After the long flight diagonally across the country from Spokane, Washington to New Orleans, Louisiana, we arrived on the evening of March 12 in Luling, Louisiana, the site of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance village # 7 that was to be our home for the next six days. There were 19 of us in all — 14 students and 5 older adults — who formed the Campus Ministry spring break work group to help with Gulf Coast relief.

Our assignment was the home of Connie and Ronald Andry in Mid-City, New Orleans, a diverse, middle class neighborhood with broad tree arched boulevards. The family had evacuated the day before Katrina hit and breached levees flooded their neighborhood with 10 feet of water that remained for two weeks. The house had been declared salvageable and the owners had decided to rebuild. Our task was to remove all the contents and gut the house down to the frame.

Amid the mold and dust and debris, we experienced the Spirit of the living Christ. And we were blessed in so many ways.

We were blessed by koinonia — that beautiful New Testament Greek word for commitment, fellowship, and caring. Hard work, humor, conversation, and common cause bonded us in ways that only mission trips with a purpose can do. We learned to love each other. We became family. The fellowship of the Spirit became our identity.

We were blessed by our New Orleans family as well. They were present each day and spent quality time in conversation with all of us. They helped us sort through stuff to save; they told us stories; they shared their grief (50 percent of all evacuees experience some form of post traumatic stress syndrome); most of all they shared their love and deep appreciation.

Connie’s brother was a God-send. Gregg lived in Uptown, an area that did not flood and was less affected by Katrina. After evacuating to Baton Rouge, Connie now has a FEMA trailer in Gregg’s driveway. Gregg is an unemployed elementary school teacher (his school has yet to re-open) and a professional jazz musician. He’s good. He gave several of us CD's of his band in which he plays trumpet and does vocals. He is currently playing in Helsinki.

During the week we were there Gregg gave a part of every day to us. One day was especially profound. We were nearly finished with the house, but had not yet toured the 9th ward — that devastated section of New Orleans where over 300,000 people had lived before the breached levees flooded everyone out. Gregg offered to spend the entire day riding with all three van loads of us and experience the 9th ward.

Dropping down off I-10 we entered a wasteland of wreckage, house after house, block after block, mile after mile of devastation. Houses on top of houses on top of cars; houses in the streets, water lines to the roofs. As we drove through what looked like a war zone, the van became silent. We were literally speechless. These were not merely houses, They were homes. Families had lived and loved and died here. Now they were gone in the great post-Katrina diaspora that has scattered them all around the United States.

Gregg reminded us that there were two disasters that struck New Orleans last September. The hurricane was the natural disaster. The broken levees, the shameful political response at all governmental levels, was the human disaster.

It was a good thing we traveled there in Lent. We saw first hand the consequences of pollution, poverty, incompetence, human greed, and the violence of neglect. All around there was evidence of crucifixion. It was like walking the Via Dolorosa, each place of suffering a station of the Cross. But we also saw signs of Resurrection. The thousands of students on spring break from colleges and universities all around the country, church groups, relief agencies — all becoming the hands and arms and legs and eyes of Christ.

And for our group, the witness of this wonderful family God had given us. Connie, Ronald, Gregg — they ministered to us. We were the ones who received the greatest blessing. On the last day, after the sweeping and cleaning and final details of our deconstruction work were accomplished, we all gathered in a circle inside the gutted house. One of our students led in a reflection and a prayer of blessing. Then Connie said “I have something to say”. And what she said was so profound and eloquent that she had us all in tears before she was finished. She spoke of depression and indecision about what to do with the house the first time she saw it when she returned. She spoke of the despair of seeing her home filled with mold and debris broken into a thousand pieces. But then, she said, there was a transformation. On the second and third day she began to see the possibilities. She turned a corner. She began to be filled with hope and gratitude. She said that God had sent us to her. And now the house was blessed from the ground up, just as it had been blessed when it was finished the first time. She said “You’re all family now. This is your home, too. You all have to come back and spend some time here”.

And we will. Whenever you meet the living Christ in the love and suffering of his people, you have to go back and meet him again.

Walt Miller
Pullman, Washington