Ruined

We went on a tour this afternoon of the devastated areas of New Orleans and its suburbs. Thousands of homes, and I do not exaggerate, remain destroyed, unihabitable or waiting to be rebuilt. We took pictures to try to capture the feeling and bring evidence back with us. But it is hard to describe the feeling of walking up to what was once someone's lovely little home in what was a neighborhood of families, friends and people who are now all gone and may never return. I went inside a couple of the homes that have still not been touched since Katrina. Windows blown out, doors ajar and the house off it foundations, you could sense the ghosts of the people who had resided there until August 2005. The debris inside and out was all that remained. And although many houses have been removed leaving bear foundations or front porch steps to nowhere, nothing speaks to the heart more than finding a Playskool picnic table in the midst of overgrown weeds, a pearl-shell windchime at the door of house with nothing left inside other than bear framing and mold.
Tonight we will be told our assignment. We will be strong and know that we are giving our best. Perhaps the more we share our experience, the more we keep the need of the people here in the minds of all of us, we will have done good beyond our work here, maybe somehow circulating the God has given us here and inspired us and those who here these stories to, at last, do something.

Rob