intomybrain

The ride home was quicker than our ride there. But much hotter, and much colder. Some where along our week there, the heat and air conditioning in our bus broke. So the first half of our trip home was sweltering and the second half of our trip home was freezing! We were quite a funny site though. Half way through our trip when the bus was stopped, we all went below the bus and pulled out our sleeping bags… so when you looked across the bus all you could see were a bunch of heads sticking out of a sea of sleeping bags.

Well…that’s about it! There’s more, really. There’s always more. But this is quite enough for now. I wonder how many of you actually made it this far through my writings. Congratulations if you did!

God Bless.

I was so exhausted. Everyone was exhausted. This was our last work day. And the fact that we had been there all week definitely showed. This house we worked on, like our second house, hadn’t been open since the hurricane. And since this was our last day, we wanted to finish it. Gut one house in one day?! That’s crazy! Well, we did it . Of course, in attempting to do so…we had to combine teams. So we had a totally of about 26 people working on one house. Crazy? Yes. Efficient? Not really. BUT! We were all so tired; we really needed all the hands we could get, so we could take extra breaks. Ironically though…the day we had the most team members is the day that we had no tools….zero… So we had 26 people, most with nothing to work with. It was at the very least interesting. And not only did we not have enough tools (because they got put on the wrong bus) but one of the three team leaders forgot to pick up lunches for their team. So. We had three teams…no tools…and not enough lunches. Praise the Lord for Red Cross trucks!!! Uri, a professor from Rutgers and a native of Russia, heard the truck’s distinctive horn in the distance and dropped all his work and just went running in search of it. About an hour later, he came back and gave us word that he found them and gave them directions to the house we were working on. Some people were a little ticked off with the fact that he left us all working to ‘go for a walk’…but when that truck came by with enough food for all of us they all definitely changed their tone .
On the truck was Dave Shelton, he’s a director. And I could have sworn that I’ve met him before from somewhere, but I can’t remember from where. He was a really nice guy, it was cool to meet him and talk with him.
Not only was I thankful for the food though…They had ice! This was the day that I got my left hand smashed by a shovel. Ice is much appreciated in those sorts of situations.
Oh yeah…and uh…we had interesting searches for porta-potties…long story. I wont bore you all .

I wrote down in my journal some things that I learned this day:
“God can give you strength even when you don’t feel like He can or will or is. It puts a whole new perspective on it all not being about a feeling.
God does things and heals you and makes you strong and works in your life and body even when you don’t feel it.
Flexibility. [Enough said.]

I decided to go out to dinner again with a group of people (Paula, Paul, Amealo, Diego, Sajen, Evet, Jenny, Coleen, and I). We went to Café Beignet’s on Bourbon Street. It’s an outdoor jazz café type place. And it’s awesome! We took the trolley to get part of the way there, that was fun too.
I got jambalaya and and an iced coffee. It was the best jambalaya I’ve ever had. Definitely some of the best food ever. And the coffee was some of the strongest I’ve ever had! I was wired for hours after drinking that. Seriously. As we were eating we were enjoying a live trio. A banjo, an upright bass, and a trumpet. The guy playing the trumpet also sang a bit. Steamboat Willie (I bought one of his cds). I totally loved that music. It was so much fun, and had so much life behind it. The guy on the banjo was really good. And when the singer sang, sometimes he’d make himself sound like Louis Armstrong…it was really great. I totally loved the whole thing. And, being totally wired on coffee, I was dancing around and acting all hyper and jittery and it was so much fun. It was such an awesome night! Good music, good food, good coffee, good company, and good conversations (evolution, Catholicism, religions, music, etc). And it was all outside so it was double awesome. It was just a great night overall. We got to meet the players in the band as well, so that was cool. They were all so really nice, and they kept dedicating songs to the college students who were down in NOLA helping rebuild the city (us!). They played “What a Wonderful World” (one of my favorite songs) and “When the saints go Marching in.” I was dancing the whole way home (aka, the hotel). We stopped at Walgreen because some people had to pick some things up, and …since I was still wired…I just started buying all of these little cheap “souvenirs” to bring home to people so I could share my experiences.
It was such a great last night away! And just when I thought the night was over, Sajen took his guitar out and we had another long worship set in the middle of the hallway with a bunch of people surrounding us again. The worship was so so deep for me this night; after everything I learned that week, and everything that happened, and all the ways He protected us and provided abundantly for us. I didn’t completely feel physically up to singing in worship…but then I remembered the fact, again, that’s it’s not about how I feel. So I just kept worshiping, Worshiping until I felt sick, and then worshiped even more. Praise God.
I feel my relationship with Christ, my God, is more intimate and it’s only by His strength. Not mine at all, because I don’t have any at all. It all reminded me that I am still supposed to pursue this mission of His to Waveland, MS. I started to doubt it, but this confirmed it to me.
Worship was awesome, it lasted about two hours again…until midnight. I was going to go to bed but I just didn’t want the night to end yet. So I made myself stay awake and hung out with people in the hallway playing games. It was cool cuz I learned some new really fun games!
But, without fail, we had another incident that night. Long story short, there were lots of security guards involved. Our group got accused of a few things, really bad things, that we never did. It took a long time and a lot of stress and prayer to get sorted out. But in the end it all worked out fine. (Although I do doubt we’ll ever get asked back there).

