Good Morning New Orleans

It's 6:30 and some of us are waking to our first full day of work. Yesterday was our welcome day, welcomed to Christian Unity Baptist Church, making ourselves welcome at the hotel and in the French Quarter and some of us, due to the generousity of someone at CUBC, welcome to the Jazz Festival. We all were made welcome by a sudden and persistent torrential rainstorm, a little over an inch of water fell in an hour. It was fun and folks adapted, but I couldn't help wondering if that much rain in that little time is a little unnerving for folks here.

Some of you are wondering about our journey here. It was longer than expected. I wrote a little that's included below. We only made it to Dayton OH the first night, which made for a long ride on Saturday. We got here around 1 am CDT. Most of the folks stayed relaxed and patient except for our two oldest workers who kept looking for things to do "Why aren't we working?"

Today we will be.

It was a strange feeling for me when we drove into the Lower Ninth Ward yesterday after lunch, to have our look at the Daycare. At first I didn't notice the level of destruction, something that has always got to me in the past. Then I noticed that I didn't notice and it bothered me that I'd gotten used to it. Then I did notice and felt sick to my stomach. People's lives marked by empty lots and ruins of houses and an idle day care centre. And the look on the faces of our crew, at least the new ones, when they saw the size of the task we've decided to tackle, and the smiles on the faces of those who have been here before and know that what looks impossible at the beginning of the week looks much different at the end.

So a paragraph I wrote earlier:
It’s almost 11 pm on Friday night and we should be coming into Louisville KY, about an hour away from our overnight stop in Elizabethtown. Should be. We left Aylmer with a happy group and great rides at 11:10, almost right on time. A group of friends and family and folks from our churches and Katrina, a young Golden Retriever praying for us and happy for us and cheering us on our way. An uneventful trip and easy run over the Ambassador Bridge and there we were, at 220 pm, at US Customs and Border Patrol with our email granting us permission to enter the States clutched in hand. But lo, the Scribes and Pharisees decried that we must be processed with antiquated software and a tedious process. We were patient and took in the stories of fellow travelers, and finally got on the road at 810 pm. That would put us in Elizabethtown in time for the breakfast buffet. So we will be stopping in Dayton sometime after midnight and have a 14 hour drive NOLA tomorrow. Thank goodness we get an extra hour when we change time zones!

Enough of that. Pictures and reflections of other coming soon. A last word?
We met a woman with a very young baby at church yesterday. Beautiful child. Her name is Hope.