The Pink Project

While in New Orleans, our mission team drove over to the Ninth Ward - the area most devastated by flooding. This area of town was exceedingly poor before the storm, and whole sections of the neighborhood were literally swept away. Houses were lifted from their foundations and floated away...some landed "intact" on top of cars and trucks, while the pressure caused others to fall to pieces. Most residents were left without any means to rebuild their lives.

Our team had a particular interest in visiting the area, because several of us are familiar with and have supported Desire Street Ministries which, pre-Katrina, worked in the Upper Ninth Ward establishing a church and school. In this area where the greatest number of casualties occurred, those who survived were scattered to the four winds. For the time being, Desire Street has relocated to Baton Rouge, though they are simultaneously working to restore property and homes in New Orleans. Their website is worth visiting...

It is easy for us to acknowledge the hand of the Lord in a ministry effort such as Desire Street, which sets out deliberately serving in the name of Jesus Christ. However, there is another work taking place across the canal in the Lower Ninth Ward, which does not immediately appear to be the work of Christ.

During our tour of the area, as we crossed the Canal which divides the Upper and Lower Ninth Wards, our eyes fell upon a sight which demanded our attention...dozens of hot pink shapes rose from the ground in what appeared to be an empty field. As we drove nearer and entered the area, we realized that this empty field once held hundreds of houses which were obliterated by Katrina. Driving through the streets, we saw one concrete slab after another, some with lone staircases leading to the nothingness which used to be a home. It was a remarkably sobering sight.

We kept driving toward these pink tent-like structures known as The Pink Project. These hot pink monstrosities represent pieces of the first 150 houses which Hollywood celebrity, Brad Pitt, hopes to help build in this neighborhood. For every $150,000 in donations, pieces of these pink tents are assembled into the shape of a house, symbolic of the real home to come.

The website to which I have linked above details the goals of the project, but the site has a very different "feel" to it than the project had in person. The bottom line is that Mr. Pitt visited this area, met with its former residents and local politicians (who had no intention of rebuilding the Ninth Ward), and he was moved with compassion for the utter devastation and inability of these folks to rebuild their lives.

So far, he has sunk at least $5,000,000 of his own money into the project, and his name has drawn a great deal of attention to and participation in restoring this hard-hit area.

I admit that my initial reaction to hearing about this was to scoff...at Pitt's motivation, at how small a sacrifice this probably was for him, at his pretention of caring. After visiting the site, my mind was changed.

First of all, I was convicted of my arrogance - often my own motivations for doing what is right are not pure and are even self-serving, but that doesn't make what I'm doing any less right in itself. And thankfully, the Lord uses me in spite of myself.

Secondly, I became convinced that what Brad Pitt is doing in New Orleans, whether or not he realizes or acknowledges it, is nothing less than God's redemptive work. He is an instrument in God's hands, bringing hope and blessing to hundreds of people. Every good gift comes from above, and Mr. Pitt is a distributor of those good gifts which ultimately originate from Our Father's hand. He is an agent of God's restorative work in the world...think about it.

Remember all the times in the Scriptures when God uses men for His own purposes even though they are wholly unaware of it. The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord and He turns it wherever He wills...likewise, Brad Pitt's heart is in the hand of the Lord and He has turned it toward compassion for these people.

May the Lord continue to prosper HIS OWN work through His servant, Brad Pitt.

Our NOLA Family

This is Shirley (whose home we gutted last week) and 6 of her 7 children...the oldest was at work and missed the photo op. The "baby" is named "Seven" - the number of perfection and completion. He was born shortly before Katrina and weighed only 1 pound at birth. He's darling! Each of the children had such sweet dispositions, and Shirley is a remarkable woman who has endured numerous hardships through the years, yet she expresses an abiding childlike trust in the Lord, and maintains an outward vision, concerned for others more than herself. One simple manifestation of that vision was that she provided lunch for us two days - shrimp po'boys and spaghetti with homemade meatballs.