Today we finished our second house. We were definitely all worn out.
Karen and I found a frog stuck in the house, in all the dust and muck. So we “saved” it. It was really fun to do something ‘silly.’ We took the frog outside (oh, by the way, we named it George) and washed it off with some water, it looked horrible. And…we soon realized…George wasn’t breathing. So. Karen thought fast and began to resuscitate it. Yes, I said resuscitate. Well, long story short…we saved George.
We were done early this day…so we hung out and just bonded some more as a group. It was great. I got to take a lot of pictures too.
It’s creepy sometimes. When you stop and look around. Everything is abandoned around you. There aren’t many FEMA trailers in the area…so not many people have come back…there’s no where for them to stay. It’s like ghost town.

Oh, just as a side note: At first I didn’t think anything of being on the forth floor of the building… Fourth floor isn’t bad…even with the elevators not working…it’s really not that high. But then, as the week, progressed and we got more and more tired… Oy…. Climbing four flights of stairs after a long days work is awful!! Talk about a work out. It totally made me appreciate Camp Katrina so much more!!!

That night we went out to get food somewhere in NOLA. In our quest to avoid Bourbon Street to find somewhere to eat jambalaya, we found Remaloude on Bourbon Street…. Yeah, my thoughts exactly…
Paula and I shared jambalaya and buffalo wings. The best buffalo wings I’ve ever had, by the way. And you all know how I’m a sucker for buffalo wings …well, if you didn’t know…now you do.

Today was a hard work day. We started a new house, and this time we didn’t have it half gutted to start with like yesterdays house. The house hadn’t been opened since it was inspected on September 27th (my birthday). So we did everything ourselves. It was quite an amazing feeling. We were the fist people to take the fridge out. So it had food in it that has been there since the hurricane. I have never in my life, ever, smelt anything that horrible. Ever. We duct taped the fridge shut so it wouldn’t open when it got moved. But, despite our efforts, liquid leaked through the cracks of the fridge anyway. It smelt soooo bad!
There were cockroaches everywhere. They were actually a really beautiful color red; but they were still completely gross and totally huge as far as I’m concerned.
Starting this day, Paula and I made lunches for out team. Unlike the first day, instead of premade lunches, we got the supplies to make our own. And, again, as another blessing, we had more than enough food.
I realized how many new friends I was making. God is good. I also realize that I was doing so much better, but I know that it’s totally by God’s grace and mercy that I was doing okay. Better than okay!

