My eldest son and I head to New Orleans tomorrow with a group of about 30 from Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church. One of our former seminary-student-interns is pastoring there at Redeemer Presbyterian Church and we hope to make a small dent in the process of cleaning up their neighborhood. This summary from Redeemer's website makes it abundantly clear just how astronomically huge this job of restoring NOLA is:
80% of the city of New Orleans was flooded in Aug 2005. 172,000 of 215,000 homes were damaged. This amounts to several times more than the entire rest of the Gulf Region combined. Habitat for Humanity (the finest organization of its kind) has built fewer than 172,000 homes nationwide in its first 25 years, so you can see our task is huge. Another way of looking at it – there are 520 licensed contractors in New Orleans, so even at ten homes per contractor per year, it would still take nearly 35 years to rebuild!
Pray that we will be a blessing and encouragement to one another, as well as to those we are seeking to serve in New Orleans.
I won't be posting until after the 6th of January....of course, after the last 2 weeks, you no longer expect regular posts from me anyway, do you?
The Lord be with you all.
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