Shirley and her children ended up in Houston after the flooding and only returned to New Orleans about 2 months ago. They currently live in a friend's home while awaiting reconstruction of their water-damaged house. The house, which sits directly on the ground (unlike most NOLA houses which are elevated 12-48") took on about 12-18" of water inside which, as you can imagine, is enough to ruin most furniture and many other belongings. Many items unharmed by water were subsequently ruined by mold.

On the first day, we emptied the house of furniture and a variety of other "stuff." One of the week's most poignant moments for me was watching the two older boys pictured above rifle through their belongings, trying to decide which "treasures" were salvageable. The younger of the two (14 years old) filled a box with toys that he hadn't seen since he was 11 and with which he was not ready to part. It can't be easy watching strangers come in and throw out your possessions, yet they were sweet and thankful...amazing.

We were successful in dismantling most of the house's interior - drywall, ceilings, mouldings, fixtures, etc., though there is one room and a garage which we didn't have access to until Friday. Hopefully another team will follow soon to finish this stage of the job. This process unveiled extensive termite damage throughout the whole house, so many of the disintegrated studs and crossbeams will have to be replaced, adding time and cost to the process. The family potentially faces a very long wait before rebuilding takes place. Most of the houses on their block were gutted long ago, but are in various stages of reconstruction. As time passes, it becomes more and more difficult to acquire enough skilled laborers to do all that needs to be done...the need remains significant.

Our hope and prayer is that Shirley's needs will be met soon, so her family can regain a sense of normalcy and stability.

Many thanks to Pastor Shane Gibson at Redeemer Presbyterian for making this opportunity available to us. We went down there hoping to be a blessing and were blessed in return.

Back From NOLA

New Orleans surprised me. Not only is its downtown "proper" much larger than I anticipated, it is sprawled out in a way I never imagined. Satellite and aerial footage don't translate into reality for me.

NOLA is very much alive and very much a mess. We spent Sunday afternoon in the French Quarter where we sampled a variety of seafood at the ACME Oyster Company. The Chargrilled Oysters were simply fabulous, and we acquired a taste for some local brew as well (ABITA Amber and Turbo Dog). From there we walked through the Quarter, which was teeming with tourists, locals, marching bands - big football week, you know - and street performers. Of course we made the compulsory trek to Cafe du Monde for some to-die-for beignets and cafe au lait, then hung around Jackson Square for a little while. New Orleans has a decidedly un-Southern flavor and, to me, it felt much more like San Francisco than anywhere else I've been (except for its visual tributes to Southern Civil War Generals!)

Pastor Gibson (of Redeemer Presbyterian Church) told us that some - maybe even a good deal - of the messes we saw existed before Katrina, and have only been exacerbated by the storm. One of the most striking aspects of the city is that the majority of the neighborhoods don't fit in a category of "well-kept" or "slummy," but are a curious mixture of both...maybe 4-5 houses on a block would be really nice and the rest in varying degrees of disarray or reconstruction...or vice versa.

Apparently the flooding from Katrina occurred in similarly random patterns - one block would have 18" of water, a block or two over would be virtually dry, while the next might have 4' of standing water. Some of our best times this week were spent hearing people's "stories"...and they all have them. While we stood around waiting for homeowners to show up, or for dumpsters to arrive, we were able to engage with neighbors who are eager to tell their personal Katrina experience.

I was likewise struck by the resiliency of many residents who remain astonishingly hopeful in spite of the devastation and the many blunders by those on whom they relied for help. There is still an incredible amount of restoration, demolition and rebuilding to be done, yet residents expressed such gratitude at our coming to gut a couple houses...you would've thought we were building something new and beautiful. After all this time, the simple act of tearing out the old helps them cling to the hope that it will all be made new again.

The greatest encouragement arising from the rubble of New Orleans is that, in wake of the governments' failures, The Church is the one who is stepping up to the plate in a way that is too obvious to be ignored. Almost everything is being done by the People of God, and the Good News of the Gospel is being proclaimed loudly and clearly by the Church's sacrificial service.

Pray for renewal of the hearts, minds and culture of New Orleans, as the physical surroundings are renewed.

NOLA

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.