People were getting really sick. I started to get sick, and didn’t recover for a good month after I got back…but there were others that were a lot worse. The mold and fungus and such really had a bad affect on our lungs, some worse than others. (Sleeping on moist, moldy floors in the hotel wasn’t helping either.
Heh, I don’t know why I laugh about this still, but this was the day I began hurting myself a lot….it was all really silly stuff for the most part too. It was like I was taking all the casualties for the team. They all thought it was funny too. I didn’t seriously hurt myself (except for on the last day when my hand got smashed with a shovel…that wasn’t cool…for a very long time). It was mostly silly stuff though…like accidentally stepping on rakes and having the handles shoot up into my face like in cartoons. Or having someone carrying a stack of 2×4’s back up into me and hit me in the back/shoulder with the wood. Ok…it all sounds a lot worse now…but really…it wasn’t that bad… I’m tough, I can take it.
I’m no longer looking forward to going home at the end of the week. What change of mindset! Praise God!
That night we were hanging out in the hall having dinner. Dinner was actually warm. It was past and meatballs (really small ones) and tomato sauce and corn. Thank God for something other than a hamburger or hotdog. We laughed a lot, it was so much fun. Paula, Evet, Diego, Sajen, Kalhil, Coleen, Paul, Amealo, and I. We talked about food and our nationalities and communion and juice and that pastor Joel from Lakewood church whose last name I can’t remember and probably other things. I asked what people thought about Jersey Cru and worship and such and they all said they really enjoy it and that they really like it when we do new songs. Who knew? Not me! I was starting to think that we were doing too many new songs, but I definitely changed my tone after that talk.
Then Sajen got his guitar out and started playing worship songs. Then, about 2 hours and 25 or so songs later (if not more), we had an awesome time of worship. And more and more people kept joining us. It was awesome. We stopped at about 10:15 or so. I was going to go to bed but then I ended up sitting down with Sajen, Kalhil, and Coleen. Sajen and I were talking about worship leading and stuff like that. He’s awesome awesome awesome at transitions by the way. I didn’t even know it was humanly possibly to have transitions that good…and they weren’t even planed out! I never want to forget the ‘worship set’ we had that night…the feel of it was awesome. There’s something about a guitar and vocals…and then some a cappella thrown in there. Then we were all talking and I was thinking about going to bed …and all the electricity in the building when out. The backup generators came on. So I took it as a sign and went to bed. I had a really hard time falling asleep (didn’t take benadryl for the first time this week). Then, when the power came back on, the fire alarms went off because it freaked out the system. We’re all really thankful that’s all it was…because a lot of people were so tired that they never woke up when the alarm went off. We didn’t even make it half way down the stairs before we were told to go back to our rooms because it was just a false alarm. (it was like 2am by the way).
And just to make the night all that more interesting…whoever was last leaving our room closed the door!!! Remember what I told you about having no keys? Well…yeah…we were locked out. In our pajamas…at 2 am. Not fun. Somehow we got someone who worked there to find us a key to our room and we got in.

First work day. It was much cooler out this day than the previous one. Such a blessing! It wasn’t cool, but, cooler. First sign of God at work.
This morning, we didn’t think we were going to have enough water. FEMA hadn’t brought the shipment yet, and they were out. Yes, it was cooler that day, but not cool enough that the idea of having no water on our work site was any where near an okay thought. I asked people to pray. On the way to our site we were able to stop at a gas station to pick up a few jugs of water, still not enough, but it was at least some. Then, when we got to our site, the home owners (Leon and Vicki…who I’d like to go back and visit) were there, with an entire cooler full of ice and water. We weren’t even expecting them to be there! And ice!! Meaning we actually had cold water instead of lukewarm…
Leon and Vicki are two of the few people who have a FEMA trailer in that area. But it’s not nearly big enough for them. There aren’t enough windows…this really bothered Vicki. They were so kind. Sooo thankful to us. Our attempts at making their lives a little easier seemed so feeble to me, but to them it was like we saved them.
The packed lunches that we bring from the hotel were…um…food…that’s just about all I can say about it. It was just about enough to sustain us, and that’s all we really needed. It really shifts your focus when you don’t know how much or even if you’re going to eat. Food was scarce all week, even for us volunteers. It totally changes your outlook and puts another whole aspect on how you feel for the people who live there.
A few hours after lunch, once the energy from lunch had definitely worn off and we were losing momentum…a Red Cross Relief truck came by . That horn was some of the sweetest music we heard all week. These trucks drive around every day bringing WARM food to survivors and volunteers. WARM food! Not lukewarm! It was such a blessing. (As well as some of the best sausage I’ve ever had!) Oh! And oranges! Fresh fruit!
We went to our sites thinking that we wouldn’t have any water; but we came back with not only extra water, but full stomachs from two lunches and even leftovers from that! Both of which were much appreciated since dinner at the hotel usually consisted of either one hotdog and uncooked rice (yes, uncooked) or a hamburger and a couple leaves of lettuce.

