristy food.  We went to the French qtr to eat at Acme.  Lisa, Lucy, and Donny worked on some RAW oysters while everyone else had cooked food.  Lisa's crab sandwich pretty much looked like the whole crab fried.  Patrick DID try crab claws but failed to step up to the oyster challenge.  He said "Next time" which means- next year, next trip. 

We headed down Royal Street and stopped in the Gallery of LIght.  If I had about 1600 to spend on art (or more) I would spend it here.  This was the first time I got to go inside and it is more amazing than outside.  The gallery had dimmers you can adjust to adjust the pictures depth of light.  Like a Noah's ark painting if you dimmed the light it made the sun shine breaking over the mountain behind the half constructed ark look like it was dawn and the light became more brilliant.  Tons of great art.  My favorite is a Don Dahlke window of a cottage you can "look" through to the beach.  I am constantly amazed at God's creation and those who can recreate it in art…

And of course we finished off the night with a stop at Cafe Du Monde and a walk down by the river.  We headed home tired and full. 

Saturday was our last day of work.  We FINALLY got the front room sheetrocked- John and Patrick became pros and Patrick learned how to measure and screw up sheetrock the American way (on the joists).  Cindy I think carried home 4 pounds of sheetrock dust in her hair and clothes and Lisa remudded the entire kitchen hall and front room I think.  We joked that the next team will have all the fun.  They can finish sanding then prime and paint.  Patrick said "All the glory goes to God anyway"  We joked that the glory DOES go to God but we would like a little credit! 🙂

As we got ready to leave we gave the family a God's promises book and another book for little Micheal.  Lucy shared her heart and started to cry as she talked.  I was glad it wasn't me.  Cuz you know how I can get like that too….welcome to the club Lucy.  Ms. Patricia was so grateful and gracious.  I told her we were family now and would stop by next time to check on her.  We were blessed to work for her. 

We headed back to the French Qtr to see if the churches were feeding the homeless.  We had made up bags for them and wanted to help serve.  Well the policeman who knows about all that was off and NO ONE at the NOLA precinct knew anything about it so we tried.  No line of homeless or anything.  One guy said they haven't been serving down there regular.  We were all bummed out to say the least.   The team was so ready to meet folks and share and serve.  So we headed home for dinner.  After dinner Lucy, Donny and I headed to Krispy Kreme.  Can you say HOT LIGHT?  We did.  Lucy and Donny's first trip to see the doughnuts being flipped and lovely.  Good times.

Sunday we got up early to pack and sightsee a little before heading home.  We drove in the Garden district then to Metarie Cemetery.  We learned it was old and had some cool stories so we thought we should go.  Found out that it also had a road race Sunday morning.  Yep- in the cemetery. So we broke the rules and drove in.  AS we were trying to leave the fun run was creeping up row by row on us.  So I hurried everyone in the van before they caught up to us and we had to wait for all of them to run by.  Fun times being sort of chased out of the cemetery.

We headed to the Lower 9th Ward.  Brad Pitt's Make it Right group has put up maybe 7 homes- the funky homes with slanted roofs in the pictures. 

 A couple of Menonite homes are up and the neighborhood is slowly coming back.   The picture of the ladder with the brick wall thing…after we climbed on it we found out it was art and we were supposed to stay off.  Whoops.  Missed the sign when we walked up.  They need a bigger sign 🙂

Things we learned:

service to simply serve and require nothing in return

Patrick learned that there really are poor people in America

Cindy loves Pepsi

Donny loves motorcyles

Lisa loves coffee

John loves crossword puzzles

Sarah loves to stay warm

Selenna loves the laundry room

Lucy doesn't know how to operate her camera

Most everyone DOESn't like crossword puzzles… (haha)

Sometimes we have to think outside the box and make ourselves Available in new ways….scratch that.  NOT "sometimes" but all times…

We had a great time.  Great team.  Great God.  I read Kyles blog about feet washing (see kyles blog on my typelist…can't get the "paste" on my mac to work to drop the page in) and thought about our team.  My community group is studying John and John 13 was on the list last week.  We talked about service and what that means.  How our understanding of service changes.  How Jesus did it regardless… So take a minute to visit Kyle's page to see his blog.  

And take a look at the photo album.  promise it is there.  And thanks NOLA team…for putting up with my driving, my harrassing, and giving of yourselves.  I would be glad to take you anywhere anytime.  Uganda is in May…hint hint… 🙂