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| 2008 image of last year’s work site |
This is a picture from the site where we worked last year, you can see the white footprint from the previous home. This would be a “before” picture. If you look at the Google credits, it says the picture was from 2008. What a difference a couple of years make.
Previously, it was a really nice neighborhood. Then Katrina came, then it became a sparse one. The google maps images (currently) show many FEMA and other trailers. Once new pictures come in, even the devastation will turn more and more into a memory.
We are hours away from boarding our plane. It’s been an exhausting week of wrapping up things from errands, work-related issues, car repairs and family time.
Now we focus.
Each one of the men and women are trying to hone in on our purpose for going. It’s to help, that’s for sure… We are going to Mississippi to continue the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Those of us that have seen the rebuilding of the Mississippi Gulf Coast region remember the wreckage, tarp-covered homes and once-floating casinos on land.
So all the more we appreciate the newbies, the ones who haven’t been before. They go out with devotion and heart even more than just reliving the devastation. Wreckage unseen, they go to help those that they may never see, but try to be part of God’s helping hand.
But if it were just financial aid, we could send money alone. As has been said before, there are less expensive and often more “efficient” ways to translate dollars to housing. But we go to serve. We serve God, but we also serve others on His behalf. To put a face and hands to a sometimes unseen God, and we ourselves are humbled in the process.
Your Prayers
If during the next couple of weeks, you get a chance, we seek your prayers for us while we try to minister on behalf of God and the others who have sent us. It’s not a working vacation. We’re trying to remind others and ourselves that God has not forgotten them, and restoration comes in many forms, sometimes buildings, sometimes people.
And if there’s anything we can pray for you while we’re working, we’d love to know how to pray for you. Drop us a line! sgvhabitat@gmail.com