This day we learned about the gang MS 13. They came to the area after the hurricane and were doing horrible horrible things in the city. It just reminded us of how unsafe we really were in that area…but more so, what the people who live there have to go through everyday. It totally blows my mind how people (I’m referring to the gang) could be like that. The people of NOLA have been through enough…how can people prey on them like that?
While on the issue of safety. We weren’t really all that safe in the hotel. We couldn’t lock our room doors ever…actually…we couldn’t even close them. No one had access to the keys to the rooms, so if you wanted to ever get back in you couldn’t close the doors. We had problems with “unwanted visitors� a few nights in a row so they placed two armed guards on every floor and set a 10pm curfew.
I was still anxious and nervous, but I was excited about what God could do there. I couldn’t wait to see it. I’ve already seen some of it and I can’t wait to see more.
We had a fire alarm this night. It was a little scary, because we didn’t know what was going on. (And I had to hang up on Rachael who was writing an email update for me.) We were outside for a while. It’s a little scary to be outside at night there…being that we were in the downtown area. When we were finally allowed to go back in, we found out that someone pulled the alarm (or caused the alarm) on the fourth floor…our floor…so they kicked everyone from our floor out until they could figure out what had happened. The people who work there were sort of flipping out. Because a lot of things aren’t to code, and I think the fire department was getting frustrated with them, and because the alarms had been going off a lot for them here recently. Tonight they couldn’t reset the system for some reason…so we had the alarms going off for a long time that night.
That night I realized God’s goodness. I had asked Him to show me it. And He did. God is good…whether I believe He is or not. But I realized that when I acknowledge His truths and goodness, whether I feel it or not, and when I ask to see it…that’s when the really cool stuff happens . Because that’s all the truth. The reality of God is that He is real. Whether you feel that He is good or not, He is. Whether you feel that He is working and moving or not, He is.
I was really missing my friends from the Waveland trip this day. So I prayed for them.

First full day in NOLA. We were staying in the Grand Palace Hotel. But don’t let the word “hotel” fool you…it was a total mess.
We had this day off to just take everything in and get settled. So we walked around in a group of probably about 10 people. You weren’t allowed to go anywhere by yourself. We mostly walked around the French Quarter. They have beautiful buildings there. And a very beautiful garden that we walked through. I’d really like to go back sometime and take some of my friends with me. Some many things I was to share with them.
I got a chance to talk with Paula and Linice (she’s from Brookdale College) some this week. It was good to share what I was feeling with other people instead of keeping it all to myself. Seclusion just makes everything worse. The sharing of burdens heals; or at the very least gives glimpses of hope, which is more than enough for me.
We had a meeting in the lobby of the hotel this day. Someone talked and someone led worship (and I was reminded of home much I enjoy the song “For You Are Good”. All 900 or so of us in the hotel were there. It was pretty awesome to see us all there. And to see us all there for the same reasons.
The speaker spoke on Luke 18:18-22. The rich young ruler. Except it was a different talk on that passage than I have ever heard before. He spoke about living life to the fullest. A full, full life.
We then later drove through the 9th ward. The devastation was…amazing…for lack of a better term. I can’t, still, two months later, figure out how I felt about it. I had already seen this devastation once…so the ‘shock factor’ wasn’t there anymore. I guess I felt depressed, but I also felt nothing. It was weird.
That night I just laid in my sleeping bag…on the mold infested floor of our room on the forth floor of the hotel. Someone brought out their guitar and was leading an adhoc worship set in the hallway (our meeting place for the week). It was beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed falling asleep to that; as well as someone snoring, the yelling outside, people talking in the hallway…all of it. It reminded me I wasn’t nearly as alone as I felt. It was like being hugged by angels. It was beautiful.

