"The Big Easy"

Last week we experienced our first days and nights apart since we have been married. I led a trip to New Orleans with 9 other people. Everybody was from ROCKHARBOR except for my parents. Let me just tell you, it was HOT! It was hot and the humidity was probably like 80 or 90%. We all had a wonderful time and really grew close as a team.

We did a bunch of different things. We tore town a garage/shop, distributed food to members of the community, did yardwork, helped at a barbecue, and fed the homeless at a place caled the wall. The two things I felt impacted me the most were distributing food and feeding the homeless. We were able to pray with people and hear their stories from when hurricane Katrina hit. Here is a picture of when we were handing out food. We were in a church parking lot and some of our team members were holding up signs that said free food. There were all kinds of people who came and got food. Some had evacuated before the hurricane and some didn't, but most of them had one thing in common...their house had been destroyed by the storm. Most of them were living in trailers.

God really worked in the lives of all the people on the team. Since I have been home, I continually think of the people there pray that they have hope and will be able to help get their city back to "normal" someday.

GOing to Mexico

This weekend we had the opportunity to go to a town outside of Ensanada, Mexico and serve families there by building them houses. We worked with a ministry called Hands of Mercy. We went with a team of over 100 people from ROCKHARBOR. We were broken up into groups of 25 and our group built one house on Friday and one on Saturday. The first family we built for was a 19 year-old boy and a 14 year-old girl who had a 10 day old baby. The second family was a mom, dad, and son. This picture is the trailer they lived in. It was very crowded inside and had a lot of cracks in it where creatures were able to find their way in.

It was pretty incredible to see the poverty these people live in. They have no running water. They all have outhouses that don't smell to nice, and most of them have big barrels of water that they put uphill from their house so they can take showers and stuff. All of the roads off the main road were made of dirt, which made for a dirty weekend. There was always dust blowing everywhere. Here is one of our finished products. (I know it's not that good of a picture, so I will post more later this week)


On the way home today we were talking about how little these people have. It makes us all more aware of everything we "think" we need and reminds us that's not what life is about. We look forward to sharing stories in person or on the phone. Please continue to pray as I am leaving in 8 days for New Orleans. :)