Almost Over...Almost Back
For the past two weeks or so, having quit my job just 2 weeks prior to that, I've been traveling, working, helping, praying, and not sleeping with 25 youth and 5 other adults from South Bend, IN in the Pass Christian area of Mississippi. I'm still trying processing all we have experienced, remembering that we still have two days together before we part ways, they heading back for home in South Bend, myself remaining in my new old home of New Orleans.
A bit of background I think is in order. Christina and I had the good fortune of getting married, graduating from Tulane, and moving to South Bend in June of last year. We had escaped harms path before any major storms actaully hit New Orleans. But during this past year with Christina in graduate school at Notre Dame, and myself working at a "real" job, we decided that we needed to be closer to family, and to switch roles, her teaching high school Latin and myself going to graduate school. And to top it all off we are going to be blessed with a child come December, whos name is Basil while in utero.
Throughout this past year Christina and I watched from afar as our home of four years was changed radically, our friends and family displaced and in need, not able to do much from where we were other than give words of encouragement, donate money and objects, and pray. We could not see what had become of the places and people we loved first hand. I struggled going to work, especially during those first few months. And as these past ten months have gone by my intense emotions waned a bit.
So here I was a week ago last Saturday, driving into Mississippi along I-10. The bits of remaining destruction were not great, a billboard here, a broken tree there, but the emotions all came flooding back and I nearly lost it in a van with 10 youth and our youth director bill. That first night we stayed at our staging ground, St. Ann's Catholic Church in Lizana, MS. They have devoted all of their energies to lodging, feeding, and arranging work for groups from all over the country. The next day we went down to highway 90 along the coast and drove from Pass Christian to Gulfport. Where there were once neighborhoods, houses, stores and government buildings there was now, even ten months later rubble and huge expanses of open lots where people's lives had once been. It was numbing.
We worked for the next five days down in Pass Christian at Our Mother of Mercy Parish, whos' parishioner base had lost 80% of their homes, and at other varried and miscellaneous jobs throught the area. We were greeted by many a stranger who would come up to us give a smile and a warm hug thanking us, over and over for being there to help. These are people who had lost everything and were having to start over, people who had been seeing groups like us for ten months, and yet when they saw us it was as if we were the first group to come out to help, it was genuine thankfullness. Our gift of presence meant more to them than the work we would actually do.
Through this past week I have been over come with feelings of confusion, fear, joy, love. This place of sadness, loss, hope, destruction and joy I am moving to, I am calling my home, where I will at least start my family in.
In two days my youth group leaves for South Bend, and I am left, I am brought, I enter willingly but with a good dose of the fear of God and love of the strangers I call my neighbors.
A bit of background I think is in order. Christina and I had the good fortune of getting married, graduating from Tulane, and moving to South Bend in June of last year. We had escaped harms path before any major storms actaully hit New Orleans. But during this past year with Christina in graduate school at Notre Dame, and myself working at a "real" job, we decided that we needed to be closer to family, and to switch roles, her teaching high school Latin and myself going to graduate school. And to top it all off we are going to be blessed with a child come December, whos name is Basil while in utero.
Throughout this past year Christina and I watched from afar as our home of four years was changed radically, our friends and family displaced and in need, not able to do much from where we were other than give words of encouragement, donate money and objects, and pray. We could not see what had become of the places and people we loved first hand. I struggled going to work, especially during those first few months. And as these past ten months have gone by my intense emotions waned a bit.
So here I was a week ago last Saturday, driving into Mississippi along I-10. The bits of remaining destruction were not great, a billboard here, a broken tree there, but the emotions all came flooding back and I nearly lost it in a van with 10 youth and our youth director bill. That first night we stayed at our staging ground, St. Ann's Catholic Church in Lizana, MS. They have devoted all of their energies to lodging, feeding, and arranging work for groups from all over the country. The next day we went down to highway 90 along the coast and drove from Pass Christian to Gulfport. Where there were once neighborhoods, houses, stores and government buildings there was now, even ten months later rubble and huge expanses of open lots where people's lives had once been. It was numbing.
We worked for the next five days down in Pass Christian at Our Mother of Mercy Parish, whos' parishioner base had lost 80% of their homes, and at other varried and miscellaneous jobs throught the area. We were greeted by many a stranger who would come up to us give a smile and a warm hug thanking us, over and over for being there to help. These are people who had lost everything and were having to start over, people who had been seeing groups like us for ten months, and yet when they saw us it was as if we were the first group to come out to help, it was genuine thankfullness. Our gift of presence meant more to them than the work we would actually do.
Through this past week I have been over come with feelings of confusion, fear, joy, love. This place of sadness, loss, hope, destruction and joy I am moving to, I am calling my home, where I will at least start my family in.
In two days my youth group leaves for South Bend, and I am left, I am brought, I enter willingly but with a good dose of the fear of God and love of the strangers I call my neighbors.