The first day of this trip was definitely not without incident. Long story short…every bag packed that afternoon had to be repacked because they ended up breaking for various reason. Repacking everything isn’t exactly something you hope to be doing as you need to walk out the door because you’re already running late.
I was really nervous and really anxious. I’m not completely sure why…I just get like that sometimes. (Plus, all the small little things going wrong that day weren’t really helping…)
A friend of mine from church, Paula, was also coming on this trip…so I was very thankful to see her there while I was waiting for the buses to arrive at the Student Center at Rutgers. I didn’t really know anyone going into this trip…so to have Paula was definitely a blessing! Yes, I did know a few faces here and there…but I knew none of them as well as I did coming home from this trip.
The bus ride was….interesting. As they usually are. I just sort of kept to myself…since I was feeling anxious and such, I didn’t really feel up to putting myself out there to meet new people. I was tired and not all that excited about going…I just wanted to sleep. We started watching the Lord of the Rings…which definitely made me more than happy. (By the end of the week we watched all three…one on the way to NOLA and the other two on the way back).
After the little sleep I got, I woke up to the buses pulling into the Cracker Barrel…and not just any Cracker Barrel… the same Cracker Barrel that I stopped at with the team I joined from church (Dan, David, Eris, Rachael, Laurie, and Steve). From this point on I thoroughly missed that team. Everything I passed reminded me of that trip and how awesome it was; and, most importantly, all the amazing ways that my individual relationships with those six people changed, each in their respective ways. I knew that amazing things would happen on this trip as well…but nothing could ever replace that week in January for me…really, nothing.

Oh! Almost forgot. The night of March 10th I saw something. I have no idea if I really saw it or if it was a dream. If it was the latter, I remember opening my eyes and looking beyond the front of the bus into the visible horizon…so it was probably more of a benadryl hallucination than a dream. I saw a sun set. With deep, vibrant colors. Purple, red, orange, yellow and green. And there were three “towers” of some sort. And that’s about it. The towers we tall. Monstrous, really. Sort of ominous…like three watchful eyes. Something about them reminded me of “1984″ (no, not the year). The were mostly cylindrical; except for the center one which had a glowing circular dome-type object at its summit. The rest were dark. One day I may paint what I saw. I drew a sketch of it when I woke.

Tomorrow I leave for New Orleans with 100 other Campus Crusaders…and I have to say… I’m quite nervous about it all. It’s not that I think anything bad is going to happen, or that I’m not going to have a good time (not that it’s about me having a good time, even in the least bit), I’m just feeling anxious about the whole thing. This isn’t anything strange for me though. Whenever I go anywhere like this I get really nervous and anxious a couple of days before I go; but I’ve definitely been getting better over the years. This time, my anxiousness only started today, really. In the past it’s started sooner. And once I get there, I know that it’ll only last a little while…my anxiety used to last the whole week and it used to be almost unbearable and petrifying, and then it went down to a few days…then a few days of bearable anxiety…and then just a day. So, I know it’s getting better, and I know that, although I feel like this, it’ll only last a short while…but…I still feel like this. Sometimes I either have to force myself to turn off this part of my brain that makes me worry and makes me focus on the knot I’m feeling in my stomach or I have to deal with it consciously. Usually dealing with it is a better, more productive way to go, especially in the long run, but sometimes I just can’t do it.

Well, anyway, I’m digressing slightly. Tomorrow I leave for New Orleans. There are a lot of us going. About 100 of us is the last count I heard. Two full charter buses! We’re going with Campus Crusade for Christ. I don’t really know anyone who is going other than two people I met through Crusade two summers ago. One is from Minnesota and the other is from Maryland. So it’ll be really nice to see them. Oh! And a friend of mine from the church I go to will be there as well. So that’s cool. I know I’ll make new friends though…you can’t exactly travel 24 hours in a charter bus with 50 other people and not meet anyone! I just have to work on not isolating myself…because I’m definitely a pro at that.

We’ll probably be doing the same sorts of things that we did down in Waveland, MS. If you want to find out more about what I’ll be doing this Spring Break, check out: www.katrinaspringbreak.com. That’s Crusade’s website for this whole endeavour.

So I’m just about done packing. I have some laundry to do…and there are some things that I’m waiting on other people for…but besides those things I think I’m just about done. And hopefully I’ll get to get a good night’s sleep tonight…in my comfortable bed…beacuse you all must know how lovely it is trying to sleep in a bus! Plus, I’m sick. And I need to not be.

See you all when I get back next weekend (the 18th to be exact )! I’ll miss you!