New Orleans

New Orleans was AWESOME and then again it was sad. There were 15 of us that went 4 sponsors and 11 graduated seniors. 4 Guys and 11 Girls. We got our assignment on the day that we arrived. We went to bed early and got up at 6:00a.m. and ate breakfast and went to work. I wasn't prepared for what I saw. I knew that we would be taking everything that the person owned and piling it in the street but what I didn't know was how much it would impact me in the end. The lady who lived in the house that we did was in her 60s and she hadn't been back since she left. She didn't have a husband or any children and she lost her dog due to the storm. She stayed and was going to wait out the storm. It was just a hurricane after all and she thought she would be safe. If the levees hadn't of broke she probly would have been safe. She lived in New Orleans near the airport. She spent the first night on her refrigerator. The next day she ended up wading to the highway with her neighbors. She is deathly scared of water. It was a huge leap of faith. It was neat to hear her story. Our job was to put on these masks so we wouldn't get sick and go into her house and take everything out. Since she waded out she had left everything. It was a 2 bedroom house with a dining room and a living room. She also had a garage full of stuff and a laundry room with a bathroom out there. The whole house sat in about 3 feet of water for a month and then was left with no one touching it since. It was pretty gross. After we got all the funiture and appliances out we then tackled the carpet and then the walls. You tear everything down to the studs. It was pretty amazing how much we got done. It felt as if we were tearing apart her life. We took her house down to the studs and made a huge pile of all her belongings on the street. It also made me realize that all this stuff on earth means NOTHING! It is just stuff and this is just a passing point until we get to the really good stuff. So I started thinking why is all the stuff we have in our houses so important to us? You don't bring anything with you and you can't take anything back.(That made me think of the song You'll Be There by George Strait) The world is so messed up. We make things mean so much when in all reality they mean NOTHING! Anyway New Orleans was a time of growth and it was an eye opening experience.