AND GOD’S PEOPLE CAME

It was a year ago this week that I took my first journey to post-Katrina New Orleans. It was surreal to see intersections without working traffic lights turned into four-way stops, dark brown lines of sewage in homes where the flood waters had remained for weeks after the levees broke, and hundreds of derelict cars and trucks under the raised roadways of Interstate 10. It had been seven months since Katrina had hit, and I wondered if anyone even cared to clean up the mess that was New Orleans.

There were 10 of us from The Church of the Good Shepherd who began the task of gutting a home in the north part of town known as Gentilly. I looked up and down the street for blocks, and all I saw were houses just like this one we were assigned with no one else working on them. You could go in any direction and see the same thing – thousand of homes waiting to be repaired, or worst case, be bulldozed.

Gutting is a smelly, dirty, disgusting and painful process of taking all the belongings from a home to the street and ripping out everything to the bare wood partitions.

We met Mary, who with her husband had moved to Dallas to find shelter and work. Her daughter had been in the military, and we found her uniform with metals and ribbons still wet after seven months. As we uncovered the treasures of their lives, I could not help but say a prayer of hope that this family would endure and a prayer of thanks that we could be a part of the healing. These are God’s people in gravest need.

In August, I returned to New Orleans to work on two more houses, including one that could not be saved and was ultimately destroyed. There was a sense of hope this time. Many homes showed signs of repair, traffic signals were functioning, stores were open and returning citizens were revitalizing the city. Hundreds of homes in Gentilly had been visited by workers who gutted and prepared them for reconstruction.

Who did all this work? What brought them to this city and from where? They are church people like us, by the hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands, from every state. They are retired people in motor homes, college students on spring break, working people giving up vacation time, teenagers on summer vacation. They are God’s people answering the call and giving hope to a city where hope was almost lost.

As you read this, I am in New Orleans for a third time. This week two more teams from Good Shepherd are continuing this overwhelming task of rebuilding the city. I invite you to join this humanitarian effort, visit this place, meet the people, listen to their stories and bring them hope that comes from sharing Christian love.

— Myron Hanke

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist