I was blessed by the opportunity to serve in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans, to help build a new home for two women who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina nearly three years ago. I went down in caravans of 42 people from Syracuse with an organization called “Operation Southern Comfort” which is affiliated loosely with a Catholic parish in Liverpool. Norm Andrezejewski started OSC in 2005 after learning that his friends in the south had lost everything, and he offered to bring a crew down to help. Three years later and twelve crews later, Norm and his volunteers have blessed dozens of people by building homes, helping provide books and musical equipment for children, mucking out homes, and giving hope to people.

 

On the trip I participated in, we were able to build a home for Marilyn and her 86-year-old mother, Stella, and give them a place of their own so they could finally move out the the tiny Fema trailer they’d been sharing.

 

We built the home from the ground up on a piece of property acquired from a friend of theirs, and we poured the foundation blocks, laid framing, constructed subfloors, built door and window frames, hammered thousands of nails (making games out of who could sink a three-inch galvanized nail with the least strokes and the most precision. I’m proud to say Cathy M. and I held the record!), toolbelt comparison was another fun diversion during our whistle-blown breaks. We constructed the roof trusses, interior wall frames, two porch decks (I and Renee did one singlehandedly, and I went from thinking I’d be stuck on kitchen duty to quickly becoming Rosie the Riveter, Glue Chick, and many other titles). We poured and filled two tons of sand around the foundation after heavy rains to create the slopes for runoff. That is back-breaking work, I must say. Raking and wheelbarrowing sand for hours, pushing the barrow through four inches of stagnant water after a day of heavy rain, and leveling the entire foundation with rakes and shovels, while tromping in water inside and outside of your shoes.

 

We stayed in a small bible church in Belle Chasse, on Fema cots in the classrooms. There were three bathrooms for 42 workers to share. There were times you’d have to set your alarm for 2 o’clock in the morning to get a shower from the long day of work. There were times I was sound-asleep by  o’clock without the strength to hold a pen to journal. The church community was so grateful for our help, and we were treated to gorgeous feasts for dinner every night, including jambalaya, gumbo, roast turkey, roast ham, stuffed shells, homemade desserts enough to feed an army, and so much more. The hope we brought with us was abundant and I was surprised at how little had been done to rebuild New Orleans by the government. The politics behind the atrocity were heartbreaking, and to walk through unmucked-out houses in the Lower Ninth Ward was beyond words, beyond expression, beyond emotion, how incredibly heartbreaking it was to observe firsthand. The remnants of people’s homes, people’s lives, little glimpses of existence abandoned, homes that had to be evacuated or residents had perished, the 25 feet of stagnant water that filled the Ward for an entire month while people and animals died. The sadness that was all around. And the hope and encouragement and love that volunteers brought. It was a life-changing experience, and much more help is needed. Downtown New Orleans is alive and well. It is the impoverished parts,the wards where the poor had lived, the less glamourous sections, that are still waiting like a silent spring to be reawakened, revitalized, replanted.

 

I thank the Lord Jesus for granting me the opportunity to go and give a little bit of myself. I pray that He would speak to your hearts and ask you if this is something you might be able to do. Norm has six other trips planned for this year, and it is encouraging to see other groups going and serving. There is much work and few hands. Please contact me if you are able to serve. And please pray for the wonderful people of Louisiana. God gave them generous hearts and they served us in many ways more than I feel I served them. I’m going back someday to Blue Bayou. If you ever hear me singing that song, you’ll know the special meaning it has to me now. Now I think of my new friends, my new family, a part of me I left behind in Belle Chasse. May the Lord bless them all.