Drive-thru Update:
School is in full swing! The kindergartners are settling in nicely, though I still feel rather awkward in my teaching. Though I am still learning boatloads and loving it!
I have started helping to lead worship at Sojourn-Lakeview church and am VERY happy to have music back in my life. Leading worship is one of my favorite things that I have done in life to date, so to have this back is a wonderful gift. On the topic of church, our little church plant has exploded over the last few weeks!! And having come from a church with a lot of great ideas on connecting people and hospitality, I have been given the ability at Lakeview Sojourn to help spearhead this! It is a need and I am very excited to be on the team and helping out!
The non-profit that we are working on starting is getting a bit more shape. I think the legs are starting to form and more people are interested in helping out every week! We are currently working on fixing up a house across the street to turn into intern housing and a sort of community center. If you are in the area and want to help, please let us know!!
Sit-Down Update:
In Madison, it's a widely known fact that everyone has an Everywhere Person, if not more than 1. In college at UW-Madison, one of the things I looked forward to every year was walking to my first week of classes and figuring out who my everywhere people were. Some of them spanned the 5 years I was in school, while others were more short-lived, but there was not a time in Madison that I did not have one. And there is something about them that has always struck something inside of me--something deep and unexplained. I think it made me stop to look at the deeper complexities of life, and to wonder about this person; to think about their life and what was happening to them that made me cross their path the times that I did. Surely, these run-ins were not just coincidence.
When I moved to New Orleans, I thought I had left my everywhere people behind. I thought that a city the size of New Orleans would never allow me the opportunity again of seeing the same red coat or checkered hat again. But on the city bus one day about a month and a half ago, an older man got on the bus. He had puffs of white hair that stuck out under his straw hat with the faded fabric around the brim. His sweat-stained bandana was wrapped around his neck and his tshirt clung to him in the Louisiana heat. His thin, long leg that faced me as he dropped his coins into the ticket dispenser looked as if it had never felt brush of his twin leg. He laughed out loud to himself, revealing a mouth full of missing teeth, as he sat down and pulled out a can of beer in a paper bag. I sat and watched him until he got off the bus, not sure what to do with what I had just seen. I chalked it up to the odd personalities that live in the neighborhood in which I work and went about my day.
But a few days later, he got on my bus again. Same story. Same white puffs of hair. Same long legs. Same beer in a paper bag. Coincidence.
And then I didn't see him again.
Until I was biking home from work the other day and a pickup truck with an old busted refrigerator turned the corner right in front of me and who else was in the back of the truck, holding the refrigerator but the old man. I almost waved, I was so excited.
And then sadness came over me. The reality of my Everywhere Man is that he has probably lived in this city, uneducated, and unable to get out of the cycles of this city, for his entire life. It reminded me of the betrayal that this city leads you into. You are overcome with the history, with the beauty, with the culture of New Orleans when you first visit it. But soon, the true colors come out... Broken relationships. Broken systems. Broken cultures.
And yet, there is so much beauty in the possibilities of redemption for this city...and for the world. The days that I see parents give their kids hugs and show excitement to see them after school...the days that I see affordable decent apartments going into low income neighborhoods...simply, flowers in a pot outside of a house in the hood...lets me know that our God is sovereign and good and will have His way with the people that He loves.
I still feel small here. I still feel like I can't make a bit of difference in the deep, penetrating problems within these lives. But i serve a big God who will bring justice in the end. I serve a God who loves all. And all people have dignity and value because of this. My only role is to live a life that looks more and more like the life that Christ lived, because it is only through that life that Paradise Restored is possible.
Please Pray For:
-An ability to see the glories of God. I am struggling to see beauty in the mess of the world, but I know it is me that is blind to them and not that they are not being revealed to me.
-Stamina to keep trucking forward and to continue to keep God in the forefront of my mind and heart as I try to care for some of the people of this city
-Wisdom as we move forward with various projects
-RefugeNOLA (nonprofit) in Central City with Michael Wong
-We need volunteers and funding to finish off the house we are remodeling for kids in the neighborhood to be
able to hang out at, as well as housing for interns who want to learn more about serving in Central City.
-Sojourn Lakeview Church
-As more of the Lakeview neighborhood returns to New Orleans, our church is growing rapidly. Please pray for
wisdom and and ability to discern what God would be having us do (or not do)
-I am doing better with missing home and people so much, but I still have moments of sorrow (but not regret). I miss everyone and everything still and long to see everyone and to feel the cooler Wisconsin night breezes. (For some reason, my big thing recently is not hearing birds ever.)
-Continued learning about what it means to love sacrificially and to give of myself until there is nothing of myself left.
